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[PANEL] Colonial Building Sites: Labor, Skills and Construction Technologies
Chairs: Ana Vaz Milheiro, Beatriz Serrazina
Venue: IASTE, Alexandria (Egypt), May 23-26, 2025
Abstract:
The spatial dimension of colonialism is a topic frequently addressed by architectural historians, who examine the finished buildings as evidence of the historical processes at work. However, the construction sites themselves were the setting for significant interactions between people, skills, materials, and technologies. Despite the ephemeral nature of these spaces, they exhibited a significant cosmopolitan dimension that has yet to be fully elucidated. What were the dynamics of interaction between laborers from disparate backgrounds and with different agendas? What construction skills and technologies were considered in the process? What was the impact of these interactions on the relationship between tradition, cosmopolitanism, and colonialism?
This session on Colonial Building Sites: Labour, Skills and Construction Technologies encompasses a diverse range of temporal and geographical contexts, including examples from Africa and Asia.
The aim is to facilitate a more nuanced and intricate comprehension of the construction site as a pivotal space that simultaneously supported and challenged colonialism across time and space.
The contributions will include questions about authorship, construction materials and methods, design, architectural modernity, the coexistence of multiple skill sets, recruitment and urban unrest, the transfer of knowledge, and the dynamics of expertise.
Participants:
– Ana Vaz Milheiro
"On what material do you want it to be made...? Negotiations and colonial building
sites in African territories under late Portuguese rule"
– Beatriz Serrazina
"Mining Labor, Housing and Building Sites in Late Colonialism across Central Africa"
– Cole Roskam (Hong Kong University )
"Architects, Contractors, and Building Sites in Late Nineteenth-Century Anglo-China"
– Robby Fivez (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), Johan Lagae (Ghent University)
"Labour recruitment in the Belgian Congo: the construction of the Ango-Ango
transport complex in the port city of Matadi and its aftermath"
– Sidh Losa MendiraKa (CES-UC); Giuseppe Resta (FAUP) & Cláudia Duarte (CHAM – NOVA)
"Building Old Goa: Identity, Patronage and Labour in Early Modern Colonial
Construction Sites"
Venue: IASTE, Alexandria (Egypt), May 23-26, 2025
Abstract:
The spatial dimension of colonialism is a topic frequently addressed by architectural historians, who examine the finished buildings as evidence of the historical processes at work. However, the construction sites themselves were the setting for significant interactions between people, skills, materials, and technologies. Despite the ephemeral nature of these spaces, they exhibited a significant cosmopolitan dimension that has yet to be fully elucidated. What were the dynamics of interaction between laborers from disparate backgrounds and with different agendas? What construction skills and technologies were considered in the process? What was the impact of these interactions on the relationship between tradition, cosmopolitanism, and colonialism?
This session on Colonial Building Sites: Labour, Skills and Construction Technologies encompasses a diverse range of temporal and geographical contexts, including examples from Africa and Asia.
The aim is to facilitate a more nuanced and intricate comprehension of the construction site as a pivotal space that simultaneously supported and challenged colonialism across time and space.
The contributions will include questions about authorship, construction materials and methods, design, architectural modernity, the coexistence of multiple skill sets, recruitment and urban unrest, the transfer of knowledge, and the dynamics of expertise.
Participants:
– Ana Vaz Milheiro
"On what material do you want it to be made...? Negotiations and colonial building
sites in African territories under late Portuguese rule"
– Beatriz Serrazina
"Mining Labor, Housing and Building Sites in Late Colonialism across Central Africa"
– Cole Roskam (Hong Kong University )
"Architects, Contractors, and Building Sites in Late Nineteenth-Century Anglo-China"
– Robby Fivez (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), Johan Lagae (Ghent University)
"Labour recruitment in the Belgian Congo: the construction of the Ango-Ango
transport complex in the port city of Matadi and its aftermath"
– Sidh Losa MendiraKa (CES-UC); Giuseppe Resta (FAUP) & Cláudia Duarte (CHAM – NOVA)
"Building Old Goa: Identity, Patronage and Labour in Early Modern Colonial
Construction Sites"
[SESSION]
Colonial Public Works: Architecture Beyond Labor Subalternity
Chairs: Ana Vaz Milheiro, Francesca Vita
Conference: SAH Atlanta, April 30–May 4, 2025
Abstract: The history of architecture and urban planning in former colonized territories has been shaped by canonical narratives and single agents (Lagae&Boonen, 2020). The question of architectural authorship has been at the center of most colonial studies, whether they focus on the designer, the engineer, the owner, or the political-administrative decision-maker who approved the territorial infrastructure, the urban
settlement, or the building. “Can the subaltern speak” (Spivak, 1988) overcoming the architectural history focused on the designing elite? We welcome scholars to critically engage with the representativeness of labor subalternity and its importance throughout the process of architectural design and construction, questioning: who were those workers whose role was crucial to the colonial sphere, but who remained
underrepresented in the history of colonial architecture? How did their labor, presence and skills influence the building site, construction methods and the project/design?
