Docomomo International | Conferences

Ninth International Docomomo Conference

Istanbul & Ankara, September 26–29, 2006

Other Modernisms

The theme of the conference, “Other Modernisms,” was employed as a broad umbrella under which designated not only the experiences of non-European and non-North American cultures, but a wide range of architectural and urban practices that fall outside the familiar, official accounts of modern architecture could take place.
The ‘other’ was meant to provoke a range of different readings including —but not limited to— the ‘non-western’ others (colonial encounters, exile, emigration, diasporas, trans-national histories, etc), the national, regional or local others of ‘international style’ (various searches for ‘national expression’ within twentieth century modernism), the subaltern others of homogeneous modern identities (i.e. race, gender and class as they have informed modern spatial practices), the anonymous, vernacular or ‘ordinary’ others of canonic modernism (such as generic slab-block apartments or squatter zones), the ‘hybrid’ others of a pure, pristine modernism (eclectic variations, multiple identities, cross-breeds), the ‘underdeveloped’ others of advanced, industrial modernisms (low-tech, appropriate tech, infrastructure projects, materials, building industry, labor, capital, patronage, etc), the preservationist others of a transient, design-oriented, utopian conception of the modern (the idea of modern architecture as repository of collective memory, as ‘heritage’) and, the temporal others of a linear modern history that has peaked in two periods: interwar and postwar (i.e. time-lags, synchrony, diachrony, pioneers, latecomers, etc).

In connection with the conference, Docomomo Turkey organized the First International Docomomo Student Workshop from September 18 to 25, 2006 on “How to Preserve a Housing Utopia: The Documentation and Sustainability of Modern Heritage, Case Study: Ataköy – Istanbul.”