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Unlocking the archive of a transnational expert

Traces of Henri-Jean Calsat’s activities as a who -consultant
Divulgation des archives d’un expert international : sur les traces d’Henri-Jean Calsat, consultant pour l’Organisation mondiale de la santé (OMS)
Johan Lagae

Termini di indicizzazione

Indice de palabras clave:

planificación, experto, red transnacional, biografía

Indice geografico:

Africa

Indice cronologico:

XX secolo
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Testo integrale

An overlooked “homme de l’action”

  • 1 For the virtual exhibition, see URL: http://www.unige.ch/archives/architecture/fonds/archivesdiver (...)
  • 2 Some of these, which were part of Calsat’s final studio project, were published in the themed issu (...)
  • 3 Frederik Cooper, Africa since 1940: The Past of the Present, Cambridge; New York, NY: Cambridge Un (...)
  • 4 Henri-Jean Calsat’s multiple professional activities were related to the fact that he held several (...)
  • 5 Of this, the new hospital of Brazzaville, designed—in collaboration with his associé Ch. Berthelot (...)
  • 6 See, for instance, the report authored by Dr. Francis Borrey, Georges Tourret, Henri-Jean Calsat a (...)
  • 7 See untitled biographical note on H. J. Calsat, prepared by S. Demiren-Calsat, 1992, Geneva (Switz (...)

1Virtually unknown outside architectural history circles in France and Switzerland, Henri-Jean Calsat (1905–1991) is a striking example of an overlooked global expert (fig. 1). Cyrille Simonnet, who compiled a virtual exhibition of the architect’s work as part of his inventory-project of the architect’s archive, which is currently held by the University of Geneva, describes him as a “key actor within the decision-making mechanisms that typify the production of the built environment during the years of the trente glorieuses”.1 Calsat’s professional trajectory, which took him to as many as 57 countries, offers a particular insight into a specific form of transnational practice that emerged during the post-war period. Beginning in the 1940s, Calsat worked as an architect both on and in l’Afrique Française. His (early) projects on the climate-responsive design of buildings and cities not only offer an interesting case with which to tackle the dominance of the Anglophone discourse in tropical architecture in current historiography (fig. 2)2 but also testify to the continuities and departures in architectural and planning practices from the late colonial to the post-independence era, a period that the prominent African historian Frederick Cooper labelled “development”.3 In this short text, which presents only a first, brief outline of a larger work-in-progress, I will focus on a particular aspect of Calsat’s broad scope of activities, which ranged from architectural design, urban planning, the conservation of monuments to consultancy work in various domains of building.4 Calsat’s major field of expertise was the design of medical infrastructure and he authored a substantial number of seminal hospital projects, both in France and abroad.5 However, his interest in the relationship between architecture and health is also evident in his work as a consultant. As early as the early 1950s, he collaborated with French doctors in the milieu of the Bureau Central d’Études pour les Équipements d’Outre-Mer (bceom), which, among other projects, developed policies to tackle the challenges of urban and rural hygiene in colonial Africa (fig. 3).6 Calsat also worked as an expert for the World Health Organisation (who) for about 15 years from about 1964 to 1980.7 Hence, Calsat was as much a man of reports, missions, conferences and committees as he was a gifted designer. Browsing through the list of his professional activities and his portfolio, one cannot but be impressed by Calsat’s capacity for work; he was truly a “man of action” who got things done. Nevertheless, although he was internationally renowned during his career, Calsat has since largely remained “off the radar”.

Figure 1: Henri Jean Calsat presenting his project for the new Brazzaville hospital to French officials, early 1950s.

Figure 1: Henri Jean Calsat presenting his project for the new Brazzaville hospital to French officials, early 1950s.

The project was also published in L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, no. 3, 1945, p. 19, as part of a series illustrating Calsat’s article entitled “L’habitat colonial européen dans la zone intertropicale française”.

Source: Geneva (Switzerland), Archives of the University of Geneva, Fund Calsat.

Figure 2: Henri Jean Calsat, project for a subterranean house in the southern part of Tunisia, ca. 1945.

