This issue of ABE Journal, which takes inspiration from a 2008 conference session as well as from the many conversations that took place within one of the working groups of the European funded COST-action “European Architecture beyond Europe,”1 seeks to contribute to a more thorough understanding of a particular type of professional who emerged in architecture and planning milieus from 1945 onwards: the “global expert”. Through a series of contributions, some resulting from long-lasting, in-depth study while others draw on work-in-progress research, a number of individuals are brought to the fore who, despite their often extensive production or prominent roles on a global scale, have remained “off the radar”. Included in this issue are discussions pertaining to people such as Michel Kalt, Henri-Jean Calsat, David Oakley, Erica Mann, or Max Lock, as well as other, more well-known figures such as Louis Kahn, Jacqueline Tyrwhitt and Hassan Fathy. Through this variety, this ABE Journal issue stresses the need to distinguish between various types of such “global experts,” from embedded practitioners to foreign consultants just passing through. More importantly, the issue also seeks to outline some of the challenges confronting architectural historians in writing the history of this new kind of professional. This is done explicitly in the lengthy editorial, which, through a discussion of recent literature, serves as an introduction to the current state of research on the theme. As such, we hope that this issue will help set a possible research agenda on a topic that in the last several years has triggered scholarly attention, yet still requires a sound theoretical and methodological framing.

  • 1. Session “Migration/Displacement and the Dissemination of Urban Planning Expertise in the Mid 20th Century in Non-Western Areas,” chaired by Johan Lagae and Marijke Martin at the IXth International Conference on Urban History (EAUH), 27–30 August 2008, Lyon (with participants: Eric Verdeil, Tom Avermaete, Maarten Goossens, Gaia Caramellino, Andrea Yuri Flores Urishima and Benoît Jacquet). URL: http://eauh.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/browse_sessions.html?idsession=24. Accessed 16 June 2014. Within the cost Action IS0904, Johan Lagae and Madalena Cunha Matos led a working group on the theme of “Actors and networks of expertise”. For more information on its goals, activities and members, see http://architecturebeyond.eu.huma-num.fr/. Accessed 14 November 2014.

Recent scholarship in architectural history testifies of an interest in a new type of professional which emerged in the postwar era, at a time when new international agencies emerged and a development discourse focusing on the Global South was on the rise. Travelling architects and planners turned into consultants consciously marketing their expertise in a worldwide arena and becoming what some have described as “global” or even “nomadic” experts. While well-known names such as Le Corbusier, Michel Ecochard or Constantinos Doxiadis immediately come to mind, this theme issue of ABE journal wishes to bring to the fore some more obscure figures which operated on a transnational scale. Following the trajectories of such figures like Michel Kalt, David Oakley, Max Lock, Henri-Jean Calsat or Erica Mann, we aim at broadening our understanding of the role this new kind of actor played in the shaping the “anxious modernisms” of the postwar global world, while at the same time acknowledging, among others via a discussion of Louis Kahn’s work in India, the often neglected role of local agents with whom these global experts de facto interacted.

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