Architectural History and Criticism Commons^™

The Glory Of The Islands: The Narrative Of Islands Behind The Design Of ‘Nagara Rimba Nusa’, Rebecca Victoria Simatupang, Rr. Diah Asih Purwaningrum

Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance

In the pursuit of creating its new capital city, the Indonesian government conducted a design competition to find alternatives that best represented the fusion between traditional and modern Indonesia. The winning design titled ‘Nagara Rimba Nusa’ employed the narrative of glorious islands as the basis of its design concepts, evoking nostalgic memories of ‘Nusantara’ in the era of the Majapahit Kingdom. This narrative became effective in capturing public attention, followed by the President of Indonesia’s decision to formalize Nusantara as the new name of the capital city. This paper delves into the design of Nagara Rimba Nusa and analyses how …

Effect Of Traditional Architecture And New Urbanism On Public Health: A Medical Perspective, Eron J. Powell, Jeremy R. Ellis

Transformative Medicine

No abstract provided.

Sit Down, But Not For Too Long, Laura Yam

ENGS 15.11: Design and Education

This lesson introduces undergraduate students to the concept of hostile architecture through an in-depth exploration of anti-homeless bench design in urban environments. It aims to help students identify both visible and disguised design features that deter unhoused individuals from using public spaces, while encouraging critical reflection on the ethical, social, and cultural implications of these practices.

Humans Among Giants: Urban Vitality And Implications Of Vertical Development In Hong Kong, Laura Jaramillo

Pomona Senior Theses

This thesis explores the complex relationship between vertical urbanism and street life, using Hong Kong as a case study to investigate how human-scale urbanism persists and adapts amidst the dominance of skyscrapers. While vertical structures symbolize modernity, economic growth, and global influence, they often overshadow the vibrancy and social connectivity that characterize ground-level spaces. This research draws on the theoretical frameworks of Jane Jacobs, David Harvey, and David Sibley to examine the interplay between vertical urbanism and street life, focusing on how spatial design impacts community engagement and cultural vibrancy. By analyzing the coexistence of modern skyscrapers and traditional street-level …

Front Matter - Zamani 1, No. 2, Editors Note

Zamani: A Journal of African Historical Studies

The editors are pleased to present to you the second issue of Zamani: A Journal of African Historical Studies. Volume 1 Number 2 has a collection of research and forum articles as well as book reviews. There are four articles that builds from field research with different themes spanning from neolithic to the postcolonial periods. The themes include new neolithic dating; smallpox control in early colonial period in the former German East Africa (now Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi); evasion of colonial taxation; and the connection between land legislations and land conflicts among the peasant and pastoral communities. There are also …

New Chronology For Neolithic Cultures In The Lake Eyasi Basin, Northern Tanzania, Musa Said Mwitondi, Pastory Magayane Bushozi

Zamani: A Journal of African Historical Studies

There have been several studies on Neolithic Cultures in the Serengeti National. The recovered archaeological materials include domestic and wild fauna remains, potsherds and lithic artefacts, ochre, and stone enclosures, dating between 7200 and 4900 BP. In the East African Rift System (EARS), conventional ages for Neolithic Cultures are inferred from the most extensively researched Neolithic sites in Kenya, where the oldest Nderit ware, cattle and caprine in the Lake Turkana Basin, northern Kenya, date ca. 5200 BP. Studies on the Neolithic of EARS have been structured to fit into the migration or diffusion models that consider the spread of …

Smallpox Outbreaks And Immunization Policies In Tanzania From The Late Nineteenth Century To The First World War, Lorne Larson

Zamani: A Journal of African Historical Studies

An estimated 300 million people died globally from smallpox in the 20th century alone. There was very much a North/South divide in the existence of the disease in that period, with countries across South America, Africa and Asia recording the majority of cases. In 1966 the World Health Organization launched an intensive effort to finally eliminate the disease. The last known endemic case of smallpox was reported in Somalia in 1977, and that outbreak was promptly contained. In 1980 smallpox was declared eradicated – the only infectious disease affecting humans to achieve this distinction. This remains among the most notable …

