Contested Space Revisited: George Town, Penang Before and After UNESCO World Heritage Listing

Abstract

back on its pre-war “pioneers of modernism,” lamenting the leading position that Austrian modernist architecture had lost after the war. According to Plazter, what happened following the occupational period and after CIAM Austria disbanded “still waits appraisal” from future scholars. At the very end, Platzer briefly mentions Hans Hollein, a young architect at the time and a key transitional figure in Austrian architecture between the occupational period and present day. Hollein is the figure who could either complete or break the arc of the “Austrian identity construct” in the twentieth century. While Platzer richly furnishes the post-war milieu with abundant material and detailed analysis, her discussion ends anticlimactically. She eschews postoccupational developments (in which Hollein played a central role) that have since restored Austria’s leading position in the global architectural discourse, demonstrated by contemporary practices such as Coop Himmelb(l)au and the rise to international prominence of the University of Applied Arts Vienna and the University of Innsbruck over the past thirty years. Platzer gestures towards some open questions in the field of architectural history, such as: what is the legacy of the “Austrian identity construct” in architecture today? To what extent is it linked to its pre-war “pioneers of modernism”? The effects of the occupational period for the “Austrian identity construct” in the twentieth century have yet to be explicated. Above all, Platzer has established solid historical ground for scholars to pursue these questions. It is now incumbent upon future scholars to draw out the larger threads that extend across the twentieth century, from Wagner and Loos to post-occupational and contemporary practices, including those of Hans Hollein and Coop Himmelb(l)au.