EPFL/PoliTo International PhD Seminar: Environmental Histories of Architecture

A dialogue has started in recent years between architectural research and environmental history. This doctoral seminar aims at exploring the heuristic value of further interweaving these fields. How does environmental history, in all its diversity, bring new insights to the study of architecture and of urban and built spaces more generally? Conversely, to what extent can urbanism and architectural history, broadly conceived, enrich historiographies concerned with the reciprocal relationships between human societies and the natural world?

The seminar will provide an opportunity for PhD students and more experienced researchers from the fields of history and architecture to exchange. Furthermore, the seminar will deal with transversal issues, for instance the new archives and sources mobilised by environmental history, the move away from an author-centred approach of architectural history, and the interdisciplinary nature of environmental studies. 

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