'Evading The Tax Collector’: Native Responses To The Head Tax In Colonial Njombe, Tanzania, 1920-1960, Peter Chaula, Hezron Kangalawe

Zamani: A Journal of African Historical Studies

Tax collection was one of the core preoccupations of the colonial government in Tanganyika (now Tanzania) and other colonies in the Africa that persisted even after independence. Direct taxation formed the basis of colonial taxation in Tanganyika. Head tax was a dominant form of direct taxation with its burden being borne primarily by Africans. This article uses the colonial Njombe District of Tanganyika to explore the responses of the African taxpayers to the head tax. The available data indicates that colonial head tax policies and practices in Njombe elicited varied responses from Africans with covert forms forming the mainstay of …

Revisiting African Religion As An Academic Discipline In Africa: History And Prospects, Ivan B. Kivinge

Zamani: A Journal of African Historical Studies

Three main religious traditions—indigenous African beliefs and practices (African religion), Christianity and Islam—have dominated everyday life of communities in Africa today. Scholarship on religion indicates that only African religion originated in Africa— Christianity and Islam are foreign religions. Many Africans today have been active Christians and Muslims, who are sometimes being misleadingly taught that African religion is demonic and forms of paganism. This article employs historical and philosophical approaches to show how the study of African religion has navigated through various historical currents and resultant implications on the way the current generation views it. In the end, the article proposes …

Major Trends In Oral Historiography In Mainland Tanzania, 1960s To The Present: A Review Of Published Sources, Albertus K. Onyiego

Zamani: A Journal of African Historical Studies

This article examines the role of oral methodology in reconstructing historical knowledge in Mainland Tanzania over the last six decades. Although greater attention is paid to the period from the 1960s onwards, efforts have been made to illuminate on the use of oral methodology in the period before. The article is organised into four temporal sections, each representing a distinct phase of oral methodology. The first section explores the role of oral methodology before independence. It will be noticed that the gradual use of oral sources in the writing of history in Mainland Tanzania started way back during German and …

A Society For Professional Archaeologists In Tanzania: A Call For Action, Richard K. Bigambo

Zamani: A Journal of African Historical Studies

This essay discusses the need for an Archaeological Association of Tanzania and provides its general structure. It argues that the proposed association is essential for promoting the country’s development, heritage preservation and conservation, and promotion of archaeological studies. In addition to providing resources and support for research, training, and education, it would facilitate collaboration and networking, help protect and preserve Tanzania's cultural heritage, and increase public awareness and education about archaeology in Tanzania. The essay also discusses the development of archaeology in Tanzania and the history and contributions of archaeological associations worldwide. This structure for the proposed association would enable …

Review Of Water Brings No Harm: Management Knowledge And The Struggle For Waters Of Kilimanjaro, Maxmillian J. Chuhila

Zamani: A Journal of African Historical Studies

Water Brings No Harm is a key text that enables readers to understand the competing claims to resource control between government authorities and local communities on the ground. Scholarship on the relationship between local knowledge and expert knowledge in resource management and control suggests an asymmetrical relationship in which expert opinion assumes the primary responsibility.1 Bender contrasts traditional and imposed systems of resource ownership and management, arguing that there has been a struggle from both sides, as each side believes it has a rightful claim to ownership and management of water source.

