Guest Programme 'Critical Documentaries from Colonial Archives'

Architects do not, strictly speaking, make buildings; they interpret, create, and mobilize a range of documents, recognizing their complex and unstable mode of functioning and their capacity to institute new imaginaries to impact the future. This concluding event of The Berlage Theory Master Class, led by Felicity D. Scott, interrogate the unstable relation between architecture and documents by presenting their critical documentaries through which to critique or counter “imperial dispositions.”

Documenting the Colonial Archive

The “Documenting the Colonial Archive” theory master class, led by Felicity D. Scott at The Berlage, addressed intentional and unintended documents, as found in official and unofficial archives of Dutch colonial administration, as well as in Dutch newsreels and propaganda films, buildings, infrastructures, and other environments and media, both historical and contemporary. Participants will identify key documents or counter-documents, asking themselves what else to do with and through these documents, ultimately advancing the proposition that architects are experts at working with documents, in many media and to various ends.

Felicity D. Scott is Professor of Architecture, Director of the PhD program in Architecture, and Co-Director of the program in Critical, Curatorial and Conceptual Practices in Architecture at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. She is the author of Architecture or Techno-Utopia: Politics After Modernism, Outlaw Territories: Environments of Insecurity/Architectures of Counter-Insurgency, and Disorientations: Bernard Rudofsky in the Empire of Signs.

Guests will include Guus Beumer, Het Nieuwe Instituut; Salomon Frausto, Director of Studies, The Berlage, TU Delft; Stefano Graziani, Photographer, Trieste; Robin Hartanto Honggare, Doctoral Candidate, Columbia GSAPP; Jules Schoonman, Policy Advisor for Academic Heritage, TU Delft.; Amy Thomas, Assistant Professor of the History of Architecture and Urban Planning, TU Delft; amongst others.

The Berlage

The Berlage Center for Advanced Studies in Architecture and Urban Design, founded in 1990 as the Berlage Institute and part of the TU Delft since 2012, educates architects in a highly collaborative and experimental setting, characterized by independent study with guidance and input from and exchange with leading and emerging designers and scholars. Master classes are a unique feature of the Berlage. Twice a year students and young professionals work with world-renowned architects, designers, and thinkers to analyze a chosen subject relevant to contemporary issues in the built environment and are encouraged to experiment with alternative forms of representation and dissemination.