9th Biennial Conference of the European Architectural History Network

Aarhus is the home to Aarhus University, one of the largest educational institutions in the Nordic countries, a vibrant School of Architecture, an Art Academy, and several prestigious museums. These include the contemporary art museum ARoS, Den Gamle By (The Old Town)—one of the pioneering open-air museums—and the Moesgaard Museum, which houses ethnographic and archaeological collections. The surrounding region offers a diverse architectural and historical landscape, from Neolithic passage graves and dolmen structures to Renaissance and Baroque manors, Legoland, expansive social housing projects, and notable modernist and contemporary works by architects such as Jørn Utzon, Dorte Mandrup, Alvar Aalto, and Steven Holl. In addition, one encounters spatial and architectural works by visual artists such as Per Kirkeby, Ingvar Cronhammar, and Olafur Eliasson (and soon by James Turrell).

Negotiating the local and the generic, the introvert and the global, Aarhus presents an ideal setting for discussing architectural histories, as the outer boundaries of architecture and its histories are constantly redefined. As technological, cultural, and territorial boundaries are constantly transgressed and conflicted, and with the planetary boundaries simultaneously expanded and consumed, the outer boundaries of architectural history are also constantly reset, expanding in temporal and cultural span and diversity, registering the past in the present as a projection of the future.