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 18th to early 20th 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.
Montage entitled 'The Most Famous Buildings in the World', showing a variety of well-known architectural landmarks from across the globe

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 […]
1_Transference_featured

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. […]
2_Legitimization_featured

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. […]
3_Preservation_featured

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. […]
4_Projection_featured

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. […]
Printed and Built FEATURED

The Printed and the Built: Book Launch

JUNE 16, 2018
EAHN Tallin
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-printed-and-the-built-9781350038417/

The edited collection The Printed and the Built, edited by Mari Hvattum and Anne Hultzsch, explores the intricate relationship between architecture and printed media in the nineteenth century. Among the authors are six PriArc scholars, making the collection a significant PriArc output. We welcome everyone to the book launch at the EAHN conference in Tallin, Saturday […]
Tallin FEATURED

PriArc sessions at EAHN Tallin

JUNE 14-17, 2018
https://www.eahn2018conference.ee/programme-category/sessions-and-round-tables/

The PriArc project is well representated at the European Architectural History Network’s conference 2018 in Tallin. No less than three of PriArc’s principle investigators host conference sessions: PriArc’s Barbara Penner leads the roundtable “The foundations of architectural research” together with Professor Charles Rice from Sidney University of Technology; Maarten Delbeke hosts the session “The persistence […]
Hugo_FEATURED

Call for papers: Touring Belgium. A nation’s patrimony in print, ca. 1795-1914.

NOVEMBER 23, 2018
Ghent

We invite contributions for a study day intending to examine how and why, over the course of the long 19th century, a variety of actors ranging from tourists and writers to artists and historians, explored the nascent architectural and artistic patrimony of Belgium. The very notion of patrimony was established in this period, promoted by […]
Book launch_featured

Book Launch

JANUARY 16, 2018
Victoria and Albert Museum, London

The book Plaster Monuments. Architecture and the Power of Reproduction, written by Mari Lending and published by Princeton University Press, was launched in the gallery overlooking the Cast Courts at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London on January 16. The book was presented by Antonia Boström, Keeper of the Sculpture, Ceramics, Metalwork and Glass […]
Denon Wall

The Art of Collecting Architecture

Elective, Fall 2017
Mari Lending and Tim Anstey

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, an influx of images of the landscapes, inhabitants and monuments of Egypt saturated European culture on an unprecedented scale. Soon, heavy physical parts of that landscape fabric were relocated to Western centers, while this transfer, in turn, was accompanied by a flood of weightless images: newspaper reports, letters, […]