Search

The process of European integration is often described in architectural terms, starting with the metaphor of a common European house. This paper weights the ubiquitous rhetoric of a supranational architecture against the largely unexplored reality of the actual architecture that has been built to house the European institutions. The focus is on the place and time that have experienced the largest production of architectural hardware: Brussels between 1958 and 1992. Most of the Quartier Européen was built in this window, while the institutions did not have a permanent status and therefore struggled to gain agency over the transformations of the city. On the one hand, the goal is to question how operating for a new and unique structure of power influenced the production of architecture. On the other hand, this is an opportunity to start discussing how architecture contributed to shaping the European Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1986, Aldo Rossi opened a satellite office in New York City to oversee his first major design commissions on the other side of the Atlantic. This moment marked a transition from traveling to establishing a permanent presence in the United States. And, more importantly, it turned Rossi's practice into a transnational organization. It is fair to say that most of his subsequent projects were developed on the Milan - New York axis. The trait d'union was the fax machine, which allowed materials and ideas to be exchanged with an unprecedented level of immediacy. This research paper explores how faxing impacted the production of architecture within this decentralized system, intersecting multiple key topoi of the architectural discourse of the time. While the literature on Rossi tends to focus on the work and the loud theoretical apparatus that accompanied it, his (largely unexplored) American archive compels us to engage with the process of working and the silent technological apparatus that made it possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]