PriArc

PriArc examines the relationship between architecture, print culture, and uses of the past in modern Europe and beyond.

Printing the Past. Architecture, Print Culture, and Uses of the Past in Modern Europe (PriArc) is an international, multidisciplinary research project funded by the Humanities in the European Research Area Program (HERA). Looking primarily at architectural debate from the 18^th to early 20^th century, we study the ways in which new notions of the past were negotiated and constructed through architecture. This negotiation took place not only in stone but on paper, not least in the illustrated press emerging from the 1830s onwards, spreading architectural texts and images to new audiences in Europe, European colonies, and USA.

_169, 6/13/05, 12:26 PM, 8C, 4380x4286 (48+1120), 75%, Default Settin, 1/30 s, R66.2, G49.3, B63.2

PriArc

Printing the Past. Architecture, Print Culture, and Uses of the Past in Modern Europe (PriArc) is an international, multidisciplinary research project funded by the Humanities in the European Research Area Program (HERA). PriArc examines the relationship between architecture, print culture, and uses of the past in modern Europe and beyond. Looking primarily at architectural debate […]

Transference

With the French revolution and the Napoleonic wars, not only the geographical but also the temporal map of Europe was redrawn. The new “historical-mindedness” of the 19th century is particularly noticeable when looking at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. With students coming from all over the world, the École’s influence spread over Europe, Eurasia and the Americas, continuing well into the 1960s. […]

Legitimization

The new awareness of historical specificity emerging around 1800 entailed an increasing recognition of the geographical and chronological contingency of human culture and sparked new questions regarding historical development. When the past could no longer be seen as stable, uniform and universal, it seemed all the more urgent to understand the nature and causes of historical change. […]

Preservation

Cultural heritage is a modern invention, emerging in the aftermath of the French revolution. It involved preserving actual monuments, of course, but surprisingly often, the rescue operation took place on paper, sparking questions regarding matter and discourse, durability and ephemerality, copy and original, which are still at the core of contemporary conservation and preservation efforts. […]

Projection

The rise of popular print culture in the 19th century came during a period of massive civic upheaval, when infrastructural projects of unprecedented size and complexity were ripping through the physical and social fabric of urban metropolises. PriArc’s UCL-led initiative, Projection, seeks to understand the operation of this narrative of progress, mediated through printed visions of architecture and institutional collection strategies, in the past and in the present. […]

Future Passé

JUNE 2, 2017
Victoria & Albert Museum, London
https://www.vam.ac.uk/event/Mo7OM4o5/future-passe

How do we represent urban change and technological development in visual and textual form, historically and in the present? How has visual rhetoric been used to normalize the disruption and destruction that accompanies modern ideas of ‘progress’? And what happens when these confident predictions of future relevance fail and we are left with dead-ends and […]

Images of Egypt

April 28–May 11, 2017
AHO Gallery

Since the Napoleonic occupation of the country in 1798, images of Egypt have played continuously on the European mind. A geopolitical hotspot, Egypt was central in 19th and 20th century reconceptualisations of time and speed, infrastructure and technology, aesthetics and movement, all negotiated through circulating imagery.
This exhibition traces the history of moving images and objects within and out of Egypt, from the massive to the […]

Caroline van Eck Slade Professor 2017

January 18 - March 8, 2017
The University of Oxford
http://www.ox.ac.uk/event/series/oxford-slade-lectures-2017-material-presence-absent-antiquities-collecting-excessive

The PriArc team is proud to congratulate PriArc scholar Caroline van Eck with her appointment as Slade Professor of Fine Art for 2017 at The University of Oxford, one of the most prestigious appointments in the world. The Slade Professor gives eight public lectures in the spring term. The topic for Professor van Eck’s lecture […]

On Style: PriArc conference session at SAH 2017

June 7-11, 2017
Society of Architectural Historians
http://www.sah.org/conferences-and-programs/2017-conference-glasgow

Style is a key issue when studying architecture’s uses of the past. To revisit this important but neglected topic, PriArc scholar Mari Hvattum hosts a session On Style at the Society of Architectural Historians’ 70th Annual International Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, June 7–11, 2017. ‘Style’ has been one of the most reviled concepts in 20th […]

Images of Egypt: PriArc workshop

January 30-31, 2017
Oslo
http://priarc.aho.no/events-output/priarc-workshop/

30-31 January 2017, the PriArc team organizes its first thematic workshop in Oslo. The workshop is dedicated to experimental preservation, looking particularly at the topic of replica / copy / quote and the way images and monuments travel – in various media – through time and space. The circulation of Egyptian imagery from Winckelmann to […]