Figure 2: Henri Jean Calsat, project for a subterranean house in the southern part of Tunisia, ca. 1945.

Source: Geneva (Switzerland), Archives of the University of Geneva, Fund Calsat.

Figure 3: Plate from Dr. Francis Borrey, Georges Tourret, Henri-Jean Calsat and Maurice Blanc, Le péril fécal et le traitement des déchets en milieu rural tropical, Paris : bceom, 1957.

Figure 3: Plate from Dr. Francis Borrey, Georges Tourret, Henri-Jean Calsat and Maurice Blanc, Le péril fécal et le traitement des déchets en milieu rural tropical, Paris : bceom, 1957.

Source: Geneva (Switzerland), Archives of the University of Geneva, Fund Calsat.

Browsing a technocrat’s archive

  • 8 My research in the Calsat archives was made possible via a Short Term Scientific Mission financed (...)

2During a preliminary short-term survey of the Calsat archives conducted in May 2014,8 I first searched for material that provided a better understanding of his role as an architect-consultant on issues such as public hygiene and health care. The inventory contains several significant entries related to such activity, and it provides references to photographic collections made on his various trips and missions (fig. 4), reports he wrote for several institutional bodies, articles and conference papers he produced on these topics, as well as files containing documents on several topics, such as geography, demography, climate control and human physiology.

  • 9 Some documents were found, for instance, on building activity in the Belgian Congo, the colonial t (...)
  • 10 Henri-Jean Calsat, “Afrique Française. L’habitat en climat tropical,” in Housing in Tropical Clima (...)
  • 11 Miles Glendinning, “Cold-War conciliation: international architectural congresses in the late 1950 (...)
  • 12 As such, this material forms a welcome addition to some historical studies on the topic. See, for (...)

3This material reveals Calsat’s long-lasting interest in these issues. Documents relating to such issues in non-French colonial territories, some of which date from the interwar period, demonstrate that from the very beginning, Calsat held a transnational gaze.9 There is also abundant evidence in the archives of his talent to network internationally and his international renown as an expert, first in the domain of housing in the tropics and later on medical infrastructure (fig. 5). In his position as the General Secretary to the Société Française d’Urbanisme and architect-planner with ample fieldwork experience in Africa, Calsat was invited to participate in the International Congress on Housing and Town Planning, held in Lisbon in 1952 and devoted to the theme Housing in Tropical Climates, where he spoke on the topic from the perspective of French Africa.10 Together with Daniel Badani, Pierre Roux-Dorlut and Michel Kalt, Calsat was in charge of the French section at the 7th Congress of the International Union of Architects held in Havana, Cuba, an event that, as Miles Glendinning has noted,11 was of particular importance in the transnational flows of expertise at a time of great geopolitical tension. The photographic documentation of this exhibition of French architecture has survived, as well as the co-authored report entitled L’architecture dans les pays en voie de développement (Architecture in Developing Countries). Both offer an interesting perspective on what were considered seminal projects in France d’Outre-mer by some of the main protagonists involved its production.12

4The various reports Calsat wrote as a who expert consultant in the context of missions, and some conferences, are of particular interest. The archive contains several of such sources: an official report of a two-week mission Calsat conducted together with Maurice Blanc, a colonial administrator, for the bceom to Dakar (Senegal), Guinea, Sudan and Ivory Coast to investigate the results of the new housing policies implemented in l’Afrique Occidentale Française (aof); and the official reports of missions that Calsat performed as a who expert in Sudan in 1964–1965 and to Indonesia in 1967–1968, to draw up a national policy schemes for the spatial planning and design of hospital infrastructure (fig. 6). The latter reports are particularly useful in unravelling how Calsat, as a transnational architect-expert in hospital infrastructure, developed a toolbox of attitudes and approaches to deal with this topic according to a general approach that nevertheless demonstrated sensitivity to the local context for which policies had to be defined.

  • 13 Geneva (Switzerland), Archives of the University of Geneva, Fund Calsat, “Allocation de H. Calsat, (...)