This session intersects the history of colonial architecture and the theme of labor, encouraging scholars to submit papers that address the agency of labor in the Public Works Departments during the late colonial period, between the 19th and 20th
centuries. Contributions related to the African and Asian contexts are particularly appreciated, as are those related to the history of colonial architecture focusing on
the relationship between project design and unskilled labor and analyzing the impact
of subalternised collective subjects (workers) who remained largely “hidden” in both colonial and postcolonial narratives. This session seeks for papers that explore the liaison between architecture, colonialism and labor, addressing: i) construction
methods and skills; ii) construction sites; iii) authorship; iv) gender and race; v) division of labor. Researches based on both case studies and methodological approaches to the theme are welcome to enable a discussion on the impact of labor within the colonial architectural effort and how to approach it from a theoretical perspective.
Participants:
– Beatriz Serrazina "Building the Benguela Railway: laborers and construction skills"
– Sarah Melsens
"Watching, listening, and reading between the lines: retrieving the construction workers of Shivaji Bridge, British India"
– Jingliang DU
"Reconstructing Colonial Architecture: Labor Dynamics under Chinese and British Contractors in Early 20th Century Shanghai"
– Maggie Freeman
"Architectures of Control and the Labor of the Controlled in the British Mandatory Middle East (1920-1948)"
– Brian McLaren
"Architecture and indigenous labor in the Libyan coastal highway"
– Romain David
"NEDECO 1952-1959: Unskilled Intellectual Labor and Postcolonial Experts in Colonial Nigeria
Conference: SAH Atlanta, April 30–May 4, 2025
Abstract: The history of architecture and urban planning in former colonized territories has been shaped by canonical narratives and single agents (Lagae&Boonen, 2020). The question of architectural authorship has been at the center of most colonial studies, whether they focus on the designer, the engineer, the owner, or the political-administrative decision-maker who approved the territorial infrastructure, the urban
settlement, or the building. “Can the subaltern speak” (Spivak, 1988) overcoming the architectural history focused on the designing elite? We welcome scholars to critically engage with the representativeness of labor subalternity and its importance throughout the process of architectural design and construction, questioning: who were those workers whose role was crucial to the colonial sphere, but who remained
underrepresented in the history of colonial architecture? How did their labor, presence and skills influence the building site, construction methods and the project/design?
This session intersects the history of colonial architecture and the theme of labor, encouraging scholars to submit papers that address the agency of labor in the Public Works Departments during the late colonial period, between the 19th and 20th
centuries. Contributions related to the African and Asian contexts are particularly appreciated, as are those related to the history of colonial architecture focusing on
the relationship between project design and unskilled labor and analyzing the impact
of subalternised collective subjects (workers) who remained largely “hidden” in both colonial and postcolonial narratives. This session seeks for papers that explore the liaison between architecture, colonialism and labor, addressing: i) construction
methods and skills; ii) construction sites; iii) authorship; iv) gender and race; v) division of labor. Researches based on both case studies and methodological approaches to the theme are welcome to enable a discussion on the impact of labor within the colonial architectural effort and how to approach it from a theoretical perspective.
Participants:
– Beatriz Serrazina "Building the Benguela Railway: laborers and construction skills"
– Sarah Melsens
"Watching, listening, and reading between the lines: retrieving the construction workers of Shivaji Bridge, British India"
– Jingliang DU
"Reconstructing Colonial Architecture: Labor Dynamics under Chinese and British Contractors in Early 20th Century Shanghai"
– Maggie Freeman
"Architectures of Control and the Labor of the Controlled in the British Mandatory Middle East (1920-1948)"
– Brian McLaren
"Architecture and indigenous labor in the Libyan coastal highway"
– Romain David
"NEDECO 1952-1959: Unskilled Intellectual Labor and Postcolonial Experts in Colonial Nigeria
[COMMUNICATION]
Imperial companies and railways between Angola and Belgian Congo, 1910-1930
Authors : Beatriz Serrazina
Conference : T2M Annual Conference - Mobilities and Infrastructures, Leipzig, Germany, 23-25 September
Abstract: This paper focuses on the mining networks between Angola and the Belgian Congo during European colonialism to question the wider and lasting socio-spatial impacts of the construction of railway lines, considering multiple agents and agendas. It explores the roles played by Union Minière du Haut Katanga, Forminière and Diamang in planning, building, and using railways between the two territories. These complex connections involved the railway routes’ layout – from the decauville lines for local transport to the trans-imperial connections provided by the Benguela Railway between Katanga and Lobito –, the displacement and mobility of workers, the employment of new technologies and construction materials, the strong entanglements with road networks, and the adaptation by local populations living near the lines.
