Speaker Series

The ISIE Speaker Series aims to share and support exposition scholarship across disciplines and to provide the opportunity to connect with each other on a regular basis.

Upcoming Lecture

All Speaker Series lectures are free and open to the public! They are held online via Zoom.

World's Fairs and the Exhibition of Life-Size Working-Class Houses: Retracing the Emergence of a Display Device (1850s-1900s)

Lucie Prohin, PhD Candidate Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne

Lucie Prohin is a Ph.D. candidate in the History of Architecture at the Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, under the supervision of Pr. Jean-Philippe Garric. Her dissertation examines the display of working-class housing projects at world’s fairs and international exhibitions throughout the second half of the long 19th century (1851–1913) and questions the transnational circulations of architectural forms and ideas that ensued in Europe. She also works as a Junior Research Fellow for the French National Institute for Art History (INHA).

Lecture Description

The full-scale exhibition of affordable houses is a phenomenon that has left its mark on twentieth-century architectural history. In this matter, one of the best-known and most significant examples is probably the Weißenhofsiedlung, designed in Stuttgart for the “Die Wohnung” exhibition organized by the Deutscher Werkbund. By looking at nineteenth-century world's fairs, this presentation aims to provide a genealogy of this display device. As early as 1851, during the Great Exhibition in London, a model cottage was built on the edge of Hyde Park at the expense of Prince Albert. Later, throughout the second half of the long nineteenth century, the success of this mode of display kept gaining momentum, as the issue of working-class housing became a burning topic of discussion and started getting attention at the numerous international expositions that punctuated the period. Several of these events featured life-size worker's dwellings and, while most were destroyed as soon as the exhibition was over, some were relocated, and others remained in place, thus leaving a lasting mark on the ground where the event was held. Through the examination of striking case studies from various world's fairs, this presentation will explore the material conditions under which these displays were created and investigate the role they played in the transnational and translocal circulation of models and ideas relating to working-class housing.

Anonymous, photograph, from Album photographique amateur de l’exposition universelle de Paris, 1900, Petit Palais, musée des Beaux-arts de la Ville de Paris.