Events

Jointly organized by Asia Research Institute, and Department of Architecture, National University of Singapore.

PROGRAMME

CHAIRPERSON

Dr Chin Chuan Fei, Department of Philosophy, NUS

ABSTRACT

In 2015 my colleagues and I initiated an interdisciplinary project called Talking Houses. We decided to explore life stories related to a beautiful Hungarian town, Kőszeg, lying at the Austrian-Hungarian border. Kőszeg survived World War II in very good shape. In a mysterious local urban legend, a soldier, who was in the American Air Force, saved his hometown by removing its name from the military map. Kőszeg is unique for its built cultural heritage with roots in the Middle Ages. Although Kőszeg was very lucky in 1945, that had not been the case many times in the previous centuries. The inhabitants of the city had to be adaptive and innovative in order to survive and progress.

While detecting individual life stories we realized that the city had been overpopulated by well-educated people in its past. Compared to other cities of that small size, Kőszeg had undoubtedly been more creative. In my lecture I examine the common influences of Austrian and Hungarian law, administration and infrastructure. I also focus on the intellectual and institutional networks which supported individuals in Kőszeg in their careers. In my analysis I shall rely on the internationally recognized network expert Albert-László Barabási’s recent findings, which are published in his latest book, The Formula (2018).

ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS

Mónika Mátay (PhD 2003) is Associate Professor at the Institute of History at Eötvös Loránd University and a permanent fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies Kőszeg. She has been a visiting scholar at several higher educational institutions, including the State University of Rutgers, New Jersey, Humboldt University, Berlin, Central European University, Budapest, and University of Trieste. She has taught international students in the Erasmus Program, the Education Abroad Program of the University of California and at ISES in Kőszeg. She has done research projects on modern social and cultural history, human inheritance (talkinghouseseurope.com), history of crime, marginalized social groups, gender and the media. Her list of publications includes a monograph on private conflicts between men and women, edited volumes on crime in turn-of-the-century Budapest, book chapters and articles on various topics, from reviewing the modern European public sphere to the role of Hungarian highwaymen. She is a founding member of the Gender Studies Centre at Eötvös Loránd and editor of the quarterly academic journal, Médiakutató (Media Researcher).

Lilian Chee is Associate Professor and Deputy Head (Academic) of the NUS Department of Architecture. She is a writer, academic, designer, curator and award-winning educator. A recipient of the University and Faculty Teaching Honour Rolls, she has lectured at the Bartlett, Delft, ETH Zurich, Melbourne and the Berlage Centre. Her work is situated at the intersections of architectural representation, gender and affect in a contemporary interdisciplinary context. She conceptualized, researched and collaborated on the award-winning architectural essay film about single women occupants in Singapore’s public housing 03-FLATS (2014), which won the best ASEAN documentary Salaya 2015; shortlisted for the Busan Wide Angle Documentary Prize 2014; and screened at the Singapore Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2016. Her publications include the forthcoming monograph Architecture and Affect: Precarious Spaces (Routledge, 2019) and a co-edited volume Asian Cinema and the Use of Space (Routledge, 2015). She is working on a book about public art in Singapore, and co-editing a volume on domesticity in architecture. Lilian is on the editorial boards of The Journal of Architecture, Architectural Theory Review and Australian Feminist Studies.

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