Housing Histories

New Research Strategies for Twentieth-century Residential Architecture

Prof Gaia Caramellino, Prof Filippo De Pieri (Herausgeber)

Buch | Hardcover

224 Seiten

2026
Bloomsbury Visual Arts (Verlag)
978-1-350-53237-3 (ISBN)

Infos

Housing Histories explores how the study of 20th-century housing has posed specific problems for architectural historians, and how it has – as a result – yielded radically innovative approaches and methodologies of significance for the wider field of architectural history.

Global research in architectural history is currently witnessing a tension between ‘conservative’ approaches rooted in traditional procedures (the study of archival sources, the close material observation of buildings) and ‘critical’ approaches that push for a radical change in narratives and attitudes.

This book presents a collection of new research practices which explore unusual or hybrid methodologies. Fifteen leading architectural historians from different academic and cultural contexts present their own approaches to the historical study of modern dwelling landscapes, testing a variety of questions, methods and instruments, showing how these can be used within the context of a specific case study, and showing how the methodological choices made in the reconstruction of the history of places can effectively challenge shared public narratives about the spatial and social geography of cities.

The four parts of the book relate to specific areas of methodological innovation: the study of ordinary actors and processes by means of non-standard sources; the use of micro-historical and anthropological fieldwork; the use of exhibitions and public history initiatives as research tools; and a re-appraisal of the role played by urban and national histories within multi-scalar research agendas. The stories presented in the case-studies offer a nuanced and stereotype-free representation of 20th-century housing environments, altogether revealing the history of modern housing as a rich testing ground for experimenting with practices and methodologies of historical inquiry.

Autor

Gaia Caramellino is Associate Professor of Architectural History at Politecnico di Milano, Italy. Filippo De Pieri is Professor of Architectural History at Politecnico di Torino, Italy.

Inhalt

Introduction - Gaia Caramellino (Politecnico di Milano, Italy) & Filippo De Pieri (Politecnico di Torino, Italy)

Part I: Archives and the Ordinary
1. Atelier 66 and the Athenian Polykatoikìa: Control and Agency Bids in the 1960s-1980s Greek Housing Market - Konstantina Kalfa (Athens School of Fine Arts, Greece) & Stavros Alifragkis (Hellenic Open University, Greece)
2. Using Every Weapon in the Battle for Housing: Historical Knowledge for Public Policies in Portugal - Ricardo Costa Agarez (ISCTE Lisbon, Portugal)
3. Writing the History of Ordinary Practices: Re-negotiating Sources, Codes and Conventions in the Study of Post-WWII Italian Housing Landscapes - Gaia Caramellino (Politecnico di Milano, Italy)

Part II: Micro-Observation and the Use of Case Studies
4. Housing as a Research Question and as a Field in the Architectural History of Israel-Palestine: The Pivotal Case Method - Yael Allweil (Technion Haifa, Israel)
5. An Archaeology of the Present - Anne Kockelkorn (TU Delft, Netherlands)
6. Practicing Skewed Microhistories of Housing: A Retrospective Fieldwork Journal - Filippo De Pieri (Politecnico di Torino, Italy)

Part III: Exhibitions, Performances, and the Public
7. Mutually Constitutive: Articulating the Intersections of Architecture, Finance, and Regulation for a General Audience - Susanne Schindler (ETH Zurich, Switzerland)
8. Pack Methodology: Studying Homes from Afar - Inge Daniels (University of Oxford, UK)
9. The Sound Studies Habit: Recording Ambience, and Listening to It - Sandra Parvu (ENSA Paris Val-de-Seine, France) & Alice Sotgia (ENSA Paris Malaquais, France)

Part IV: The Global, the National, and the Urban
10. Mass Housing: A Global History. Themes and Methodologies - Miles Glendinning (University of Edinburgh, UK)
11. The Concept of Efficiency in Socialist Housing: A Case Study in Research Methodology (Romania, 1958-74) - Dana Vais (Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania)
12. The Scale of Home: Building the “House of Man” in Mid-Century Milan - Jonathan Mekinda (University of Illinois at Chicago, USA)
13. The Invention of Housing: Comparative Studies of Early Mass Housing in Europe - Irina Davidovici (ETH Zurich, Switzerland)

Index

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 6.8.2026
• Zusatzinfo: 80 bw illus
• Verlagsort: London
• Sprache: englisch
• Maße: 156 x 234 mm
• Themenwelt: Technik ► Architektur
• ISBN-10: 1-350-53237-1 / 1350532371
• ISBN-13: 978-1-350-53237-3 / 9781350532373
• Zustand: Neuware