<p> This dissertation examines the architectural patronage of a small cadre of industrialists, textile millowners, who controlled the city of Ahmedabad, India economically and politically between Indian independence in 1947 and 1968, the year communal riots shattered that city's self-image. It examines the role modern architecture played for these elites in projecting Ahmedabad as a modern, cosmopolitan city, though one steeped in a unique history and culture. On the one hand, modern architecture was used to promote the city as a node in the global network of capital and industry that developed after the Second World War. As such, most of the architects selected by these industrialists came from the ranks and institutions of the global modern movement, mirroring the industrialists' attempt to place the city's industry into global networks of capital and development. On the other hand, the millowners employed modern architecture as a way to naturalize Ahmedabad's sweeping social changes, so that they appeared as an inevitable outgrowth of Ahmedabad's and India's own history. In this, the modern architecture of Ahmedabad was suffused with references both to Ahmedabad's textile industry and India's imagined and historical past. </p><p> The first chapter examines projects that represent the industrialists' earliest overtures towards the global network of modern architects and institutions. The goal of the projects, which included an unbuilt store by Frank Lloyd Wright, a store inspired by Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes, and Achyut Kanvinde's Gropius influenced ATIRA headquarters, was to instantiate a capitalist model of modernity in Ahmedabad through the fostering of consumer markets and the rationalization of industry. The second chapter delves further into the millowners' use of modern architecture for the instantiation of capitalist values and self-representation by comparing the city's two most famous modern projects: Louis Kahn's Indian Institute of Management and Le Corbusier's Millowners' Association Building.</p><p> The third and fourth chapters turn to the cultural and domestic sphere, exploring projects that negotiated modern, Indian identity in the public and private context. Cultural institutions by architects like Le Corbusier, Charles Correa, and Balkrishna Doshi interrogated the relationship between the elite's new vision for Ahmedabad and the city's history. Meanwhile houses by many of the same architects for industrialists showed a modern domesticity that negotiated between community, the joint family and the individual by fusing modern forms to older domestic spatial organizations.</p><p> This dissertation contributes to the growing body of research focused on the role modern architecture played in shaping postcolonial Indian identity and subjectivity. While previous research has often focused on the patronage of the socialist state, the examination of the patronage of an elite group of capitalists shows how modern architecture became the locus for debates about the direction of modern Indian society. Further, the dissertation's focus on capitalist patronage places this dissertation in a larger body of research that traces the connections between capital and modern projects, though such issues have rarely been explored in the Indian context.</p>

<p> This thesis analyzes <i>Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Details of the Alhambra</i> (1836-1842) by British Architect Owen Jones in relation to British conceptions of Spain in the nineteenth century. Although modern scholars often view Jones&rsquo;s work as an accurate visual account of the Alhambra, I argue that his work is not only interested in accuracy, but it is also a re-presentation of the fourteen-century monument based on Jones&rsquo;s ideologies and creative faculties. Instead of viewing the Alhambra through a culturally sensitive, historical lens, Jones treated it as an Imaginary Geography, as Edward Said called it, through which he could promote his interests and perspectives. </p><p> Although there were many British views of Spain in nineteenth-century, this thesis will focus on two sets of seemingly contradictory conceptions of Spain that were especially important to Jones&rsquo;s visual and ideological program in <i>Alhambra</i>: Spain&rsquo;s status as both the Catholic and Islamic Other, and its frequent interpretations through both romantic and reform-oriented lenses. Through a closer look at <i>Arabian Antiquities of Spain</i> by James Cavanah Murphy and the illustrations from <i> The Tourist in Spain: Granada</i> by David Roberts, I show the prevalence of these mindsets in nineteenth-century reconstructions of the Alhambra. Then, I compare portions of these works to plates from Jones&rsquo;s <i>Alhambra </i> to illustrate Jones&rsquo;s similar adaptation of these perspectives despite the visual peculiarity of his work as a whole.</p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2009. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-06, Section: A, page: . Adviser: Jordana Mendelson. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 220-240) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

<p> The Rue R&eacute;aumur, cleared and constructed between 1896 and 1900, was the first major urbanism project initiated in central Paris after the dismissal of Haussmann. Realized under the Third Republic and under the guidance of a democratically elected Paris Municipal Council, the street provoked an unprecedented public debate about urbanist priorities, the management of municipal debt, and architectural aesthetics. Disappointed with the visual homogeneity of the Haussmannian boulevard, Councilors liberalized building code and declared a Concours des Fa&ccedil;ades in the Rue R&eacute;aumur in order to visually revitalize their city.</p><p> That variation of the streetscape would turn on a monumentalization of the urban party-wall building through enlarged <i>saillies</i> and <i> avant-propos</i>, corbelled fa&ccedil;ade elements hitherto banned in the streets of Paris. Conceived as a central business district, the Rue R&eacute;aumur was also a unique concentration of commercial architecture, which encouraged an expanded use of iron structure to open building interiors and fa&ccedil;ades into naturally illuminated, floor-through spaces of manufacture. Construction in the Rue R&eacute;aumur was, then, guided by contradictory impulses. Charged with psychically countering the uniformity of the rationalized city, the exuberant elevations of the new street simultaneously masked a reordering of the architectural object by similar pressures towards economic and technological efficiency. </p><p> This dissertation treats the architecture of the Rue R&eacute;aumur and the public debate that shaped it as mutually determining engagements of architectural modernity. It situates the street's evolution as a response to the political, economic, spatial, and psychic challenges posed by the emerging capitalist metropolis. Reconstruction of the architectural and social discourses that informed design practice in the Rue R&eacute;aumur positions late-century eclecticism as an indispensable step in the development of interwar Parisian modernism. That architecture served as the primary object of rejection within modernist historiography and avant-garde theory due to its reliance on historical vocabularies. This study demonstrates that the perceptual immediacy desired of the late-century Parisian fa&ccedil;ade was of equal importance to the development of architectural modernism as theories of structural rationalism. It considers eclecticist architecture like that of the Rue R&eacute;aumur as a moment of dynamic invention within nineteenth-century theory and design practice, the terms of which would integrally condition Le Corbusier's reconception of architecture and architectural aesthetics a generation later.</p><p>