5In line with who policy, Calsat defined health in a broad sense, in terms of not only the “absence of sickness or injury” but also the “total well-being in a physical, mental and social sense”.13 From this perspective defining a policy for hospital infrastructure was a complex issue that touched on issues of public health, urbanization, architecture, construction, and economy, as well as cultural traditions, psychology and even politics. A term that Calsat often used when speaking on the topic was “milieu total,” and seen from that perspective, it should not be surprising that Calsat considered the architect-planner not as a professional to be hired at a late stage in order to create the design through which policies could be implemented, but instead as a key figure to be included at the earliest stage in the process when the policy itself was still to be defined.

6The official reports produced by Calsat reflect this position. They commonly begin with a synthetic survey of the territory’s geographic, demographic and economic characteristics and statistics on the state of public education and health in order to determine the needs in the domain of hospital infrastructure. These needs were formulated according to a pre-established and generic standard of a set number of beds and doctors per one thousand citizens. The quantitative needs identified by this exercise were consequently compared with an assessment of the existing infrastructure and the level of training of medical staff in the territory under survey, based on visits to specific hospital buildings, universities and interviews with local stakeholders. By comparing these sets of data, a policy could then be established on various scales, from the national to the local level, according to a pre-defined hierarchy made of three different types of medical complexes: a regional hospital, an intermediate hospital and a rural health centre. This basic infrastructure could be complemented with specific institutes for the education of medical staff, which were to be erected such that the territory would be well covered.

  • 14 For a discussion of Écochard from this perspective, see Tom Avermaete, “Framing the Afropolis: Mic (...)
  • 15 The latter is suggested in the foreword of another official who-publication, edited by B. M. Klecz (...)

7In the report on the mission to Indonesia in 1967–1968, the various recommendations are translated into a set of visual diagrams that underline the programmatic attitude of Calsat’s approach (fig. 7 and 8). Despite Calsat’s recurrent claim that sensitivity to the local context was crucial, the reports first provide a model template for a generally applicable policy, which only in a further stage of the process would be adapted to specific locales. Hence, there seems an interesting parallel in Michel Écochard’s development of a transnational approach for urban planning, although more profound research needs to be done to establish whether one can speak here of a “shared culture” of transnational expertise,14 just as more work is needed to position Calsat’s approach vis-à-vis the questioning of a generic approach of specific locales that seems to have occurred within the milieu of who since the mid-1970s onwards.15

Figure 4: Henri-Jean Calsat, photograph of the cityscape of Lagos, 1948.

Figure 4: Henri-Jean Calsat, photograph of the cityscape of Lagos, 1948.

Source: Geneva (Switzerland), Archives of the University of Geneva, Fund Calsat.

Figure 5: Henri-Jean Calsat at a diner during the Council Meeting of the International Federation for Housing and Planning, Perugia, Italy, 6–11 September 1959.

Figure 5: Henri-Jean Calsat at a diner during the Council Meeting of the International Federation for Housing and Planning, Perugia, Italy, 6–11 September 1959.

Source: Archives of the University of Geneva (Switzerland), Fund Calsat.

Figure 6: Henri-Jean Calsat, Report Planification, organization et architecture hospitalière au Soudan, who-mission, SU.22 Khartoum – Genève – Paris, 1964–1965. Table of contents.

Figure 6: Henri-Jean Calsat, Report Planification, organization et architecture hospitalière au Soudan, who-mission, SU.22 Khartoum – Genève – Paris, 1964–1965. Table of contents.

Source: Geneva (Switzerland), Archives of the University of Geneva, Fund Calsat.

Figure 7: Henri-Jean Calsat, Report Planification, organization et architecture hospitalière en Indonesie Soudan, who-mission, searo 0.103 Djakarta– Genève – Paris, 1967–1968. Scheme “Maison de la santé & organigramme général”.

Figure 7: Henri-Jean Calsat, Report Planification, organization et architecture hospitalière en Indonesie Soudan, who-mission, searo 0.103 Djakarta– Genève – Paris, 1967–1968. Scheme “Maison de la santé & organigramme général”.

Source: Geneva (Switzerland), Archives of the University of Geneva, Fund Calsat.

