"Faith in a better future": Josep Lluis Sert's American Embassy in Baghdad

Journal of Architectural Education

Volumn 50, Issue 3, 1997, Pages 172-188

  Isenstadt, Samuel ^a  

^a MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61949105207     PISSN: 10464883     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/10464883.1997.10734720     Document Type: Article

References (51)

1. For background on the embassy program, see Jane C. Loeffler, "The Architecture of Diplomacy: Heyday of the United States Embassy-building Program, 1954-1960," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 49 (Sept. 1990): 251-78
2. See also Ron Robin, Enclaves of America: The Rhetoric of American Political Architecture Abroad, 1900-1965 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp.136-66
3. and in V.G. Kiernan, America: The New Imperialism (London: Zed Press, 1978)
4. See also Robin, Enclaves of America, pp. 139, 141, 148
5. For a more complete history of Iraq, see Phebe Marr's The Modern History of Iraq (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985)
6. Department of State, Public Series Division, Background: Iraq, Near and Middle Eastern Series 26, Washington, DC, Nov. 1957, p. 1
7. Stivers, America's Confrontation, p. 6
8. See also Elie Kedourie, "The Transition from a British to an American Era in the Middle East," in Haim Shaked and Itamer Rabinovich, eds., The Middle East and the United States: Perceptions and Policies (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1980), pp. 3-10
9. and Batatu, Old Social Classes, discuss class tensions in detail
10. In Committee on Research for the Security of Future U.S. Embassy Buildings, The Embassy of the Future: Recommendations for the Design of Future U.S. Embassy Buildings (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1986), p. 27. Since the seventies, security has been the overwhelming issue for embassy design
11. Fumihiko Maki, "Josep Lluis Sert: His Beginning Years at Harvard," Process: Architecture, Special issue: Josep Lluis Sert: His Work and Ways 34 (1982):13. Subsequently, in a personal communication with the author in 1996, Maki recalled there being more Americans on the staff
12. See, for examples, John Gulick, "Baghdad: Portrait of a City in Physical and Cultural Change," Journal of the American Institute of Planners 33 (July 1967): 246-55
13. John Warren and Ihsan Fethi, Traditional Houses in Baghdad (Horsham, England: Coach, 1982)
14. Oscar Reuther, Das Wohnhaus in Baghdad und anderen Städten des Irak (Berlin: Wasmuth, 1910)
15. and Jovan Krunic, "Architectural Tradition and New Architecture of Iraq: The House of Baghdad, Its Old and Modern Concept," Sumer: A Journal of Archaeology and History in Iraq 17/1-2 (Jan.-Feb. 1962): 33-47
16. Project description typescript, Sert Collection, HUGSD. Excerpted in "United States Embassy, Baghdad."
17. Discussed in Fethi, "Contemporary Architecture in Baghdad," p. 116
18. In Erving Goffman, Asylums (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961), p. xiii
19. Eveland, Ropes of Sand, p. 45
20. Sert, "United States Embassy, Baghdad"
21. Sert, "United States Embassy, Baghdad."
22. Homi Bhabha, "Sly Civility," October 34 (Fall 1985): 71-80
23. Paul Ricoeur, History and Truth (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1965), p. 277
24. Lord Salter, The Development of Iraq: A Plan of Action (Baghdad: Iraq Development Board, 1955), pp. 31, 159, and throughout
25. Fethi, "Contemporary Architecture in Baghdad," p. 115
26. Ellen Jawdat, "The New Architecture in Iraq," Architectural Design 27/3 (Mar. 1957):79-80
27. See Lord Salter, Development of Iraq
28. Department of State, Development of Iraq p. 6
29. Josep Lluis Sert, "Design Process," Process Architecture 34 (1982):7-11
30. and Sert, "The Architect and the City."
31. Josep Lluis Sert, "Changing Philosophy of Architecture," talk presented to the AIA annual convention, typescript, June 16, 1954, Sert Collection, HUGSD, excerpted in Architectural Record 116/2 (Aug. 1954): 181
32. and Sert, "Design Process."
33. Sert, "Changing Philosophy of Architecture."
34. Jürgen Habermas, Toward a Rational Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970), pp. 96-99
35. Cited in Paul Durbin, ed., Philosophy and Technology, vol. 5 (Boston: Reidel, 1983)
36. Cook, The Declassified Eisenhower, pp. 126-27
37. United States General Accounting Office (USGAO), Telling America's Story to the World - Problems and Issues (Washington, DC: USGAO, 1974), p. 23
38. See John Boardman Whitton, ed., Propaganda and the Cold War (Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press, 1963), p. 65
39. and Chester Bowles, Ambassador's Report (London: Collins, 1954), p. 319
40. Edward Durell Stone, The Evolution of an Architect (New York: Horizon Press, 1962), p. 138. Stone was apparently referring only to domestic politics
41. See Rubin, Objectives, p. 169
42. Cited in Loeffler, "Architecture of Diplomacy," p. 252
43. Sert, "Changing Views," p. 189
44. Christopher Lasch, "The Cultural Cold War," Nation (Sept. 11, 1967): 98-212
45. James B. Conant, "Scholarly Inquiry and the American Tradition," Educational Record, July 31, 1950, p. 282
46. Lasch, "Cultural Cold War," p. 207. A number of authors have, both critically and uncritically, noted the link between technical advance and American political ideals
47. On more recent developments in Iraq and the appeal to a mythic past, see Samir al-Khalil's, Republic of Fear: The Inside Story of Saddam's Iraq (New York: Pantheon, 1989)
48. Belluschi, "The Meaning of Regionalism in Architecture," Architectural Record 118/6 (Dec. 1955): 131-39
49. cited in Sert. Mediterranean Architecture, ed. Mario Lluïsa Borràs (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1975), pp. 9-10
50. Alan Colquhoun, "Regionalism and Technology," in Modernity and the Classical Tradition (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), pp. 207-12
51. Sibel Bozdogan, "Modern Architecture in the Non-Western World," in Thresholds (1992): 4. It is important to restate that I am speaking of what regionalism signified in the United States. In many other nations, as Bozdogan points out, modernism from the start was an exercise in regionalism in terms of national identity and also in terms of adapting formal ideas to local conditions of markets and materials