SEMINAR, SS 2014
Dr. Rachel Lee

Export / Import, North South / East West  

Through a selection of case studies this seminar will examine the export of European architecture and planning models to countries in parts of the world that have variously been referred to as the colonies, the underdeveloped world, the Third World, the developing world, and the global south.

Beginning with examples of colonial town planning and the imposition of European urban planning concepts onto foreign cultures and built environments, the seminar will trace the changing approaches of European architects and planners as the colonial period came to an end and the reality of the postcolonial era set in.

From an emphasis on welfare in the 1940s, to the offer of technical assistance from the 1950s, to a focus on development aid and later development cooperation, the seminar will critically discuss the shifting power relationships between the foreign “experts” and the emerging independent nation states, and their effects on the architecture and planning projects. Embedded within a conceptual framework that considers aspects of neocolonialism, modernism, technocracy, and globalization, planning concepts such as site and service, roof loan schemes, action planning and participation will be examined.

While the first half of the seminar will examine examples from across the world by individuals, nations and international organisations such as the UN and the World Bank, in order to analyse the impact of the Cold War on development cooperation, the second half will concentrate on architecture and planning projects conducted by East and West German architecture and planning teams. As well as outlining the battle for political and economic hegemony between East and West in the Third World, this will also reveal unlikely cooperations between the Cold War rivals and the growing agency of actors in the global South.