Accessibility statement

The Medium and the Message: Re-evaluating Form and Meaning in European Architecture c. 1400-1950

Friday 1 July 2016, 9.00AM to 2nd July 5pm

All buildings – whether polite, vernacular or somewhere in between – were initially informed by some kind of presiding idea or set of ideas. Some of these ideas presumed an audience (and are therefore part of the building’s Medium and the Message‌rhetoric and essential to its intended ‘meaning’), while others did not (in being part, for example, of a production process, or allied with social and cultural contexts, and no more than that). All such ideas should concern the architectural historian, but the most engaging and historically resonant may well belong to the first category and also be ones that can be inferred and recovered from the buildings themselves. The architectural historian may also profit from a keener understanding of how the ideas initially underpinning a building may, in time, have become modified, or even eclipsed by associations of very different kinds.

The conference will investigate the ways in which ideas are conveyed by the physical and visual medium of architectural form. It will include case studies which will move us beyond explanations of architecture that borrow too liberally from literature and theory, and will thereby deepen our understanding both of the medium of architecture and of the construction and operation of architectural ‘meaning’. Moreover, by establishing or re-exploring the intellectual foundations sustaining the designs of certain key buildings, and by examining the ways in which they informed the physical realities of the buildings themselves, we hope to reinvigorate and enrich our understanding of significant moments in European architectural history.

Papers, presented by leading international speakers from the UK, Europe and the United States, will explore the relationship between message and medium through detailed historical case studies. Keynote speakers are Sigrid de Jong (University of Leiden) and Christine Stevenson (Courtauld Institute of Art, London). Speakers will include Fabrizio Ballabio (Architectural Association), Paul Davies (University of Reading), Richard Hewlings (Historic England): Olivia Horsfall Turner (V&A), Angeliki Pollali (American College of Greece, Athens), Harald Stühlinger (ETH Zürich), Peter Lindfield (University of Stirling), Mark Wilson Jones (University of Bath).

Tickets for the conference cost £10 and are purchased via the online shop.

Student applicants: Ten grants each of £30 are being offered by the Society of Architectural Historians Great Britain to registered students based outside Birmingham, to cover the £10 conference fee and to help defray costs; these will be awarded strictly on a ‘first come first served’ basis, and, to apply, you should contact David Hemsoll before 8 June heading your message ‘student request for conference support’.

Tea and coffee (but not lunch) will be provided and the conference will include a concluding drinks reception in the foyer of the Barber Institute.

Sponsored by the University of Birmingham, the University of York and the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain.

Conference convenors: Dr David Hemsoll (University of Birmingham) and Professor Anthony Geraghty (University of York)

Location: The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, The University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TS