Asian Built Environments

There will be a stream on “Asian Built Environments” run by Society of Architectural and Urban Historians – Asia at the biennial Asian Studies Association of Australia (ASAA) conference, to be held at the University of Sydney on 3–5 July 2018.

Modernisation, urbanisation and globalisation have brought about unprecedented changes across Asia. What new architectural forms and urban spaces are created through the entanglements of new modes of production and historical legacies? How have transnational flows, natural catastrophes and geopolitical shifts shaped the development of built environments? How are notions of class, ethnicity, race, gender and nation negotiated in these charged contexts? And what sorts of social relations, theories and developmental patterns are at stake as a result? The SAUH-Asia stream at the ASAA conference will explore these questions by bringing together papers ranging from empirical studies of built environments to broad concerns about the theorisation of “Asia” as a geographical, cultural, political and economic entity in a global era. The abstract will be reviewed by two readers.