Conference : T2M Annual Conference - Mobilities and Infrastructures, Leipzig, Germany, 23-25 September
Abstract: This paper focuses on the mining networks between Angola and the Belgian Congo during European colonialism to question the wider and lasting socio-spatial impacts of the construction of railway lines, considering multiple agents and agendas. It explores the roles played by Union Minière du Haut Katanga, Forminière and Diamang in planning, building, and using railways between the two territories. These complex connections involved the railway routes’ layout – from the decauville lines for local transport to the trans-imperial connections provided by the Benguela Railway between Katanga and Lobito –, the displacement and mobility of workers, the employment of new technologies and construction materials, the strong entanglements with road networks, and the adaptation by local populations living near the lines.
[COMMUNICATION]
"Model workers" villages? Company rule and adobe-brick houses in late colonial Africa
Authors : Beatriz Serrazina
Conference : 8th International Congress on Construction History (ICCH), Zurich, Switzerland, 27 June
Abstract: In the early 1920s, a severe influenza epidemic in the Panda mining camps, recently founded by Union Minière in southern Belgian Congo, shed light on the importance of housing material conditions. Due to medical studies and reports, a solution was soon to be found in single-family adobe houses. Bricks arguably offered plenty of “benefits”: they were cheap, made with local raw materials, easily assembled on site and did not require much expertise or heavy machinery. For the following decades, adobe was put forward by mining enterprises as a tool for and a symbol of control, neatness, salubrity, productivity and social hierarchy. When industrialization and urbanization issues became strongly entangled in the 1950s, the materialization of workers’ houses was not only a case study for scientists but also a key instrument to counter international politics and anxieties about African housing. This paper questions the role of the adobe-brick components in shaping the built environment in late colonial Africa. What was their impact on house design, construction sites and building teams? To what extent did they compete with other technologies, namely concrete and stone? The overlooked histories of mining villages’ construction illuminate significant trans-imperial circuits of knowledge transfer, running from the first on-site connections to the late international expert meetings. Far from being “workingman’s paradises”, as most company official reports suggested, adobe villages materialized multiple combinations of economic, social, moral and power guises, thus offering new perspectives on colonial construction, away from canonized actors, materials and norms.
Conference : 8th International Congress on Construction History (ICCH), Zurich, Switzerland, 27 June
Abstract: In the early 1920s, a severe influenza epidemic in the Panda mining camps, recently founded by Union Minière in southern Belgian Congo, shed light on the importance of housing material conditions. Due to medical studies and reports, a solution was soon to be found in single-family adobe houses. Bricks arguably offered plenty of “benefits”: they were cheap, made with local raw materials, easily assembled on site and did not require much expertise or heavy machinery. For the following decades, adobe was put forward by mining enterprises as a tool for and a symbol of control, neatness, salubrity, productivity and social hierarchy. When industrialization and urbanization issues became strongly entangled in the 1950s, the materialization of workers’ houses was not only a case study for scientists but also a key instrument to counter international politics and anxieties about African housing. This paper questions the role of the adobe-brick components in shaping the built environment in late colonial Africa. What was their impact on house design, construction sites and building teams? To what extent did they compete with other technologies, namely concrete and stone? The overlooked histories of mining villages’ construction illuminate significant trans-imperial circuits of knowledge transfer, running from the first on-site connections to the late international expert meetings. Far from being “workingman’s paradises”, as most company official reports suggested, adobe villages materialized multiple combinations of economic, social, moral and power guises, thus offering new perspectives on colonial construction, away from canonized actors, materials and norms.
[COMMUNICATION] Building from colonial non-simultaneities: Mabubas Dam, Angola
Authors: Ana Vaz Milheiro, Beatriz Serrazina
Conference : SAH 2024, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 17-21 April
Session : Under Construction
Conference : SAH 2024, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 17-21 April
Session : Under Construction
[SEMINAR]
Round table: Colonial and Post-Colonial Landscapes I
Title : Colonial and Post-Colonial Landscapes: roundtable series I. Infrastructures + Labour + War
Venue : CCB, Lisbon, 9 April
Speakers : Cristiana Bastos, Peter Scriver & Johan Lagae
Venue : CCB, Lisbon, 9 April
Speakers : Cristiana Bastos, Peter Scriver & Johan Lagae
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