Travels in Architectural History

Abstract

Travel is a powerful force in shaping the perception of the modern world and plays an ever-growing role within architectural and urban cultures. Inextricably linked to political and ideological issues, travel redefines places and landscapes through new transport infrastructures and buildings. Architecture, in turn, is reconstructed through visual and textual narratives produced by scores of modern travellersincluding writers and artists along with architects themselves. In the age of the camera, travel is bound up with new kinds of imaginaries; private records and recollections often mingle with official, stereotyped views, as the value of architectural heritage increasingly rests on the mechanical reproduction of its images. Whilst students often learn about architectural history through image collections, the place of the journey in the formation of the architect itself shifts. No longer a lone and passionate antiquarian or an itinerant designer, the modern architect eagerly hops on buses, trains, and planes in pursuit of personal as well as professional interests. Increasingly built on a presumption of mobility, architectural culture integrates travel into cultural debates and design experiments. By addressing such issues from a variety of perspectives, this collection, a special Architectural Histories issue on travel, prompts us to rethink the mobile conditions in which architecture has historically been produced and received.

“Les Girls en voyage”

“…17 The popular Grand Tour in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, where elite British men and women, in different ways and experiences, explored Italy to unearth ideas of antiquity, was soon replaced by the Tour d'Orient; and by the nineteenth century, travelling was a well-established industry through mass tourism with the help of Thomas Cook and the advancement of travel guidebooks, such as Baedeker or Marshall guides. 18 Indeed, travel and tourism were tied to colonialism and Orientalism.…”

“…Davide Deriu, Edoardo Piccoli, and Belgin Turan Özkaya suggest that it was seen as "fundamental for aspiring architects to visit historically significant places to gain a firsthand experience of architecture." 21 That tradition continued in the twentieth century among pioneer male architects, Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Alvar Aalto, Louis Kahn, Richard Neutra, Jørn Utzon, among others. Travel accounts of these architects have been the subject of scholarly works that analyze the meaning of mobility in these architects' architectural identities and the role of architecture in their travels.…”

“…These documents prove another aspect of their mobility: anticipation, the journeys that commence prior to departure-what Deriu, Piccoli, and Turan Özkaya call "pre-posterous travel," and José Pozo and José Ángel Medina, "paper travels," alternatively. 64 Jilly Traganou for her part says that the anticipation for travel creates an architecture that is "conceived, produced, reproduced, consumed or imagined." 65 Imrie and Wallbridge's "paper travels"their letters-reveal the network that they developed in one month, from the end of July to September, just before leaving.…”