Architecture, Building and Planning - Theses

Permanent URI for this collection

http://hdl.handle.net/11343/280

Filters

1997 1
Reset filters

Settings
Statistics
Citations
Author: Cairns, Stephen × End date: 1999 × Start date: 1980 × Type: PhD thesis ×

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Occult dwellings : architecture, anthropology & the possibilities of a postcolonial sublime
    Cairns, Stephen ( 1997)
    This thesis addresses questions of intercultural relations as they are theorized in the field of postcolonial criticism, and seeks to explore the ways in which architecture is implicated in these relations. Architecture's traditional engagement with cultural difference is shown to be negotiated through the conceptual and methodological devices of another discipline, anthropology; as a consequence the thesis exploration is developed along inter-disciplinary lines. This institutional negotiation is investigated in terms of two specific historical moments: eighteenth century Enlightenment and early-twentieth century colonial. The first moment is exemplified by the well-known relationship between the architectural theory of Marc-Antoine Laugier and Antoine Chrysostome Quatremere de Quincy, and the letter's engagement with the anthropology of Joseph-FranVois Lafitau. The second moment is exemplified by the little-known architectural theory of two colonial Dutch architects working in Indonesia in the early twentieth century, Henri Maclaine Pont and Charles Wolff Schoemaker. Their work is explored with reference to contemporary anthropology through the theory and practice of James Frazer and Bronislaw Malinowski. In different ways the negotiation between anthropology and architecture is shown to alleviate a threat of cultural difference, leaving a legacy which remains unchallenged in contemporary debates on architecture and cultural difference. The thesis argues that this negotiation is underpinned by developments in Enlightenment aesthetics. However, it reads the latent workings of a sublime aesthetic in this institutional relationship, and seeks to exploit the more radical possibilities of this aesthetic in order to offer a mode of architectural invention which might more effectively address the cultural demands of contemporary postcolonial contexts.