From Overseas to Transnational. Shifts in Perspectives in the Historiography of Colonial and Post-Colonial Architecture

Taking into account the recent broadening of the geographical gaze of the historiography on 20th Century Architecture, this paper discusses the shifts in perspective that have occurred over the last decades in assessing colonial and postcolonial built production. It demonstrates that recent scholarship is moving beyond a national/nationalist narrative, based on the idea that architectural ideas, models and practices were exclusively exported from the mother country to colonial territories. Today, other logics and mechanisms are being charted, accounting for other transnational flows linked to professional networks of expertise or resulting from complex migration patterns. Presenting a number of critical themes that have informed studies on the topic for the last 30 years, this paper situates the production of colonial and postcolonial architecture within a globalizing world, underlining the ruptures as well as the continuities from the colonial to the post-independence era. Richly illustrated, it also draws attention to the numerous actors involved in this process, and thus argues for going beyond an architect's history, while simultaneously stressing the need to not only take into account "masterworks" but also the more mundane built environment.