Post-War/Cold-War in the Region
Fabrications: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand invites papers for a special issue (Vol. 31, No. 2) on Post-war / Cold-War in the Region edited by Mirjana Lozanovska and Cameron Logan.
World War II transformed the process of production at a global scale and, as a consequence, the period of economic prosperity that followed is often considered a ‘Golden Age’. But the booming postwar decades, frequently referred to in France as the Trente Glorieuses, also occurred in the shadow of the Cold War. Following the defeat of Hitler and Nazi Germany by Stalin’s Red Army in 1945, the world was caught in the grip of a political confrontation between the USA and the USSR, one which dominated the international environment for more than forty years (1948-1990). While the Cold War meant the end of WWII in Europe, wars erupted in the Asia-Pacific region, most obviously in Vietnam and Korea, but also in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Cambodia to name just a few.
The Cold War drew ideological lines. Architectural historian, Juliana Maxim argues the USSR and USA presented competing architectural modernities. Maxim’s work, along with that of Greg Castillo and a handful of others, focuses on a political dialectic, and thus confronts consistent depoliticization in the architectural historiography of modernism, a process left mostly undisturbed by the recent emphasis on difference and plurality. Łukasz Stanek examines the export of architecture and planning from socialist countries to the ‘Third World’ and conceptualises this as Cold War transfer. What of this post-war/Cold War political ideology did émigré architects departing Europe, transport to Australia and New Zealand?
This ideological divide mobilised modernisation and development aid programmes. Educational initiatives from the period such as the Colombo Plan (1951) focused on education and cultural exchange, and were deeply conditioned by Cold War political arrangements as much as by longstanding colonial ties. Even more explicit in its cold war implications for the region was Australia and New Zealand’s strategic pivot to the United States and its formalisation in the ANZUS Treaty (1951). The security alliance was the foundation for a much more visible US footprint in Australasia, expressed in architectural terms not only through embassies but also military bases and other security installations such as the one at Pine Gap near Alice Springs. The US presence in the wider region was also dramatically expanded in the period, with facilities established or expanded up and down the western rim of the Pacific.
This issue of Fabrications seeks to explore the post-war period not as mid-century architectural aesthetics and urbanisation, or through its hero architects, but through the lens of architecture’s participation in the ideological and political divide of the Cold War. We seek papers on a broad range of issues that highlight the political and ideological aspect of architectural history in this period with a focus on Australia and New Zealand and the Asia Pacific region. We encourage contributions that include the following: the ideological/political position of Australia and New Zealand during the Cold War and it impact on architectural discourse and practice; new networks that emerged in Australia and New Zealand in architecture and the visual arts due to Cold War orientations; the involvement of Australian and New Zealand architects in projects linked to Cold War political agendas in the Asia-Pacific; architectural education and the Colombo Plan or equivalent organisations; émigré architects and the effects of anti-communist political narratives in Australia and New Zealand and their alignment with the USA; the architecture and politics of post war refugee camps, military bases, embassies in Australia and New Zealand.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
Papers should be submitted online by the due dates identified above.
The Editors consider essays of 7000 to 9000 words (including foot notes). Papers should be submitted as Word documents. Authors should use the footnote function of Word, but no automatic footing programs such as Endnote. Papers should be submitted with an abstract (200 words) at the beginning of the paper and a brief author biography (80 words), images and image captions. Abstracts are published at the beginning of papers. All papers published in Fabrications are blind peer-refereed by two readers.
Papers must conform with the Instructions for Authors.
For the refereeing process, please submit low-resolution images of illustrations as separate files {or embedded in a separate pdf file with captions} (72dpi jpeg files). Once a paper is accepted for publication, high-resolution images should be submitted as 300 dpi tiff files, at a minimum of 100mm wide with a separate list of captions indicating permissions.
Authors are responsible for securing all permissions and paying all fees to reproduce images in Fabrications. Authors must meet the publisher’s requirements.