Review Of Decolonising Sociology: An Introduction, Armstrong K. Matogwa

Zamani: A Journal of African Historical Studies

Decolonizing Sociology is one of the few works in sociology that makes critical assessment of the discipline. It is a kind of self-critique within the discipline that aims to reveal epistemic setbacks that have existed for decades. To arrive to the point, Meghji, has situated his thesis along decolonial sociology, which interrogates dominant sociological theories in the context of imperialism. By so doing, he makes three main arguments as follows; first, what is called sociology is colonial in nature as it is based on the ideas of the Western thinkers namely Marx, Durkheim and Weber which emerged and institutionalized during …

Legal Provisions And Administration Of Land Disputes In Kiteto District, Ca. 1970s – 2000s: The Missing Linkage, Juma Marmo

Zamani: A Journal of African Historical Studies

There have been a series of legal interventions on land use in the post-colonial Tanzania to create a good land administration and management in order to end land use conflicts. Scholarship on the legal aspect of land use indicates that legal interventions did not provide lasting solutions to land use conflicts because of their structural and systemic arrangements. In addition, existing scholarship has little focus on the linkage between law enforcement machinery, the peoples’ level of understanding on land laws, and the occurrence of land use conflicts. This paper discusses the violation of laws by peasants, pastoralists, and government officials …

Introduction: Failed Futures? (Post)-Colonial Planning And Future-Making In Tanzania, Ulrike Lindner

Zamani: A Journal of African Historical Studies

Future-making and planning as social practices are strongly related to the
surrounding society’s political structures and power relations. In this
special issue of ZAMANI, we conceptualize future-making as physical
changes and social practices that shape future conditions by making future
an issue in the present. We analyse how different approaches to the future,
and also surprises and unintended side-effects, have informed the politics
and practices of planning in Tanzania and its various regions.1 When we ask:
“Failed Futures?” we address future in the plural, a term that has diffused
into historical scholarship rather recently and originates from
futurology/future studies, known …

‘Sold Down The River’: Histories Of Production, Trade, And Transport Along The Waterways Of The Kilombero Valley, Tanzania, Jonathan M. Jackson

Zamani: A Journal of African Historical Studies

This article considers the centrality of waterways in the Kilombero Valley of Tanzania to the region’s histories of development from above, particularly in terms of infrastructure, crop production, trade, and transport. Early colonial investigations hoped Kilombero’s riverine system might prove a navigable link from the coast to the Southern Highlands. The British colonial era instead focused more on utilising riverine networks for internal goods transport. Throughout these colonial visions – simultaneously ambitious and naïve – the prevalent dug- out canoe was considered unsafe, inefficient, and replaceable by modernised methods. But the canoe – a symbol of indigenous knowledge and practice …

Nurturing Traditional Midwifery And Medicine: The Entangled Path Of Health Integration In Post-Independence Kilombero, Tanzania, Veronica Kimani

Zamani: A Journal of African Historical Studies

This paper focuses on the Tanzanian government’s ambitious endeavour to enhance health, particularly midwifery services following independence. The initial strategy by the government involved promoting Western medicine by establishing healthcare facilities and training medical personnel. However, the strain of a burgeoning population and limited resources soon became evident, prompting the government to recognise the need for the incorporation of traditional medicine, previously overlooked. This integration posed its own set of obstacles, as the focus on herbal remedies overshadowed crucial aspects of conventional midwifery, such as rituals. While research has shown the resolve of the government towards medical integration between different …

Health Infrastructure Planning In Tanzania, 1961–1980s: The Problems Of Future-Making, Frank Edward, Ulrike Lindner

Zamani: A Journal of African Historical Studies

Between 1961 and 1978, Tanzania invested significantly in the health service provision – from training requisite manpower, provision of health education to building the necessary infrastructure in order to improve health conditions of the population. As existing research indicates, the investment paid off considerably in qualitative terms, for instance, with a gradual increase in life expectancy and a decline in infant mortality. This paper examines the vision of the state of health in Tanzania by using the prism of infrastructure. Its focus is on direct and indirect physical infrastructures, particularly medical buildings and facilities. Through the analysis of archival and …

