Ankara Bağ Evi, a traditional Ankara orchard house, restored by the Vehbi Koç Foundation and opened to the public in 2007. Members of the EAHN committee toured the Orchard House the day after the EAHN annual business meeting.
Photograph: Rob Dettingmeijer
A restored interior in the Ankara Orchard House with period furnishings.
Photograph: Rob Dettingmeijer
The headquarters of VEKAM, the Vehbi Koç and Ankara Research Center, which maintains the Ankara Orchard House. The EAHN committee enjoyed a lunch hosted by VEKAM after visiting the Orchard House.
Photograph: Rob Dettingmeijer
EAHN committee members with Turkish colleagues at the VEKAM Research Center in Ankara
Photograph: EAHN
Summary of Proceedings, EAHN Annual Business Meeting 2009
The Fourth Annual Business Meeting of the EAHN took place at the Middle East Technical University, Ankara, on Saturday, 14 February 2009. President Christine Mengin began the meeting with a review of the organization’s activities and achievements in 2008 and early 2009 which included the Transfer and Metamorphosis conference in Zurich in June 2008, the tour to Romania in July 2008, the publication of four newsletter issues, the launch of the new website, and the continuing progress in preparations for the EAHN First International Meeting in Guimarães in June 2010.
The financial report for 2008 details many transactions for the EAHN treasury, both income (such as a small surplus from the Romania tour, and various contributions from the STAG foundation, general members and committee members), as well as expenditures (chiefly payments for the new website). The EAHN has established a Paypal account which will assist in collecting donations from members, fees from tour participants, and annual contributions from committee members. An appeal to the membership for donations in January 2009 yielded a small number of generous contributions: most of this sum was applied to pay for programming of the new website, and the balance of the website costs were covered by donations from EAHN committee members.
Developing a comprehensive fundraising strategy has become more important than ever for the organization, and a subcommittee was formed to investigate possibilities such as donations from members, institutional contributions (both monetary and in-kind contributions), and grant proposals targeted for specific projects. The structuring and amount of a future individual membership fee was discussed again, as well as the development of a consortium of supporting institutions. For the moment, the EAHN will continue to collect a modest donation from tour and conference participants as included in the registration fees. Finally, the EAHN Treasurer Carmen Popescu will resign her post after the Guimarães conference and the search for a replacement should begin now.
A major change in the EAHN mailing list was made in September 2008, when the list moved from INHA in Paris to the Delft office where it is administered with the commercial mailing list service Constant Contact. The Constant Contact monthly fee is paid by an individual committee member. The committee discussed striking the correct balance between freely disseminating information regarding architectural history throughout Europe and filling members’ in-boxes with too many messages, perceived by some as spam.
Most encouraging for all present, EAHN membership continues to grow dramatically. During the 2008 Annual Meeting in Leuven, the EAHN counted approximately 250 members; one year later during the 2009 Annual Meeting, the organization has approximately 670 members. (Note: as of May 2009, membership has passed the mark of 750).
Carmen Popescu reported on EAHN tours: the Romanian tour to Bucharest and Bucovina in July 2008 was a success, with ten participants in addition to the tour leaders. To repeat this success we must identify appealing new tour destinations, with appropriate local contacts to assist in developing the itineraries, all with the continuing goals for EAHN tours of discovering new geographical locations, exploring new sites, developing a historiographic approach to the architecture of a region, and broadening the horizon of the EAHN members. Such tours should be realized with low prices and high impact for networking between tour members, local scholars, and with local organizations. Areas under consideration for future tours include Poland, Finland, Serbia and Scotland; a Scottish tour will definitely be developed for 2010, as well as a tour in Portugal in conjunction with the Guimarães conference.
Nancy Stieber reported on EAHN publications. The launch of the new website in February 2009 and the continuing production of the quarterly newsletter were the major accomplishments of the publications committee during the past year. Both the newsletter and website need to recruit additional personnel to ensure smooth production processes and reduce the work load for individual members of the editorial team.
Progress on developing the journal has been delayed because of the work involved in the website and newsletter. A draft mission statement for a journal has been developed by Alona Nitzan-Shiftan and Carmen Popescu, to be reviewed by the publications committee in Ankara. The format of the future journal was again discussed (digital or print); we agree that a convincing concept for journal content is of utmost importance, before any decisions on format.
Nancy Stieber also discussed the EAHN’s relations with other similar organizations: the EAHN is currently a candidate for becoming a CAA affiliated society, and affiliate status with the SAH has also been mentioned (Note: affiliate status with both the CAA and SAH has since been granted.) We continue to have close contacts with the SAHGB and Docomomo International, and should pursue similar cooperation with other related organizations.
The EAHN thematic groups continue to grow and develop their own active projects. The judicial architecture group (Christine Mengin) is pursuing projects with the Court of Justice of the European Communities in Luxembourg, and hopes to apply for EU funding for its activities. The eastern Europe and Balkan group (Carmen Popescu) is working particularly on Balkan cities, with a meeting on this topic organized by Greek colleagues. The group on colonial architecture is not represented in Ankara, but they have presented their activities on the new EAHN website, as have the other two groups.
Andrew Ballantyne discussed plans for the SAHGB-EAHN annual symposium scheduled to take place in London this May (Note: see the symposium report elsewhere in this newsletter).
Jorge Correia discussed the preparations for the Guimarães conference. The conference committee will finalize the selection of the twenty sessions and five roundtables in Ankara, and also discuss keynote speakers for the three evening events planned. The CFP will be launched just before the SAH meeting in early April. The committee discussed the amount of the conference registration fee, how much of a donation to the EAHN should be included in this fee, and which reduction to offer to students, as well as to scholars from economically weaker countries. Registration fees will also include abstracts and dinners on three evenings. The total conference budget is € 40,000, with half of this covered by sponsors: the city of Guimarães, the Universidade do Minho, and others.
The project of a comprehensive bibliography of European monographs in architectural history remains a goal of the EAHN, but the project has made little progress this year due to a lack of funding and personnel.
Hilde Heynen is organizing a project to develop a ranked list of periodicals in the discipline, to be used by scholars and universities to help assess research output. A subcommittee was formed to work on this project over the coming sixteen months, with a final draft to be presented for discussion at the Guimarães conference.
Marc Visser reported that ®MIT at the TU Delft will no longer be able to fund the EAHN secretariat after 1 September 2009, because of drastic budget cuts to the entire department. The committee thanked Visser and ®MIT for the generous support given to the EAHN to date, which has been crucial in the development of the organization. The fundraising committee will explore possibilities to raise money elsewhere to keep the EAHN office in Delft at least through the Guimarães meeting; other departments in Delft might contribute, as well as other institutions, with the goal of developing a funding consortium.
The situation in Delft raises the issue of long-range planning for the organization, and the committee considered the following questions: when will the EAHN incorporate as a permanent organization? How should this permanent organization function? And how can we professionalize the organization for the long term (hiring an executive director, for instance)?
Finally, the committee elected four new members, Elvan Altan Ergut, Zeynep Kezer, Cana Bilsel, and Ilknur Kolay, while the previous committee members and officers were all reconfirmed in their positions. Furthermore, Jorge Correia was elected second vice president of the EAHN in recognition of his outstanding efforts in organizing the EAHN First International Meeting.
The next EAHN business meeting will take place in Bologna in late January 2010; further details will be announced in the December 2009 EAHN Newsletter.
The full minutes of the Ankara meeting may be consulted on the EAHN website:
http://www.eahn.org/site/en/annualmeetings.php.