<p> The Lincoln Memorial Monument is one of the most successful monuments in Washington D.C. Abraham Lincoln's achievements in his presidency left imprints on every American's life. His memory lives on through the generations. The monument was originally considered a Union Civil War and Presidential memorial, but has evolved into something more. This thesis will analyze the evolution on this monument. This memorial has adapted to a shifting nature of its meaning to different generations throughout the history of the United States. This nature is attributed to its location, the Civil Rights Movement, the Civil War, and the personal character of Abraham Lincoln. </p><p> A major aspect of success comes from the location and iconography of the site. The statue alone inspires a spiritual connection to the struggles of Lincoln. The memorial was placed on the direct axis of the National Mall. This is considered a location of great honor and is easily accessible to visitors. The site and design also allows a massive amount of people to gather and participate in events on the grounds of the monument. A visit to the Lincoln Memorial is a remarkable journey though American history and the extraordinary memorials and monuments of the National Mall. </p><p> Another crucial aspect to the success of this monument in Washington D.C. is the struggle for civil rights. The Civil Rights Movement was able to use the monument as a stage for protest. The movement could then use the Lincoln Memorial and the character of Lincoln as part of its iconography. This fundamentally changed the meaning of the Lincoln Memorial Monument. This allowed a major shift in the meaning of the movement, allowing the monument to grow within another generation of Americans. </p><p> The personal life and views of Lincoln led to many of his successes and accomplishments throughout his political career. His experiences in life impacted many of his policies and the laws that he stood for in the United States. Lincoln's character proved to be inspirational in a time of need and slavery. His political stances paved the way for sociopolitical changes in the United States. His character is a crucial aspect in understanding the need to honor such a great man. The circumstances of Lincoln's death have also made him into a martyr for abolition. The assassination created a legacy in the history of the United States. </p><p> Events of the Civil War and its time period also played a crucial matter in the Lincoln memorial's success. The American Civil War and the division of the United States of America proved to be an altering time in American history. Many Southern politicians fought for the right to maintain individual states' rights. These rights mainly pertained to slavery. As the conflict over slavery continued, a total of eleven states seceded from the Union to create the Confederate States of America. The Civil War lasted four years with hundreds of thousands of deaths. In the end, the Union triumphed and the United States remained one nation.</p>

<p> This thesis explores Gregory Ain's planned housing communities spanning the period 1939-1948, connecting their conception to the theoretical legacy of Modernism that began with the <i>Congr&egrave;s Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne</i> (CIAM) in Europe a decade earlier. Expanding on existing scholarship, this thesis attempts to contextualize Ain's One Family Defense House Project (1939), Park Planned Homes (1945-47), and Mar Vista Tract (1946-48) within the social, political, and economic context of the interwar and postwar period. Although the latter two projects are more well-known, I attempt to expand the understanding of their design through new and lesser-known examples by Ain in the area of tract housing and contemporaneous housing examples. These include his manifesto for a project entitled Preliminary Proposal 'A' for a low-cost community housing development in Southgate, California and the U.S. government's Basic Minimum House (1936). The three projects discussed in this thesis expand the context within which one views the typical tract house, but also the avant-garde approach to Modernism during this era and the years that followed.</p>

<p> The grouping of public buildings into civic centers and cultural centers became an obsession of American city planners at the turn of the twentieth century. Following European and ancient models, and inspired by the World&rsquo;s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 and the McMillan Commission plan for the National Mall in Washington, D.C. in 1901, architects sought to create impressive horizontal ensembles of monumental buildings in urban open spaces such as downtown plazas and quasi-suburban parks in direct opposition to the vertical thrust of commercial skyscrapers. Hitherto viewed largely through the narrow stylistic prism of the City Beautiful vs. the city practical movements, the monumental center (as Jane Jacobs termed it) continued to persist beyond the passing of neoclassicism and the rise of high modernism, thriving as an indispensable motif of futurist aspiration in the era of comprehensive and regional planning, as municipalities sought to counteract the decentralizing pull of the automobile, freeway, air travel and suburban sprawl in postwar America. The administrative civic center and arts and educational cultural center (bolstered by that icon of late urban modernity, the medical center) in turn spawned a new hybrid, the center for the performing arts, exemplified by Lincoln Center and the National Cultural Center (the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts), as cities sought to integrate convention, sports, and live performance venues into inner-city urban renewal projects. Through the key case studies of Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Detroit, one-time juggernauts of heavy industry and twenty-first century regions of rust-belt collapse, this study examines the emergence of the ideology of grouping public buildings in urban planning as well as the nineteenth century philology of the keywords civic center and cultural center, terms once actively employed in discourses as diverse as Swiss geography, American anthropology, Social Christianity, the schoolhouse social center movement, and cultural Zionism. It also positions these developments in relation to modern anxieties about the center and its loss, charted by such thinkers as Hans Sedlmayr, Jacques Derrida, and Henri Lefevbre, and considers the contested utopian aspirations of the monumental center as New Jerusalem, Celestial City, and Shining City on a Hill. </p>