Figure 8: Henri-Jean Calsat, Report “Planification, organization et architecture hospitalière en Indonesie Soudan,” who-mission, searo 0.103 Djakarta– Genève – Paris, 1967–1968. Scheme “Dispositifs favorisant la ventilation transversale”.

Figure 8: Henri-Jean Calsat, Report “Planification, organization et architecture hospitalière en Indonesie Soudan,” who-mission, searo 0.103 Djakarta– Genève – Paris, 1967–1968. Scheme “Dispositifs favorisant la ventilation transversale”.

Source: Geneva (Switzerland), Archives of the University of Geneva, Fund Calsat.

Investigating the modus operandi of the expert

  • 16 See reference note 1.

8In the introduction to the online inventory of the Calsat archives, Cyrille Simmonet mentions in a somewhat lapidary manner that the architect “proceeded himself to the archiving of his own fund”.16 The remark is far from insignificant. As confirmed by the current archivist, Miss Bernadette Odoni-Cremer, in their current state, the Calsat archives testify to a radical pre-selection of documents, which has major implications for future research on the architect and his work. In the almost complete absence of papers related to finance and administration, it is almost impossible to reconstruct the business structure of what must have been, at times, a quite large architectural firm. In fact, no traces remain of Calsat’s collaborators during his career. Regarding the topic that concerns us here, namely Calsat’s role as a who expert between 1964 and 1980, the archive holds similar challenges. Interesting as they may be, the official reports briefly discussed above provide only a partial view of the modus operandi of the transnational expert.

  • 17 The file is registered under the number 296.03.735 in the online inventory.
  • 18 Kim De Raedt’s ongoing PhD research on school building in post-independence Africa comes to mind, (...)

9In this respect, the file regarding Calsat’s mission to Sudan in 1964–1965 contains some interesting documents that provide a glimpse behind the scenes of this enterprise.17 It includes select correspondence between Calsat and the administrative staff of who, which sheds light on the decision-making processes regarding the granting of the mission to Calsat. This material suggests that he had tried previously to be sent on a mission to Cyprus, but because he failed to obtain the commission, the Sudan mission was granted to him as an alternative. While such information might seem anecdotal, I would argue that to re-assess the genesis of a large part of the building construction in the Global South, and the politics underlying it, a clear insight into the negotiations between experts, institutional bodies who granted commissions, and the local actors with whom they interacted in the field is of crucial importance, as some recent scholarship indeed has indeed already suggested.18

  • 19 One of these is a question to be asked to Mr. Salah Ahmed Mazari, Chief Planner of the Ministry of (...)
  • 20 We find references in the notebook to, among others, the work of engineers Arturo Luis Berti and A (...)

10The file on the Sudan mission also contains other sources that are particularly helpful in gaining a more intimate view of the modus operandi of Calsat as a who consultant. These include a series of handwritten lists of questions, probably to be submitted to local informants,19 several censuses of the country and news clippings. The sources also include, perhaps most importantly, a 50-page handwritten notebook that was used by Calsat to collect data acquired from books he consulted on various aspects of the country and its population (fig. 9), from documentation he received on specific hospital buildings and via interviews he conducted with various who-staff members, as well as local stakeholders (e.g., doctors, politicians, technical staff of the Ministry of Public Works and of Health etc.). The first entry, dated December 30th 1964, indicates a visit to a doctor Attia in Alexandria (fig. 10), while the last two pages record the debriefing Calsat had with Dr. R. F. Bridgeman, who acted as a who official in the domain of hospital planning and with whom Calsat would collaborate on several occasions. Particularly interesting from an architectural point of view are Calsat’s often very critical comments on the existing hospital architecture in Sudan, which were based on his study of the documentation (e.g., plans, reports etc.) for specific hospital buildings he received from an official within the Ministry of Health in an early stage of the mission. In these notes, he complains about the lack of consideration for the climate in the orientation of buildings and the overall poorly conceived use of building materials, which could only be remedied by the introduction of stricter building regulations and a more general application of standardization. The notes and sketches that Calsat made during visits to specific hospital sites are a further indication of his focus on aspects of organization and climate-responsive construction (fig. 11). The notebook also reveals that Calsat looked carefully at the recommendations and best practices of other experts, especially those working on the problem of housing in the region.20

Figure 9: Henri-Jean Calsat, handwritten notebook of the 1964–1965 mission to Sudan.

