Privacy on the move: two-way Processes, Data and Legacy of Danish metropolitan and colonial Architecture and Urbanism

ended

INDIABRIDGE aims to produce an understanding of the historical notions of privacy in architecture and urbanism since the 17th century were a bilateral mechanism between West and East. This will be achieved by analysing and recording border-crossing patterns and relationships in the built environment between Denmark and India. I will claim that Danish colonial architecture in India and the imprint of Indian architecture in metropolitan Denmark, represented a larger history of influence on how notions of privacy shape relations between individuals and society across diverse historical contexts. By combining architectural and urbanism with history, anthropology and area studies’, my intention is to map and analyse border-crossing patterns and relationships of privacy between Denmark and the India. Accordingly, I will conduct the research through systematic, site-based, interdisciplinary spatial analysis of the Danish case studies of Tranquebar and Serampore, two former Danish colonial cities in India. It will locate Tranquebar and Serampore within the shifting locations of European architectural narratives in India and will propose relating other European colonial case studies, which enables comparative analysis between Northern and Southern Europe. I will approach the built environment in Denmark and in India as a material and spatial reality that has persisted through the notion of privacy. The benefits are two-fold. First, I will establish research on privacy in Danish colonial architecture and urbanism, with the ambition of turning it into a forum for comparative and interdisciplinary enquiry in the field and ultimately in the host institution. Second, I will re-launch academic career in a specialized collaborative research infrastructure with focus on the built environment itself. It will be a key to document and study the coming into being of Danish architecture and urbanism in Asia as a relevant Northern European case study for historical notions of privacy.