dilemmas in the Middle East
The challenges that architects face incorporating the modern and the traditional in the Middle East will be explored in a symposium being held Friday and Saturday, April 4 and 5, at the School of Architecture, 180 York St.
Titled "Local Sites of Global Practice: Modernism and the Middle East," the symposium has been organized by School of Architecture faculty members Sandy Isenstadt, Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen and Kishwar Rizvi.
The event will bring together architects, critics and scholars from around the world to discuss what the symposium organizers describe as "one of the most pressing issues facing architecture today," the tension between global cultural and economic interests and the increasing demand for local cultural expression.
The organizers note that architects must, on the one hand, respond to calls for culturally relevant architectural forms from local residents and, on the other, to conform to standards and methods of construction used throughout the world's cities. This peculiar dilemma of contemporary architects and urban planners reflects a worldwide historical shift from colonialism to postwar de-colonization and to the present postcolonial search for local identity, they say.
The symposium focuses on the Middle East, note the organizers, because it has been at the crossroads of this historical and cultural transition, and because -- perhaps more than any other region -- it is a place where deep architectural traditions vie with rapid modernization.
The symposium begins on Friday, 3:45 p.m., with a session on "Colonialism and the Search for National Identity."
At 6:30 p.m. that day, Nezar al-Sayed of University of California at Berkeley will deliver the keynote talk, "Manufacturing Heritage, Consuming Tradition." Al-Sayed has written extensively on urban issues and on globalization and transnationalism in Europe and the Middle East. A reception will follow the talk.
There will be two panel sessions on Saturday: at 9:30 a.m., "Case Study: from Gaza to Beirut," and at 1:15 p.m., "Local Sites of Global Practice: Postwar to the Present."
The event will conclude at 4:30 p.m. with an address by Arjun Appadurai, the William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of International Studies and director of the initiative on "Cities and Globalization" at Yale. His talk, the School of Architecture's third annual Roth Symonds Lecture, is titled "The Circulation of Forms." Appadurai, the author of seminal essays on globalization, will present his research on global violence, mega-cities and grassroots globalization. A closing reception will follow.
The symposium is sponsored by the School of Architecture and the Department of the History of Art. It is partially funded by the Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Memorial Fund, the Yale Center for International and Area Studies and the David W. Roth and Robert H. Symonds Memorial Lecture Fund.
All symposium events will take place in Hastings Hall in the School of Architecture Building, 180 York St. Limited seating requires prior registration. For more information and to register, call Jennifer Castellon at (203) 432-2889.
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