Figure 9: Henri-Jean Calsat, handwritten notebook of the 1964–1965 mission to Sudan.

Pages showing the collection of climatic data for various sites.

Source: Geneva (Switzerland), Archives of the University of Geneva, Fund Calsat.

Figure 10: Henri-Jean Calsat, handwritten notebook of the 1964–1965 mission to Sudan. Opening page.

Figure 10: Henri-Jean Calsat, handwritten notebook of the 1964–1965 mission to Sudan. Opening page.

Source: Geneva (Switzerland), Archives of the University of Geneva, Fund Calsat.

Figure 11: Henri-Jean Calsat, handwritten notebook of the 1964–1965 mission to Sudan.

Figure 11: Henri-Jean Calsat, handwritten notebook of the 1964–1965 mission to Sudan.

Analytic drawings of existing hospitals, North Khartoum, with critical notes.

Source: Geneva (Switzerland), Archives of the University of Geneva, Fund Calsat.

  • 21 The presence of a who-document entitled “Reporting Procedures” in the Sudan-file of the Calsat fun (...)
  • 22 One can think, for instance, of Georg Lippsmeier, who wrote on the topic in Baumeister. See George (...)

11There is a striking discrepancy between the wealth of local data collected by Calsat in the notebook and the rather generic information of the final report that he produced on his mission. The notebook clearly reveals that Calsat worked very efficiently, and numerous pages in the first part indicate that he already clearly had in mind the table of contents of the final report of his mission. However, the comparison of the two documents revealed that the multitude of specific data and the attentive comments on the current local conditions were almost completely filtered out in the final report, leading to a document based on a pre-established template that provided only abstract recommendations. The extent to which this manner of report was a strategic policy of the who, which sought to provide services to countries without becoming overly politically engaged, requires further investigation.21 It could also indicate a comparison of the consultancy work of other architects operating in the domain of hospital infrastructure.22

  • 23 This text was published in Techniques Hospitalières, no. 215–216, August–September 1963.
  • 24 It is interesting in this respect that in the text reference is made to the hospital projects of P (...)
  • 25 We might draw in this respect on the notion of “Radical Functionalism” advanced by Bruno Reichlin (...)

12There might be more to Calsat’s generic approach than is clear at first sight. In a 1963 text entitled La banalisation des Services d’Hospitalisation: Solution logique et économique de la normalisation hospitalière, which he co-authored in 1963 with doctor R. F. Bridgeman and P. Hervouët and which he distributed to officials during his Sudan mission,23 Calsat suggested that the only solution to the many challenges posed by the insufficient hospital infrastructure in developing countries lay in a thorough investigation of the normalization of the hospital as a building type, without, however, reducing the architectural solution to an insensitive and monotonous design. Indeed, for Calsat, “banalisation” was not pejorative. Instead, it was a concept that underlined the benefits of rationalization and standardization, which, if well thought through, could be given form in a truly new way by drawing on the lessons learned by modern architecture.24 A fundamental reflection on this concept of “banalisation” might thus well provide the ideal starting point for re-assessing the work of a technocratic architect, such as Henri-Jean Calsat, as well as for re-evaluating the role of such figures in the large bureaucracies of transnational agencies, such as the who.25

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Note

1 For the virtual exhibition, see URL: http://www.unige.ch/archives/architecture/fonds/archivesdiverses/calsat/expocalsat.html. Accessed 16 June 2014. The term les trente glorieuses (the thirty glorious years) is commonly used in the literature to refer to the period of economic growth in France between 1946 and 1975 and the related rise of mass consumption and welfare society.

