I organised the session “Urban surfaces: architectural perspectives on public walls” at the Society of Architectural Historians annual conference in Atlanta on my birthday – 2 May 2025. The session built on recent multidisciplinary uptake in surface-related scholarship, to develop architectural perspectives for the urban surfaces research agenda.
We had six excellent presentations:
Meng-Hsuan Lee, Columbia University, USA: Façades, Signboards, Screens: A Media Archaeology of Taiwan’s Urban Surface Techniques
Melissa Smith, CEPT University, India: Boundary Walls: Territorial Negotiation in the Indian City
Efrîn Özyetiş, Middle East Technical University, Türkiye: The Facade in the Age of Data-Enriched Technologies: oddviz’s Shedding
Lynnette Widder, Columbia University, USA: Surface to Volume to Surface: Postwar Wall, Germany 1945-49
CC Williams, University of Technology, Australia: Learning from Shopfronts: Why Signage is Not Superficial
Cheng Chen, University of Virginia, USA: From Construction Fences to LED-rendered Skyscrapers: Urban Beautification Campaigns and State Dominance in Contemporary Chinese Cities
…and here we are after the session ✨
SABINA ANDRON 