<Symposium Overview: Presentations' outlines>Reading the Exchange : Mapping Journals as Platform for Urban Knowledge

Abstract

Mapping the Transfer (1920s-1970s): Magazines as Platforms for Architecture and Urban Knowledge (resp. Gaia Caramellino and Nicole De Togni) is a project inaugurated in 2014 and developed over the last three years with the contribution of the Master students of the course in History and Theory of Architecture, at the Politecnico di Milano. It is based on the inquiry conducted on forty-six periodicals published in seventeen diverse countries between the 1920s and the 1970s. The presentation will discuss the creation of a database aimed at facilitating the study of the international circulation of models, persons and discourses in areas of diverse cultural and linguistic background. A powerful tool/source for the research in the field of transnational studies, the database will not be used to address the history of periodicals and the editorial culture – observed within their national boundaries –, but will rather encourage a cross-national and cross-cultural reading, aimed at investigating the international dimension of the process of production and discussion of architectural and planning knowledge over the 20th century. As a testing ground, the database will be used for the investigation of the transfer of urban notions and visions between US and Italy, after WWII. The main goal will be to map the exchange, but also to analyze the forms of reception and adaptation at local level, by questioning their impact on the urban environment.