2 Some of these, which were part of Calsat’s final studio project, were published in the themed issue of France d’Outremer of L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, published in 1945, while Calsat also authored some seminal contributions to the 1952 themed issue of Techniques et Architecture on L’Architecture intertropicale. For the first brief survey of tropical architecture in the francophone context, see Philomena Miller-Chagas, “Le climat dans l’architecture des territoires français d’Afrique,” in Maurice Culot and Jean-Marie Thiveaud (eds.), Architectures Françaises d’Outre-Mer, Liège: Mardaga, 1992, p. 340–363. For discussions of tropical architecture in the Anglophone context, see the work of Hannah Leroux, Ola Uduku, Iain Jackson and Jiat-Hwee Chang.

3 Frederik Cooper, Africa since 1940: The Past of the Present, Cambridge; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2002 (New Approaches to African History).

4 Henri-Jean Calsat’s multiple professional activities were related to the fact that he held several degrees, ranging from architecture and urbanism to conservation and archeology, and even archival and medical sciences.

5 Of this, the new hospital of Brazzaville, designed—in collaboration with his associé Ch. Berthelot—and built between 1950 and 1954, quickly gained international renown and was published in, among others, l’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, vol. 84, 1959, p. 16–18.

6 See, for instance, the report authored by Dr. Francis Borrey, Georges Tourret, Henri-Jean Calsat and Maurice Blanc, Le péril fécal et le traitement des déchets en milieu rural tropical, Paris: bceom, 1957. On bceom, see Sophie Dulucq, La France et les villes d’Afrique noire francophone. Quarante ans d’intervention (1945-1985), Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997, p. 62–64. While writing this contribution, I came across a reference to the ongoing PhD-project of Yetunde Olaiya at Princeton University, entitled “Expert, Artifact, Fact: the Technopolitics of Architectural Production in French Black Africa, 1945–1975”. In this project, a discussion of the early stage of Calsat’s career as consultant between 1945 and 1955 is planned. For a brief description of the project, see URL: http://issuu.com/princetonsoa/docs/2013_workbook/70. Accessed 16 June 2014.

7 See untitled biographical note on H. J. Calsat, prepared by S. Demiren-Calsat, 1992, Geneva (Switzerland), Archives of the University of Geneva Fund Calsat.

8 My research in the Calsat archives was made possible via a Short Term Scientific Mission financed by the COST Action IS0904, “European Architecture beyond Europe”.

9 Some documents were found, for instance, on building activity in the Belgian Congo, the colonial territory that was adjacent to Congo-Brazzaville, where Calsat was active since the late 1940s. The Calsat fund also contains a copy of A. Lebrun and N. Vander Elst, Le climat de l’habitation au Congo belge, Léopoldville: Service météorologique du Congo belge, 1958.

10 Henri-Jean Calsat, “Afrique Française. L’habitat en climat tropical,” in Housing in Tropical Climates, Proceedings of the XXI International Congress for Housing and Town Planning, Lisbon, 1952, p. 3–19.

11 Miles Glendinning, “Cold-War conciliation: international architectural congresses in the late 1950s and early 1960s,” Journal of Architecture, vol. 14, no. 2, p. 197–217. URL: http://www.research.ed.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/coldwar-conciliation-international-architectural-congresses-in-the-late-1950s-and-early-1960s(1d8e943b-2fa6-4188-98cd-77ba8ab9069c).html. Accessed 16 June 2014

12 As such, this material forms a welcome addition to some historical studies on the topic. See, for instance, Maurice Culot and Jean-Marie Thiveaud (eds.), Architectures Françaises d’Outre-Mer, Liège: Mardaga, 1992.

13 Geneva (Switzerland), Archives of the University of Geneva, Fund Calsat, “Allocation de H. Calsat, architecte, consultant oms, représentant l’Organisation Mondiale de la Santé,” paper presented at the 5th Conseil International du Bâtiment pour la Recherche, l’Étude et le Documentation, C.I.B., Paris-Versailles, juin 1971.

14 For a discussion of Écochard from this perspective, see Tom Avermaete, “Framing the Afropolis: Michel Écochard and the African City for the Greatest Number,” OASE, no. 82, 2010, themed issue of L’Afrique c’est chic: Architecture and Planning in Africa 1950-1970, p. 77–100. URL: https://www.oasejournal.nl/en/Issues/82/FramingTheAfropolis#077. Accessed 18 June 2014.

