Books and Articles

Dainese, E., 2015, “Histories of Exchange: Indigenous South Africa in the South African Architectural Record and the Architectural Review” in Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Special Issue on Global Postwar Architecture, vol.74 no.4, (Dec 2015), pp. 443-463 (ISSN 0037-9808)

Abstract

During World War II, interest in indigenous South African architecture deepened, leading to studies that challenged modernism and influenced architectural design. “Histories of Exchange: Indigenous South Africa in the South African Architectural Record and the Architectural Review“ remaps the tension between modern and indigenous cultures during the 1940s and 1950s, examining the diaspora of ideas between South Africa and Britain and revealing a new  genealogy of postwar architecture. Elisa Dainese addresses indigenous South African architecture as it was seen in the postwar years from the perspectives of two architectural magazines. In doing so, she provides a new theoretical framework that probes the role of architectural journals, considering them as alternative spaces where contact took place among European and African cultures.

The research in this essay has accumulated over a number of years, but this synthesis evolved in the course of a recent postdoctoral fellowship under the People Programme (Marie Curie Actions) of the European Union’s 7FP (FP/2007-2013, REA grant agreement n.327261), which I gratefully acknowledge.

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