DECONSTRUCTING EXOTICISM: Architectural Phantasies of “The Other“ in Europe (19th century – today) [SoSe2025]

Mila Kostović

In 19th century Europe, colonial expansion accelerated the urge to set out into the ‘new world’. Travel and narrations of distant lands established fairytale-like, seductive and simultaneously hierarchising racist and sexist fantasies. However, these could only retain their validity by maintaining distance to the actual location and people living there. Palaces, pavilions and gardens as well as public buildings such as bathhouses and concert halls were built throughout Europe with references and apparent copies of Indian, Chinese, Egyptian and ultimately ‘oriental’ architecture. The presentation of ‘the other’ in world exhibitions was intended to educate the public and reinforced the dichotomous image of civilised and enlightened Europe in contrast to the wild and primitive rest of the world. The longing for a paradise of cultural origins and perpetual tradition materialised in buildings and other artificial structures, the staging of which was only complete with the placement of (costumed) people playing exotic roles and engaging in exotic practices. In the Eurocentric appropriation of the foreign, a search for self-knowledge moved between imperialism, racism and sexism. Its romanticised trivialisation becomes questionable at the latest in ethnological and colonial exhibitions that remained common until the middle of the 20th century. Those architectural phantasies are strongly connected to corporeality. By combining fetishization and oppression, an ambiguous perceptions of various peoples were created, who had no say in the process.

In the seminar, we will analyse various exoticising buildings of the 19th and 20th centuries, identify their references, examine their accuracy and understand them in a European context: To what extent do specific colonial expansions characterise stylistic appropriations? Does the idea of architectures of ‘the other’ correspond to contemporary reality at all? For which typologies was exoticism increasingly used, ...