Front Matter - Zamani 1, No. 1, Editors Note

Zamani: A Journal of African Historical Studies

This is the maiden issue of Zamani: A Journal of African Historical Studies. It charts the beginning of a continental journal that is based in an African higher education institution within Africa. It breaks away from the traditional historical journals in Africa of being national or regional and at best being owned and operated by scholars and institutions from Europe and North America. With this maiden issue, the journal seeks to demonstrate that it is part of the bigger knowledge decolonization movement. It seeks to influence historical writing and research by giving more Africanness in ownership, operations, production and knowledge …

Medical Mission Futures: German Protestant Missionaries And Modern Healthcare In Southern Highlands, Tanzania,1891–1940, Luoneko Kaduma

Zamani: A Journal of African Historical Studies

The history of colonial missionaries in Tanzania is marked by a complex interplay between evangelical efforts and the provision of Western biomedicine, which functioned as crucial mechanisms for conversion and cultural transformation. Missionaries viewed the improvement of African health as a project aimed at attracting converts and propagating Christianity. However, the available data indicates that, instead of genuinely expressing interest in converting to Christianity, the majority of Africans primarily sought mission medical assistance for medical reasons while maintaining strong connections to their traditional beliefs and healing practices. This paper, drawing from archival documents, ethnographic accounts, and missionary writings, focuses on …

‘Prevention Is Better Than Cure’: Smallpox Vaccination In Postcolonial Tanzania, 1961–1980, Musa Sadock

Zamani: A Journal of African Historical Studies

This article examines the smallpox vaccination programme in postcolonial Tanzania from the 1960s to the early 1980s as part of the postcolonial future making in preventive medicine. The article departs from extant scholarship on smallpox vaccination in postcolonial Tanzania, which depicts the intervention as a success, while relegating to the background challenges associated with the intervention. The article argues that the smallpox vaccination programme registered challenges and successes that offer lessons for combating of future epidemics. The achievements of the programme were due to the adoption of specific public health policies, namely mass vaccination and public health education as well …

Codifying Domesticity: The Story Of The Recommended Minimum Requirements For Small Dwelling Construction Of 1923, The Housing Policy Of The Hoover Secretariat, And The Impact On American Residential Architecture, Noah Morris

Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design Theses & Dissertations

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, fire disasters and health-safety issues led to the widespread adoption of building codes. While the National Board of Fire Underwriters published the National Building Code in 1905, the code did not maintain regulatory consistency across the nation. This lack of consistency across the nation and socio-economic factors contributed to a nation-wide housing shortage of a million units by 1919. During World War I, the government addressed the housing crisis through the United States Housing Corporation and Emergency Fleet Corporation, building public housing based on the ideals of the Garden City Movement.[1] Following the …

تحليل تاريخي للممارسة التخطيطية الاولى لطرق مدينة البصرة سنة 1917, Armin Sarkis Markaryan

Emirates Journal for Engineering Research

المخلص: تنوعت وسائل النقل في المدن المختلفة فمنها النقل المائي الذي يتمثل بالنقل البحري والنهري, والنقل الجوي, والنقل البري, والاخير يمثل احدى السبل الاكثر رواجاً في اغلب المدن, ولكون هذه الوسائل تحتاج الي بنى تحتية, برزت اهمية الطرق في النقل البري كونها الشرايين الرابطة بين اجزاء المدن, ولا تعد مجرد طرق للمواصلات وانما تتعدى هذه الخاصية الي امتلاكها خصائص ومميزات مكانية مع مرور الزمن. ولأجل ذلك تطرق البحث الي طرق بصورة عامة, وبعد نقد الدراسات والطروحات السابقة تبين وجود نقص معرفي متمثل في عدم وجود دراسة معمارية مختصة بتخطيط طرق مدينة البصرة لسنة 1917, بوصفها الممارسة التخطيطية الاولى لطرق المدينة, …

The Runis: How Can Social Remidation And Environmental Remeidation Be Linked Throguh Architecture?, Tayu Ting

Masters Theses

This thesis delves into the integration of social and environmental remediation through innovative architectural strategies, focusing on the adaptive reuse of an abandoned copper smelter plant in New Taipei City, Taiwan. The project confronts the site’s industrial legacy by deploying contemporary programs that cultivate a productive, sustainable, and community-oriented environment. A pivotal aspect of the redevelopment is a phytoremediation system utilizing wetlands to purify toxic metal-contaminated water, thus restoring ecological integrity and providing clean water to the community.

