It’s a Match!
Paolo Scrivano and Neilabh Sinha on Distant Objects

Paolo Scrivano’s talk considers how architecture and architectural discourses, developed in China under Mao’s rule, were seen by European architects and planners, particularly those based in France, Germany, and Italy. In the quarter century following the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, China became an object of interest for numerous European architects. Some of them had the opportunity to personally visit the country, others were only able to get to know it from afar: everyone, however, was seemingly fascinated by China because the latter appeared to them as the material result of an unprecedented revolutionary change. His talk pushes us to question: did these architects completely understand what they saw or were told about? And what was, in their eyes, the degree of “intelligibility” of Chinese architectural culture and Chinese culture in general? Through the examination of documents as diverse as travel diaries, photographic and cinematographic reportages, publications, or teaching materials, the presentation aims at exploring the relationship established from the 1950s to the 1970s between Chinese architecture and a fraction of European architects. Its objective is to discuss questions related to cultural transfer and the construction of narratives, as well as issues of translatability and partial or total misunderstandings between different cultural realms.

Drawing on his current doctoral research, Neilabh Sinha will trace stages in the creation of Habsburg and Mughal albums of flora and fauna under Rudolf II (r. 1576-1612) and Jahangir (r. 1605- 27), in central Europe and south Asia respectively. Despite their disparate contexts, both courts were engaged in strikingly similar collection practices—encompassing artefacts and beings of all kinds—seen by some scholars as systematic and by others as relatively haphazard. With respect to the natural world, the process began with the acquisition of animals, plants, and birds from a variety of channels. Though local and domestic species were of interest to the two monarchs, it was exotic varieties that were desirable for collections, for reasons economic, political-symbolic, and curiosity driven. Despite this physical possession, the two sovereigns also appear to be invested in recording their possessions in image (and sometimes in text as well as other media). The images, created separately, were brought together and bound into volumes. The binding of these representations resulted in yet another physical manifestation—the volumes—of which the collection function was referred to in their naming as “albums”. In his presentation, Sinha will focus specifically on the parallels in characteristics of courtly art in central Europe and south Asia. He will attempt to identify the reasons for transforming individual images into albums—scientific and symbolic—and trace some precedents that informed these practices.

Biographical Notes

Paolo Scrivano is an Associate Professor of Architectural History at the Politecnico di Milano. He received a Ph.D. in History of architecture and urbanism from the Politecnico di Torino and has been Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto and Boston University, Senior Associate Professor at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, and Honorary Professor at the University of Liverpool. He has authored several publications on 20^th-century architecture, including the volumes Storia di un’idea di architettura moderna. Henry-Russell Hitchcock e l’International Style (2001), Olivetti Builds: Modern Architecture in Ivrea (2001, as a co-author), and Building Transatlantic Italy: Architectural Dialogues with Postwar America (2013). He has also been Visiting Scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Visiting Senior Fellow at the Center for the Advanced Study in the Visual Arts of the National Gallery of Art, and has received research funds from the Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Boston University’s Humanities Foundation, and the Australian Research Council.

Neilabh Sinha is a doctoral candidate at the Institute for History of Leiden University. His dissertation, provisionally titled “Civilized Men: Culture and Power at the Courts of Rudolf II and Jahangir, 1575-1625” was awarded a “PhDs in the Humanities” grant by the Dutch Research Council. He holds a Research MA in Global History from Leiden University, and a BA (Honours) in History from the University of Delhi. He was a doctoral fellow in the Lise Meitner Group “Coded Objects” till May this year and has held research and travel grants from the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome and the NW Posthumus Research School. In September, he will embark on a period of study and research in south Asian collections with a Gonda grant of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences.