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Expertise and Architecture in the Modern Islamic World

Expertise and Architecture in the Modern Islamic World

Peter H. Christensen

(2018)

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Book Details

Abstract

Expertise and Architecture in the Modern Islamic World explores how architectural traditions and practices were shared and exchanged across national borders throughout the world, departing from a narrative that casts European actors as the importers and exporters of Islamic designs and skills. Looking to cases that touch on empire building, modernization, statecraft, and diplomacy, this book examines how these processes have been contingent on a web of expertise informed by a rich and varied array of authors and contexts since the 1800s.
The chapters in this volume, organized around the leitmotif of expertise, demonstrate the thematic importance and specific utility of in-depth and broad-ranging knowledge in shaping the understanding of architecture in the Islamic world from the nineteenth century to the present. Specific case studies include European gardeners in Ottoman courts, Polish architects in Kuwait, Israeli expertise in Iran, monument archiving in India, religious spaces in Swedish suburbs, and more.
This is the latest title in Critical Studies in Architecture of the Middle East, a series devoted to the most recent scholarship concerning architecture, landscape, and urban design of the Middle East and of regions shaped by diasporic communities more globally. 

Table of Contents

Section Title Page Action Price
Cover Cover
Half Title i
Title iii
Copyright iv
Contents v
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction 1
Chapter 1: ‘I don’t want orange trees, I want something that others don’t have’: Ottoman Head-Gardeners after Mahmud II 21
Chapter 2: A Nineteenth-Century Architectural Archive: Syed Ahmad Khan’s Asar-us-Sanadid 51
Chapter 3: The Balyan Family and the Linguistic Culture of a Parisian Education 85
Chapter 4: Drawing Knowledge, (Re-)Constructing History: Pascal Coste in Egypt 123
Chapter 5: A Bourguibist Mural in the New Monastir? Zoubeïr Turki’s Play on Knowledge, Power, and Audience Perception 151
Chapter 6: Expertise in the Name of Diplomacy: The Israeli Plan for Rebuilding the Qazvin Region, Iran 179
Chapter 7: Industrial Complexes, Foreign Expertise, and the Imagining of a New Levant 213
Chapter 8: Mobilities of Architecture in the Global Cold War: From Socialist Poland to Kuwait and Back 237
Chapter 9: Form Follows Faith: Swedish Architects, Expertise, and New Religious Spaces in the Stockholm Suburbs 271
Notes on Contributors 287
Index 291
Back Cover Back Cover