8th October, 2024 - 16:30
Stadscampus Mutsaard, s.Mu.A2.03
Ambtmanstraat 1, 2nd floor

The lecture will explore the construction of architecture and infrastructure through the collaborative efforts of different agents from across the Global South. Specifically, it will focus on the cooperative production of architectures through which new ‘South-South’ networks of knowledge, technology, labor, and material circulation were substantively constructed.

Distinguishing such transnational cooperation-building from better-known postcolonial nation-building projects, it will reframe the existing narratives of development to include previously un-examined trajectories that open a new space within the critical historiography of modern architecture. To achieve this, the lecture will explore patterns of exchange and cooperation within the construction worlds of the Global South focusing on transfers of materials, processes and knowledge that intentionally or effectively served to subvert the imperial hegemony. This relates to both the power relationships still latent in the organizational and cultural legacies of the colonial past, as well as the neo-colonialism inherent in the ‘North-South’ paradigm of foreign-aid-assisted development in the Cold War era.

About Amit Srivastava

Amit Srivastava is Director (India) for the Centre of Asian and Middle Eastern Architecture (CAMEA) based at the University of Adelaide, Australia. Having trained and practiced as an architect in India, his primary research focuses on the architectural and construction histories of colonial and postcolonial India. His 2015 book, India: Modern Architectures in History with co-author Peter Scriver, published by University of Chicago Press, offers the long history of architectural modernity in India, from its beginnings in the colonial modern enterprise of the British PWD to the late twentieth century struggles with post-colonial identities. While his current research examines the transnational exchange of materials, skills, and construction processes across the Indian Ocean region, spanning across Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Australia, with a particular interest in South-South cooperation.