Portable Architecture and Gateway Cities
4.2 Interdisciplinary Scholarship on Exchange
4.2.1 Leed
Eric Leed, currently Professor of History at Florida International University in Miami, has focused on travel and exploration as part of his scholarly investigations. He is a wide ranging scholar delving into the fields of literature, history, politics, sociology, and anthropology. His investigations in The Mind of the Traveler: From Gilgamesh to Global Tourism, is of particular importance to this study.6 In The Mind of the Traveler, Leed concludes that mobility, not sessility, is the theme of the life of cities and civilizations. I propose that this concept should extend to interpretations of the form of cities. Leed states:
Travel is, as I will argue throughout this book, a central rather than a peripheral force in historical transformations….The great ancient centers─Delos, Memphis,
5 Most studies of gateway cities in economic geography focus on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in North America. These studies are discussed in more detail in Section 4.7 of this chapter. Another area that uses the term ‘gateway city’ is in studies of mill cities in Massachusetts. In these recent studies, ‘gateway city’ is understood as meaning a regional, industrial city containing diverse migrant populations, focused on economic development. See John Schneider “Gateway to the Future: Rethinking the Mill Cities of Massachusetts,” ab (ArchitectureBoston) Summer 2009, 28; or Robert Ansin, “Hidden Assets: Rebuilding the Gateway Cities”, ab (ArchitectureBoston), Summer 2009, Vol 12:2, 17; In addition, studies with a focus on migrant populations also use the concept of ‘gateway cities’. For example, Marie Price and Lisa Benton-Short eds., Migrants to the Metropolis: the Rise of Immigrant Gateway Cities (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2008), and David Ley, “Countervailing Immigration and Domestic Migration in Gateway Cities: Canadian Variations on an American Theme”, Economic Geography 83, no.3 (July 2007): 231-254.
6 Eric Leed, Shores of Discovery: How Expeditionaries Constructed the World (Basic Books, 1995).
Athens [Fig 4.1.a.b], Rome, Jerusalem, Mecca, Thebes—are only monuments to generations of arrivals and returns, the skeletal remains of countless journeys.
….The presumptions of the effects of travel, sessility and territorialization, enter deeply into our often unspoken assumption that societies are somehow pre- established rather than constantly in the process of formation and dissolution.7 Leed explains why travel is so important to any analysis of intangible and material culture. Firstly, he points out that travel is a common part of everyday life and it plays a crucial role in the formation of the individual, societies and cultures (however, because of this commonplace nature it is often taken for granted and, therefore, overlooked in discussions of the role of travel in human history).8 Secondly, he emphasizes that mobility is a force of change and we must understand how it has operated in the past in order to understand this past as well as the present.9 This insight inspired this study to privilege travel and mobility as the driving force of architectural exchange.
a b
Fig 4.1.a Part of the Parthenon (fifth century B.C.), dedicated to Athena, the Acropolis, Athens in 2010. In the fifth century A.D. the Parthenon was converted into a Christian church, and in the 1460’s, during the
Ottoman Occupation, it was turned into a mosque, and a minaret was built in it. 4.1.b Drawing of the mosque situated in the acropolis 1728-30, by Etienne Fourmont, titled View of Athens from the North.
7 Eric Leed, The Mind of the Traveler, From Gilgamesh to Global Tourism (Basic Books, 1991), 18, 19.
8 Leed, The Mind of the Traveler, 5.
9 Leed, The Mind of the Traveler, 4.
Third, Leed maintains that societies are in a constant state of motion, and are not
‘somehow’ pre-established.10 Logically, Leed’s recognition of the role of ‘travel’ as an everyday event that has always generated change would also extend to architecture. What this study proposes is that buildings and landscapes are subject to constant change, due to human mobility, and this should be considered the norm.11 This enables a perceptual shift in architectural history. Buildings need to be understood in terms of their ongoing process of construction and adaptation and as subject to the forces of travel. The role that travel plays in civilisations explains the widespread phenomenon of cultural and architectural exchange and the need to interpret architectural history in terms of mobility not sessility.
Despite these observations by Leed on the fluidity between and within civilizations, buildings have primarily been analyzed as static products rather then part of a process of architectural exchange. Oleg Grabar is an example of a scholar (referred to in Chapter 1) corroborating theoretical perceptions (more often accepted, rather than stated) of architecture as static. As identified in Chapter 1, architectural scholarship has emphasized stasis in the representation of architectural exchange through the application of reductive labels, the concern with origins and the core theoretical belief in the immobility of architecture and the idea of culture as a pre-established entity as criticised above by Leed.
My findings regarding the mobility inherent in the built environment of cities, as indicated in Part II, supports Leed’s argument on the importance of travel and mobility in the formation of cities and civilizations. Leed’s (a travel historian) insights correspond to those of Geoffrey Gunn (a world system’s theorist) as he identifies travel or movement as the underlying reason for the mobility of cities and civilizations which leads to the formation of Gunn’s insights into the Eurasian exchange. It is travel and mobility that
10 Leed, The Mind of the Traveler, 19. The notion that societies are ‘pre-established’,links with the preoccupation with origins in architectural history and how this preoccupation can obscure a perception of the many changes that occur on a building/site. The writings of James Clifford (twentieth century) and Joan Pau-Rubiés (who mostly writes about the period from 1200-1630) also examine the cultural history of travel. Clifford argues that routes precede roots rather than pre-established roots preceding routes. See James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge, Massachusetts:
Harvard University Press, 1997) and Joan Pau-Rubiés, Voyages and Visions, Towards a Cultural History of Travel (London: Reaction Books, 1999).
11 Other environmental factors that can compromise the ‘permanence’ of the built environment are many.
Some examples of these factors are: fires, floods, earthquakes, tsunami, mudslides, volcanic activity, and vegetation re growth in abandoned tropical sites.
enable exchanges to occur. Though the two scholars are from different disciplines, they both have explored data in many areas beyond their original field of interest.