Search

Government House in Calcutta, today known as the Raj Bhavan of West Bengal, was built between 1799 and 1803 as the official residence for the Governor-General of Fort William, then the 1st Marquess Wellesley. It is well-established that Government House is modelled after Kedleston Hall in Derbyshire, England, known for the involvement of Robert Adam in its design. A significant fact linking Adam, and therefore Kedleston, with Government House is the previously unacknowledged presence of Adam’s great-nephew, the statesman John Adam, in Calcutta at the time Government House was designed and built. In the exploration of Scottish architectural and familial networks within the British empire, this article seeks to locate the identities of Robert Adam and John Adam within a series of exchanges: between Government House and Kedleston Hall; between public buildings and private houses; between India and Britain; and finally between Scottish, English and British identities. In the context of these exchanges, the study of Government House allows us to connect Robert Adam and John Adam, explore concealments of Scottish identity, and ultimately map previously unknown familial, professional and architectural networks.

This article follows the hypothesis that the migration movements of artists, architects and intellectuals in the first half of the twentieth century had a profound and long-term impact on art and architectural production and history. During the first half of the twentieth century artists, architects and intellectuals from Europe sought refuge in global metropolises. As hubs of globalizing modernism these cities were places of entrance, transition and creativity for people fleeing their native countries due to changes in political systems, dictatorships and wars, repression, persecution and violence. In the metropolises new transcultural places of artistic encounter were established. Flight, exile and migration brought artistic and architectural concepts, objects and actors around the world into contact, resulting in transformations that are legible in the topographies and structures of cities, particularly in the ”target“ cities. Their urban topographies contain neighbourhoods, places and spaces that were populated, frequented and run by migrants. In addition to providing the migrants with income, employment and exposure, urban institutions, academies, associations and museums were crucial settings for interaction and exchange between the local and migrant populations. In the following we discuss preliminary findings on the connections between exile, modernism and the urban environment in Istanbul and Bombay (now Mumbai). The essay draws on ongoing research from the European Research Council funded project Relocating Modernism. Global Metropolises, Modern Art and Exile (Metromod).

James Fergusson’s (1808-86) books on architectural history were widely read in Britain, America, India and Australia. He was born in the Scottish town of Ayr and educated at the Royal High School in Edinburgh. Family connections made it possible for him to work and travel in India between 1829 and 1839. Fergusson wrote notes on a vast array of the country’s antiquities. He began publishing this material in London during the 1840s and completed a comprehensive survey of the subject in 1876, the History of Indian and Eastern Styles of Architecture. For him, each Indian architectural style was classified according to its region and period, as well as the religion and race of the builders. This essay considers the Scottish background for Fergusson’s writings of India, particularly as set out in letters and a diary, written during his journeys within the country. He discerned an ideal, in which the arts of agriculture and architecture are similarly practiced in a logical manner. Fergusson was especially impressed by the way workers in India respected common sense when constructing and adorning a building. Such an edifice was described as “pure”; and conformed to his mature definition of a “true style” of architecture.

Two Scottish architects, John Begg and George Wittet, created some of the most famous of Mumbai’s landmarks and notable buildings elsewhere in India in the early twentieth century. They were also instrumental in the development of architectural education in India through their involvement with the Sir Jamshetji Jeejeebhoy School of Art. Both men made major contributions to the colonial built environment as well as to the future of the architectural profession in India. In this regard, they are highly significant but under-studied Scottish participants in the history of the British Empire. Scottish architects and their role in the shaping of imperial cities around the world have remained largely absent from much of the rich history of Scotland and empire. This article uses the examples of Begg and Wittet to analyse the career trajectories of these two Scottish architects. Through close analysis of Begg’s numerous writings, it becomes clear that in the professional sphere, Begg sought to champion the notable minority of trained British architects serving in India, and to bring their work to the attention of the metropole. In this regard, their professional identity was that of the British imperial architect, while they simultaneously maintained Scottish social and religious connections. Like many Scots before them, they forged fluid Scottish, British, and imperial identities while serving in India.

This paper is concerned with the family as one of the key entrepreneurial and capitalist agents in the colonisation of Australia. Private enterprise has long been understood to be one of the prime factors in this history and Scottish families were particularly active. My case study is the Learmonth family who hailed from the Falkirk area in Stirlingshire, 44 km west of Edinburgh. Their story exemplifies the imbrication of family identity in its dynastic character with the opportunities afforded by the colonial expansion of the British empire and how this was figured in built works. Of significance for the paper is an understanding of what was at stake in Scotland for the Learmonth family and its lineage and how Thomas Learmonth, youngest of four sons, and his sons used colonial acquisitions to embellish their family status and identity at home. Ercildoun, the famous sheep station they established near Ballarat in Victoria was the final achievement of their Australian sojourn and it propelled them from the margins of Scottish life to somewhere much nearer its centre. The paper will show how they, as pastoralists and breeders of the “pure Australian merino” operated in the colonial enterprise-driven and global modality of economic migration that drove the expansion of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales in the 1830s and 1840s.

