The Project

The project proposes the transformation of the collection of photographs of early 20th century architecture (Art Nouveau and Modernism across Europe) gathered by the applicant over about 30 years of travel, into a database by answering the research question on how threats from the hazards of earthquake, flood and fire can be answered taking into account the local culture in the European countries covered, for buildings from a period when the architecture styles were global already that time. For this purpose digital humanities methods of image annotation (including architectural volumetric analysis) and mapping are employed. Apart of the mapping which takes also the form of story maps, being thus in dialogue with literature analysis methods of the relationship between traditional and modern in crisis times, also online exhibitions will be created. The subject is innovative as only recently the role of humanities in the fields of history and art history started to deal with the subject of catastrophes, following social sciences which entered this field of engineering and natural sciences. With this aim evaluation criteria will be developed considering the decisions which can be taken to prioritize the retrofit interventions depending on the geographic positions of the buildings. The analysis methods of philosophy of materials and technology history of these architecture objects are important, the theory of the shape from the time, but also phenomenology and the philosophy of Deleuze.