Six-month or 12-month Fellowships to be held from January 2014 to September 2015.

For more information click here.

The Department of Culture, Media and Sport announced on 16 January that it has revised the list description for Scroope Terrace. The original terrace of 1839-64 had been listed as a building of special interest since 1972, along with the front railings, but the new list description adds the extension designed by Colin St John Wilson with Alex Hardy in 1958 and opened by Le Corbusier and Henry Moore in 1959.

The extension houses the Department of Architecture's lecture room and principal crit space on its upper level, with staff offices and a staff common room below. It was constructed following the arrival in Cambridge of Leslie Martin (co-designer of the Royal Festival Hall) in 1956 as Professor of Architecture. Wilson, who had worked with Martin at the London County Council, joined him as a studio master and Lecturer in Architectural Theory. Under Martin's leadership, the Department expanded in size and ambition: the Diploma course was for example founded in 1960, and the Centre for Land Use and Built Form Studies (now the Martin Centre) was created to develop a research agenda.

Sandy Wilson's design was described by Reyner Banham as an example of 'extreme intellectual' Modernism. Its planning is based on a rigid geometric module, with both plan and section being shaped by the ratio of the golden section. Visually the building adopted (partly in the name of economy) exposed brick and shuttered concrete. The result recalls Le Corbusier's then-recent Maisons Jaoul, and the design thus stands as an early example of British interest in Le Corbusier's late work. The Corbusian influence is also felt in such details as the centre-pivot doors that separate the spaces at the upper levels. Historians have noted the way in which ideas of plan, section and movement seen in the building reoccur in other works by Wilson, including the British Library at St Pancras.

The extension remains relatively intact. The lecture room, for example, retains many of its original finishes as well as the mechanically operated shutters that blank out the roof lights during lectures and its tungsten light fittings, dimmable from the lectern, plus its furnishings by Robin Day for Hille.

Other buildings by Wilson in Cambridge that are listed include Harvey Court on West Road, the William Stone Building at Peterhouse, and the architect's own house on Grantchester Road. Listing is not a preservation order, but rather a marker that notes what is significant about a building in order that future change might preserve what is important.

The Lecture Series is entitled

Professor Necipoğlu has been the Aga Khan Professor of Islamic Art and Director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at the Department of History of Art and Architecture in Harvard University since 1993, where she earned her PhD in 1986.

Her dissertation was titled, “The Formation of an Ottoman Imperial Tradition: The Topkapı Palace in the 15^th and 16^th Centuries”. In 1986-87, Gülru Necipoğlu was appointed Lecturer at the Columbia University, Department of Art History and Archaeology, and Mellon-David Heyman Fellow in Urban Studies at the Society of Fellows in the Humanities. Between 1987 and 1993 she taught as an Assistant Professor and Associate Professor at the Harvard University Department of History of Art and Architecture. Gülru Necipoğlu is a Fellow of the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a board member of the Centro Internazionale di Studi di Archittettura Andrea Palladio in Vicenza. She is the editor of Muqarnas: An Annual on the Visual Cultures of the Islamic World and her books include Architecture, Ceremonial Power: The Topkapi Palace (1991); The Topkapi Scroll, Geometry and Ornament in Islamic Architecture (1995); and The Age of Sinan: Architectural Culture in the Ottoman Empire (2005). Her Topkapi Scroll won the Albert Hourani and the Spiro Kostoff book awards. The Age of Sinan has received the Fuat Köprülü Book Prize and Honorable Mention by the Albert Hourani Book Award.

The lectures will take place weekly at 5:00 pm on Mondays and Thursdays during Lent Term at Mill Lane Lecture Room 3.

The subject of these lectures is an interpretation of the interconnected architectural cultures of three early modern Islamic empires, which partitioned the Eastern Islamic lands from the Balkans to Bengal together with the Uzbeks in Central Asia: The Mediterranean-based Ottomans, the Safavids in Iran, and the Mughals in the Indian subcontinent. During the 16^th and 17^th centuries, these three great empires developed distinctive architectural and ornamental idioms, originating from a previously shared “international Timurid” cultural heritage that merged Turco-Mongol and Perso-Islamic elements. The lecture series begins with a general introduction to the contexts of architectural production in the three empires. The second lecture introduces the capital cities of each empire as the primary setting for major architectural monuments. This is followed by a comparative analysis of iconic monuments in each empire, grouped according to two main building types: three lectures on palaces and landscape architecture, and three lectures on socio-religious monuments. The intimate connection between empire building and architecture is explored with respect to aesthetics, historical contexts, religious orientations, imperial ideologies, and theories of dynastic legitimacy.

18 February: Architecture and the Construction of Early Modern Islamic Empires

21 February: Dynastic Imprints on the Cityscape: Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal Capitals

25 February: Universal Kingship, Dynastic Identity and Court Ceremonial: Ottoman Palaces and Landscape Architecture

28 February: Universal Kingship, Dynastic Identity and Court Ceremonial: Safavid Palaces and Landscape Architecture

4 March: Universal Kingship, Dynastic Identity and Court Ceremonial: Mughal Palaces and Landscape Architecture

7 March: Religion and State: Ottoman Socio-Religious Architecure

11 March: Religion and State: Safavid Socio-Religious Architecure 

14 March: Religion and State: Mughal Socio-Religious Architecure

In opposition to the enduring stereotype of the Renaissance as a ‘secular age’, their research sets out to demonstrate that religion played a key role in attending to the needs of the laity, and explores the period 1400-1600 as an age of spiritual revitalization. Devotions, from routine prayers to extraordinary religious experiences such as miracles or exorcisms, frequently took place within the home and were specifically shaped to meet the everyday demands of domestic life.

Breaking Boundaries

The three Principal Investigators, Abigail Brundin (from the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages), Deborah Howard (Architecture and History of Art) and Mary Laven (History) offer a rare combination of expertise and experience across several disciplines. By bringing together the study of books, buildings, objects, spaces, images and archives, they aim to show how religion functioned behind the doors of the Renaissance home. The project moves beyond traditional research on the Renaissance in two further ways. Firstly, it breaks away from the ‘golden triangle’ of Venice, Florence and Rome in order to investigate practices of piety in three highly significant yet under-explored zones: Naples and its environs; the Marche in central Italy; and the Venetian mainland. Secondly, it rejects the standard focus on Renaissance elites in order to develop an understanding of domestic devotion across a wide social spectrum.

People

The project will provide opportunities for three PhD students and three post-doctoral researchers to undertake research in Italy. Back in Cambridge, the University will provide a unique environment for interdisciplinary collaboration and dialogue. The PIs comment that, unlike many of the other successful Synergy teams, they do not need funding to set up a laboratory or to pay for expensive equipment: ‘Our pooled knowledge and expertise are key to this project, which, in the way of arts and humanities research, gains its strength and vitality from the bringing together of people, and the opportunity to arrive at a 360-degree view of a research question that alone we could never achieve’. 

A first

2012 was the first year in which the ERC published its Synergy call. The competition attracted over 700 applications, only 1.5% of which were retained for funding. ‘Domestic Devotions’ is one of only two projects from the Humanities and Social Sciences to be funded, and the only project to be led by an exclusively female team.

Click here to see the press release and here to see the University of Cambridge press release.

Click here for more information on the appointment.

The catalogue has been published in English, French and Spanish.

This Conference was possible due to the generosity of the Department of History of Art and Magdalene College. The organizers are greatly indebted to the kindness and support of the faculty and staff at the History of Art Department, as well as members of the graduate community.

Organizers: Rachel Parikh, Josephine Perfall, and Molly Dorkin