This chapter considers several iconic buildings and domestic spaces that were central to British imperial rule in South and South East Asia. Imperial buildings were never simply copies of buildings in Britain and no single ideology or ‘style’ underpinned the architecture of the British empire. Rather, central to their production was articulating the relationship between ruler and ruled. This chapter shows that the British alone never wholly defined an architecture of empire in Asia. Instead, imperial architecture in Asia was a product of contact zones where colonial populations both challenged and collaborated with foreign colonial power by participating in the production, habitation, and thus characterization of its buildings and spaces.

This special issue of Fabrications on “Networks and Flows,” provides an opportune moment to reflect upon some ongoing initiatives with respect to the historical theme of networking in architecture. In what follows we provide some perspective on the growing significance of this methodological shift towards understanding architecture in its regional and global capacity, especially as it has developed in the European academy over the past 5–10 years. This report focuses on the activities of a European Union collaborative known as “European Architecture Beyond Europe.” The collaborative was formed in 2010 and funded by the European Cooperation in Science and Technology programme (COST), and ran for 4 years up to May 2014. Referred to by COST as an “Action,” this collaborative was designed to establish a network of academic researchers from across the EU with common interests in the history of imperial, colonial and transnational architectures.1 Although the funded meetings and activities of the Action only lasted a short period of time, the creation of a specialist scholarly periodical ABE Journal (Architecture Beyond Europe) has since continued the Action’s agenda and sustained cooperation across a number of EU member states.2 An account and rationale of the Action’s formation and activities are given here, with a view to reiterating the importance of understanding networking and its consequences in architectural scholarship, and also how further exploration in this area continues to shape the future of research in colonial and post-colonial architecture and urbanism.3 This account is followed by three perspectives by each of the authors relating to their own experiences in this area of research.

Although Otto Koenigsberger (1908-1999) began working in India eight years before the country won independence, he was not part of the British Raj’s colonial enterprise. As Government Architect of the semi-autonomous Princely Mysore State and later as Federal Director of Housing, as well as through his private architecture and planning practice, Koenigsberger worked on building the independent Indian nation from within. In this paper, the author will argue that the high profile private commissions for Tata & Sons—a privately owned and hugely influential industrial corporation committed to nationalism and philanthropy—both forwarded Koenigsberger’s career and directly contributed to building the infrastructure of independent India. As the basis for their sustained and successful collaboration, the author will demonstrate that Koenigsberger’s notion of a locally rooted, research-based “scientific architecture,” overlapped with the Tata Group’s philosophy of advancing India through science and technology. Moreover she will shed light on the networks of India’s cultural elite, illustrating that connections in the international realm of physics were responsible for the initial contact between the refugee architect and the industrial concern. While showing that his work with the Tatas enabled Koenigsberger to realise his architectural and planning goals more fully than his work as a government architect, the author proposes that the vision shared by Koenigsberger and the Tatas, and the projects they undertook, played a role in the dissolution of the British empire in India. Otto Koenigsberger (1908-1999) empezó a trabajar en India ocho años antes de la independencia del país pero no colaboró con las actividades coloniales del Raj (Gobernador General) británico. En su calidad de Arquitecto de la Administración del Estado semi-autónomo de Mysore y, más adelante, como Director Federal de Vivienda además del ejercicio privado de la arquitectura y del urba

This article explores the corporate nature of missionary Anglicanism and its architectural consequences in Britain’s empire during the 19th century. It is argued that in highlighting the incorporated status of ecclesiastical organisations such as the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts and the Colonial Bishoprics’ Fund we are able to reach a better understanding of not just how the objectives of these organisations mapped onto their operations “in the field” but also how the form of the accompanying ecclesiastical architecture was affected by their agenda. It is suggested that the influence and authority of these organisations, through their patronage, gave distinct shape to much of the Anglican missionary enterprise during this period, leading to a form of architecture that was in many respects a direct expression of the ideals and practices of the English Church as a constitutionally incorporated entity. This was therefore an architecture that can be seen to have both embodied and represented a certain “corporate identity.”