EAUH Lyon 2008: 9th International Conference on Urban History, Lyon, 27 – 30 August 2008

Call for Papers, Deadline: 1 November 2007

Session: Big Buildings - Concepts of Competition and Order since the 19th Century

Large-scale buildings characterize the appearance of the city. They draw special attention, communicate meaning, arouse admiration and pride as well as fear and jealousy. They are the objects and results of social-political and economically motivated competition on both local and global level.
Since the 19th century, new building materials (steel, glass, concrete) as well as modern techniques allow the realization of novel dimensions in space and height. Simultaneously, cities increased and became more complex. Urban scales and viewing habits changed radically. New social needs arose. Large-scale buildings restructure and organize the urban space and give shape to new cultural requirements.
Planning and realization of large-scale buildings are subject to multifaceted economic processes and evoke broad political, social and cultural discussions. Therefore, the study of large-scale constructions can be particularly informative for the interpretation of social and cultural preferences, proceedings and ways of perception in the 19th and 20th century.
We invite studies on the social-political-economic and cultural context of planning, production, assignation and the use of large-scale buildings, to be focussed on architectural-spatial concepts of urban development, economic processes, urban debates, configurations of parties involved etc., covering the period from the 19th century until the recent past. In order to establish and evaluate relationships between spatial architectonic objects and urban structures as well as economic, social-political and cultural conditions, multi-disciplinal accesses are required and warmly invited.

If you are interested in participating please e-mail an abstract of your paper (up to 500 words) and a short CV not later than 1 November 2007 to: celina.kress@metropolitanstudies.de
and place it on the conference website: http://eauh.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/