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The 7th EAHN Biennial Meeting (Madrid, June 15-19, 2022) attracted a relevant collection of papers on various topics. Like its predecessors, EAHN 2022 aimed to promote high quality research. As a diverse field, architectural history requires interaction and discussion among people with different interests and backgrounds. Beginning and experienced theorists and practitioners, people from different disciplines and different countries gathered both in person and virtually to learn from and contribute to each other’s growth. The conference was organized in two calls. The first one to define the sessions and round tables, and the second one to select the participants. In the first call there were a total of 85 session and roundtable proposals, evaluated in 5 peer-reviewed tracks. Of these, the following contributions were accepted: 20 sessions and 5 roundtables . To participate in these, a total of 486 submissions, evaluated in 25 peer-reviewed tracks, were received. The acceptance rate for contributions received in the peer-reviewed tracks was 29,41% for session and roundtable proposals, 25,72% for full papers and roundtable lectures, and 41,51% for interest group meeting participants. Many of these contributions were accepted after further review to be included in the present proceedings. The final decision on acceptance or rejection of full papers was taken in an Editorial Committee meeting held in September 2022. The meeting discussed a consistent set of criteria to deal with inevitable differences among many reviewers, and the expert advice of the corresponding session chairs and reviewers was taken in consideration.

European integration subverts our common understanding of “the rear view,” as it openly rejects planning or finality and, instead, unfolds as a gradual process, exploiting the spillovers and unintended consequences that occur when multiple states come together. The hypothesis of this study is that, within such fragmented system, walking in a straight line, having a goal and knowing where to go undermine the possibility of building. Con- versely, the buildings in the limelight result from a zigzag process, driven by contingency and informality. What is purposely designed as a front view tends to remain on paper due to a widespread concern for and distrust in the power of planning and, over time, that space is occupied by objects that respond to the logic of the rear view. The following analysis traces two case studies that illuminate how this tension played out in the early part of the integration process: on the one hand, a set of unplanned buildings that marked the spontaneous entrenchment of Brussels as the primary seat of the European institutions; on the other hand, a set of unbuilt plans for a single European capital on the Franco-German border. This is a unique op- portunity to explore how things get shaped and built within our complex, supranational system.