Docomomo Journal

Sites of Modern Industrial Heritage in Egypt and Iran

Mirhan Damir — 2024-07-01

The countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have only recently discovered their modern industrial heritage as an object of conservation and future development. Through an in-depth analysis of four industrial sites in Egypt and Iran, testifying to a designated modern era, this article documents the complex historical process of industrialization and its political and economic background. Building on fieldwork, archive studies, workshops, and interviews, the article explores how built structures of modern industrial sites signify the multi-facetted, symbiotic, and exploitative international exchange behind the modernization of economies in the region. In the face of many obstacles to the conservation of this heritage, ranging from incomplete listings and ineffectual policies to high development pressures on urban land, this article aims to transcend the current Eurocentrism in industrial heritage research and practice, and encourage regional claims on this significant heritage.

Recovering the Historical Construction and Materials of Erik Gunnar Asplund’s Stockholm Public Library

Patrick Fleming — 2024-07-01

This work presents the first detailed study of the construction and materials of the Stockholm Public Library. As the building undergoes a rare period of maintenance and renovation, the floors and walls of the library are examined from three perspectives. First, using available but limited archival documents and plans; second, with non-destructive ground-penetrating radar measurements; and finally, through on-site surveys during local interventions for the maintenance and renovation process. The ensuing results emphasize the complementary nature of this combined research approach in recovering lost or forgotten construction details and further reveal several important findings. In the case of the unique wall finishing of the library’s rotunda, multiple layers of lime mortar, each varying in thickness and coarseness, were used to build up and craft the relief-like interior wall surface. With the use of in-situ aerated concrete and prefabricated Solomite panels in the library’s 1931–32 floor construction, a material connection between Asplund and the broader modern movement in architecture is further highlighted. At first glance, these construction-related findings seem to reinforce the common architectural narrative of the library as a transitional project between neoclassicism and modernism. At the same time, however, the library’s separate periods of construction of 1925–28 and 1931–32 and their distinct materials can be seen as a continuity of construction culture, with the innovative use of local raw materials related to the Swedish landscape.

From Hospital to Criminal Justice Complex

Ivo Giroto — 2024-07-01

This article analyses the conversion of a big hospital and teaching complex, designed between 1968 and 1978 and commissioned by Santa Casa de Misericórdia de São Paulo to a team of architects led by Fábio Moura Penteado, into the biggest criminal justice complex in Latin America, since it was acquired by the State of São Paulo in the mid-1990s and opened in 1999. The architectural characteristics and the superlative scale of the complex constitute a privileged object to analyze the potentialities and limits of architectural flexibility, as well as how this concept is related to the modern project culture, specifically with the general strategies developed by the so-called Escola Paulista.