Alcide De Gasperi Research Seminar
This research seminar aims to host a lively and engaging discussion on architecture as an actor in European political, diplomatic, and administrative history.
In a first panel, the seminar seeks to look beyond the symbolic value of European institution buildings, such as the now infamous Berlaymont, and see them first and foremost as inhabited spaces. The interior design of public administration buildings affected the material conditions for the civil servants who worked within them. In addition to highlighting the historic malaise and disaffection of European administrators regarding their working environment, this panel considers the impact of such conditions on the development of public policy and institutional politics.
A second panel will discuss the ways in which European states knowingly used architecture as tools for their foreign policies. It will address how architectural narratives were instrumentalised to underpin West Germany’s diplomatic efforts to rebuild European and Western relationships after the Second World War. In addition, the panel will discuss the political stakes and geopolitical opportunities for European countries chosen to host the headquarters of International organisations
Panels and Speakers
Panel 1. 9.30-11.00 - Europe at Work: Office Spaces and the Making of the European Commission
Marco Ninno (KU Leuven): Europe Inside Out : Reading Europeanisation from Commission Office Spaces
Aude Foucoin (EUI): A social history of European civil service: civil servants and their building, 1975 – 2000
Panel 2. 11.30-13.00 - Architecture as a tool of European diplomacy
Aleksandr Lemeshinski (EUI): The role of architecture in West German foreign policy in the 1950’s and 1960’s
Jonah J. Berger (EUI): The 1994 competition to host the World Trade Organisation (WTO)
Register