Spaces & Flows: Ninth International Conference on Urban and ExtraUrban Studies

Abstract

Despite prevailing notions of globalization as emanating from the West outward, cultural globalization and architectural interventions from outside the West are increasingly affecting Europe. Such globalizing projects are claimed to reflect local aspirations to better capture lucrative flows and uplift local institutions and localities to a global scale. But large-scale interventions are contentious, especially when they affect historic neighborhoods. Taking Japan as a prime example of a non-Western agent, this paper analyzes conflictual dynamics of locality and globality in two unrealized Japanese-designed extension projects to European museum buildings: the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and the IVAM in Valencia. In both cases, the building projects were eventually shelved despite claims to localization and prestigious validation. The two cases attest to a European uneasiness with material manifestation of modernity flowing inward from elsewhere.