2024 EAHN Award for Best Publication 2022-2023
Alla Vronskaya, ‘Modernism and Mobilization: From Viktor Sokolsky’s Economic Principle to Interwar Architectural Planning’
Jury’s comments: ‘An exceptionally well written account of the relationship between the work of Russian imperial military architect Viktor Sokolsky (1869–1913) and its subsequent application in post-revolutionary Russia. Vronskaya shows how the origins of Moisei Ginzburg’s legendary Narkomfin housing in Moscow lie in the architecture of the military barracks. The jury were impressed by the quality of the research, the brilliant explanation of sometimes difficult economic concepts, and the interrogation of the usual boundaries between (as Vronskaya puts it) ‘radical and regressive’ architectures.’
Best Article by a Young Scholar 2024
Dasha Kuletskaya and Alicja Willam, ‘Warsaw and Its Land: Property Rights on Urban Land in Transition’
Jury’s comments: ‘An extremely lucid and carefully researched article on post-War land reform in the Polish capital. Drawing on recent research on the Swiss architect and urban planner Hans Bernoulli, the authors challenge conventional assumptions about Polish land reform. This was a specialised topic, but the jury was impressed by the depth of the research, the clarity of the explanation, and its implications for future work on Warsaw’s urbanism, and that of Poland in general.’
2022 EAHN Award for Best Publication 2020-2021
Jury's comments: Drawing on oral testimonies by women who are members of her own family, while reflecting critically on her training as an architect, Menna Agha offers an entirely original, textured account of Nubian building culture after displacement. Emphasizing the unrecognized potency of Nubians’ matrilineal kinship bonds, Agha excavates the central role of women in the rebuilding of the village of Qustul, where the author grew up, one of numerous resettlement sites created by the Egyptian state between the 1960s and 1980s as part of the massive High Dam project. At the same time, the article charts new ground in its conceptually rich approach to emotional labor and care as overlooked, but critically important, components of building and placemaking.
Best Article by a Young Scholar 2022
Shuntaro Nozawa, 'Modernity of Electric Light and Shadow: Japanese Domestic Architecture from the Late 1910s to the Early 1930s'
Jury's comments: A brilliantly written discussion on the impact of electric lighting upon domestic interiors and its implications for traditional Japanese culture. Centred on the work of Fujii Koji in the 1920s and 30s, Shuntaro Nozawa’s clear and focused article explores with great skill the relationship between modernity and tradition in Japanese architectural practice through the changing spatial experience of light and shadows, brightness and darkness, introduced by electric light.
2020 EAHN Award for Best Publication 2018-2019
Sheila Crane, ‘Algerian Socialism and the Architecture of Autogestion’
Jury's comments: This is a brilliant analysis of a particular aspect of architecture in post-revolutionary Algeria, one in which the government policy of autogestion (self-management) was transferred and re-imagined in architectural terms. Crane offers a nuanced and carefully argued discussion of this fascinating if brief moment when architectural projects, debates and writing worked in synchrony with the politics of independence in order to un-shackle Algeria from the practices of the colonial era and its economic dependence on France. The article focuses on the theory of Abderrahman Bouchama, relating it to the work of a number of other Algerian architects who were doing (necessarily) experimental and ephemeral work galvanising users in active participation with architectural design. Of particular interest here is the way that Crane brings her arguments to bear in relation to the theoretical framework of provincializing Marxist architectural theory. Crane attends to the shifting alliances as well as the contradiction between architectural production and political ideology. Carefully contextualised and lucidly expounded, this is by any measure a substantial contribution to architectural histories of the post-colonial world.
Runner-up 2020
Andreas W. Putz for ‘Housing Paul and Paula: Building repair and Urban Renewal in the German Democratic Republic’
Jury's comments: Andreas Putz’s article considerably advances our understanding of architecture and reconstruction in post-war East Germany. Focussing on the repair of buildings, and the re- direction of the construction industry and its technologies to this end, Putz shows how by these techniques architects not only advanced urban renewal but also how they brought historic forms back into circulation in new economic circumstances. The article adroitly juggles fascinating detail and many relevant contexts, helping us understand better how repair and re-appropriation were also a part of making the socialist world.