At the heart of this transformation is the artistic integration of glassmaking, where flowers and plants that have absorbed metals through phytoremediation …

Frontier: Land, Architecture, And Abstraction, Jacob Boatman

Masters Theses

The abstraction of land is a colonial process by which physical land is transformed into a conceptual or symbolic entity. This transformation occurs through various economic, architectural, and cultural practices that imbue land with abstract values, meanings, and functions beyond its physicality. This includes the division of land into parcels for economic transactions, the design and construction of built environments that shape human interactions with the land, and the cultural narratives and representations that ascribe significance to particular landscapes. Through abstraction, colonial powers devalue indigenous perspectives and relationships to the land, reducing them to mere obstacles in the path of …

Homeward Bound: Moving Homes, Moving Home, Ella Nadeau

Masters Theses

The built environment has a powerful way of showing where our human attention and care is, a magic trick of emphasis and deemphasis. We proudly display our assets, wrapping them in light and gold while we shun the background people and places, choosing ubiquitous skins of plastic or brick in an effort to remove them from our visual language. Since we have had people we have had spaces to place them in but where some spaces relay the message that the person inside is a gift to the world, the majority chant a tired monotony of oppressive apathy: you do …

House Calls, Gregory Goldstone

Masters Theses

This thesis explores the unique architectural challenges and opportunities present in rural communities, with a focus on addressing the crisis of affordable housing. Grounding the discussion in the author's personal experiences growing up in the rural town of Cambridge, New York, the thesis illuminates the diversity of identities, needs, and values that coexist within the rural context.

The thesis critically examines the architectural academy and its urban-centric biases, which have led to a neglect of rural design issues. It highlights the shortcomings of standard affordable housing approaches, such as public housing and mobile homes, in meeting the independent spirit and …

A Dispatch From The Site Office, Adrian Pelliccia

Masters Theses

In the middle of the 20th century, a rare confluence of political, economic, and cultural forces aligned to produce a slate of highly progressive policy and design agendas for social housing in the United Kingdom. A widely shared utopian ambition to house all people with dignity was made real by a motivated government and its well-resourced planning and architecture offices, tasked with bringing this vision to bear in the built environment. In London, the London County Council Architect’s Office and later local council-led architecture and planning offices were at the forefront of designing and delivering high quality, formally ambitious housing …

Folding (And Unfolding): A Site-Responsive Strategy For Reusing Construction And Demolition Waste, Jennifer Ansley

Masters Theses

Discarding—in its most reductive formulation— is a sorting operation that makes distinctions between materials (as well as objects, people, communities, and landscapes) based on perceived value. In her book Waste of the World, Nicky Gregson, therefore, argues for a more careful collection-curation strategy that revalues and re-signifies “waste” to make it available for repair and reuse. Gregson, however, points to limited space and infrastructural capacity as a potential barrier to the development of new material handling strategies. My design responds by proposing a network of walls and paths that operate in each of the sites I’ve identified as an …

Demonstration Dwellings: Building Racial Capitalism And Economic Cooperation In New Deal Housing, 1933–1942, Austin Ehrhardt

Masters of Environmental Design Theses

Beginning in 1933, the United States federal government initiated a series of historic investments in the nation’s housing infrastructure. Propelled by the convergence of the Great Depression and the Great Migration, New Deal administrators commissioned a network of segregated residential prototypes to operate as replicable models for private industry. At the core of the discriminatory program was the creation and circulation of federally-insured debt. Reading across federal records, correspondence circuits, and contemporaneous Black journals and newspapers, this thesis revisits struggles for land, property, and Black participation in the emergent housing-based economy. It explores the distributed networks within which the Black …