Best article by a young scholar 2020
Rixt Woudstra for ‘Exhibiting Reform: MoMA and the Display of Public Housing (1932 1939)’
Jury's comments: Still a PhD student at the time of the publication of this article, Rixt Woudstra has produced a substantial new account of MoMA’s commitment to housing reform in the New Deal era of the 1930s. We can now understand much better how this social project of architecture, supposedly marginalised by MoMA’s International Style interests, was interwoven with formal interests, even as it was subsequently treated as separate. Not only was it closely aligned with the policies of government and housing organisations it also, Woudstra argues, continued to offer a different set of architectural values, if shorn of their implications for architecture more generally.
2018 EAHN Award for Best Publication 2016-2017
Kenny Cupers, ‘Géographie Volontaire and the Territorial Logic of Architecture’ (2016)
Jury’s comments: This article offers an innovative interpretation of the history of the post-war new towns in France (which is still not that well known in Anglosaxon contexts), by focusing on the role of the so-called ‘Géography Volontaire’ – volitional geography, as Cupers translates the term. This is a school within French postwar geography which aimed at formulating directives for spatial planning a and urbanism, and which has thus far been neglected as a formative influence on the construction of theVilles Nouvelles.
The author competently analyses the impact of this school, not shying away from a politically informed and critical discussion that also addresses the relationship between capitalist political economy and planning on a territorial scale. The writing is very convincing and the argument very well constructed. In dealing with this period of enlightened territorial planning, the article is moreover pertinent for topics that architects and urbanists are dealing with today, such as sustainable cities, medium density tissues, and the like. For all these reasons, the committee is happy to bestow this award upon Kenny Cupers and congratulates him with this achievement.
Honorary mention 2018
Jury’s comments: This paper is an excellent example of the focus on traveling and its impact on architecture, bridging the spheres of perception and reception. It discusses the various interpretations of British gentlemen-architects and -travelers who encountered the Baroque churches of Rome during their Grand Tour in the 17thand 18thcentury. Morel offers us a new angle of interpretation, by framing these interpretations in relation to a theme of lasting consequence: the connection between ethics and aesthetics. The article is well-constructed, uses a wealth of material and is the result of well-conducted research.
Runners-up 2018
Jury’s comments: This is an inspiring article addressing interesting and diverse source material focusing on critical regionalism. It offers an alternate reading to the impact of the 1980 Venice Biennale and the celebration of postmodernism, by focusing on the viewpoint of Kenneth Frampton and his interactions with the work and the ideas of Suzana and Dimitris Antonakakis, whose visit of the Venice Biennale is documented and discussed. The article thus ponders the mediation between historical constructs and experiences of practice, providing a multifaceted and very elegant approach of authorship.
Jury’s comments: This beautifully written article deals with a very interesting topic: the various official descriptions of the John Soane Museum, beginning with the one authored by Soane himself and comparing this with the subsequent editions of the curators of the museum, in order to prepare visitors for what they would encounter. The paper opens up a wealth of source material and engages with the articulation between textual sources and the construction of experience. This paper thus is exemplary of the turn toward the built and the experiential; it focuses on the mediation of experience by written text and images; and highlights how this mediation changes due to technological and cultural transformations.
2016 EAHN Award for Best Publication 2014-2015
Jury’s comments: This is a great article, very well written, an elegant narrative interweaving primary (archival) and secondary (contemporary) sources on a surprising topic, which is not yet treated in a thorough way. The article relies on skillful and astute analysis, opens up new sources and new research questions, and is very well informed theoretically. It is of interest to a wide range of scholars, including curators and museum historiographers.
Runners-up
Hazem Ziada, To See (Like) a Crowd (2015)
Jury’s comments: This article is very rich in visual interpretation and theoretical references, combining the analysis of specific drawings with broadly cast theoretical understandings about the nature of a crowd and its representaton. Through the intensive scrutiny of graphics as primary materials and evidence, the author recognizes the importance of drawing techniques, while also contextualising this material in terms of political theory. It is a bit strange that the analysis does not rely more heavily on Russian language sources.
Gerd Grasshoff & Christian Berndt, Decoding the Pantheon Columns (2014)
Jury’s comments: The importance of the article lies in its innovative approach of a major issue in design and construction – the entasis of a classical column (whose radius diminishes from the base to the top). Thanks to an intelligent use of digital data, the exact measurements of the Pantheon columns are compared with the column construction drawing recently found at Didyma, and the team was able to convincingly argue for a specific construction method. The article is based upon an earlier publication in German, which contained a less thorough analysis of the same data.