15 The latter is suggested in the foreword of another official who-publication, edited by B. M. Kleczkowski and R. Pibouleau that was found in the Calsat archives and is entitled Approaches to planning and design of health care facilities in developing areas, Geneva: who, 1977, vol. 2.

16 See reference note 1.

17 The file is registered under the number 296.03.735 in the online inventory.

18 Kim De Raedt’s ongoing PhD research on school building in post-independence Africa comes to mind, as does the recent work by Łukasz Stanek, Tom Avermaete or members of the Architectural History Collective Aggregate.

19 One of these is a question to be asked to Mr. Salah Ahmed Mazari, Chief Planner of the Ministry of Local Governments concerning whether there are any “plans d’urbanisme” available for a series a cities in Sudan. The documents reveal that Calsat was aware that Doxiadis has been designing a “plan directeur” for Khartoum in 1959.

20 We find references in the notebook to, among others, the work of engineers Arturo Luis Berti and Alvaro Milanez, who acted as who short-term consultants on the public health aspects of housing in the Sudan and wrote a report on the topic in 1962, as well as to a report on low cost housing trials in the Blue Nile Province, produced by Barry Kimming, Unesco expert on low cost school building, and Patrick Crooke, a lecturer in architecture at Khartoum University.

21 The presence of a who-document entitled “Reporting Procedures” in the Sudan-file of the Calsat fund indicates that there were indeed specific templates and rules to be followed when drawing up a mission report.

22 One can think, for instance, of Georg Lippsmeier, who wrote on the topic in Baumeister. See Georges Lippsmeier and Kiran Mukerji, “Hospitalbau in den Tropen,” Baumeister, no. 5, 1979 (my thanks are due to Sam Lanckriet who pointed this source out to me).

23 This text was published in Techniques Hospitalières, no. 215–216, August–September 1963.

24 It is interesting in this respect that in the text reference is made to the hospital projects of Paul Nelson. On this Franco-American architect, see Terence Riley and Joseph Abram (eds.), The Filter of Reason. The Work of Paul Nelson, New York, NY: Rizzoli, 1990.

25 We might draw in this respect on the notion of “Radical Functionalism” advanced by Bruno Reichlin in his discussion of the work of Paul Nelson. See Terence Riley and Joseph Abram (eds.), The Filter of Reason, op. cit. (note 24), p. 140–147, as well as on William J. Rankin’s insightful discussion of modular design, see William J. Rankin, “Laboratory modules and the subjectivity of the knowledge worker,” in Kenny Cupers (ed.), Use matters: an alternative history of architecture, London; New York, NY: Routledge, 2013, p. 51–68.

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Indice delle illustrazioni

Titolo Figure 1: Henri Jean Calsat presenting his project for the new Brazzaville hospital to French officials, early 1950s.
Legenda The project was also published in L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, no. 3, 1945, p. 19, as part of a series illustrating Calsat’s article entitled “L’habitat colonial européen dans la zone intertropicale française”.
Credits Source: Geneva (Switzerland), Archives of the University of Geneva, Fund Calsat.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/3390/img-1.jpg
File image/jpeg, 73k
Titolo Figure 2: Henri Jean Calsat, project for a subterranean house in the southern part of Tunisia, ca. 1945.
Credits Source: Geneva (Switzerland), Archives of the University of Geneva, Fund Calsat.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/3390/img-2.JPG
File image/jpeg, 98k
Titolo Figure 3: Plate from Dr. Francis Borrey, Georges Tourret, Henri-Jean Calsat and Maurice Blanc, Le péril fécal et le traitement des déchets en milieu rural tropical, Paris : bceom, 1957.
Credits Source: Geneva (Switzerland), Archives of the University of Geneva, Fund Calsat.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/3390/img-3.jpg
File image/jpeg, 102k
Titolo Figure 4: Henri-Jean Calsat, photograph of the cityscape of Lagos, 1948.
Credits Source: Geneva (Switzerland), Archives of the University of Geneva, Fund Calsat.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/3390/img-4.jpg
File image/jpeg, 137k
Titolo Figure 5: Henri-Jean Calsat at a diner during the Council Meeting of the International Federation for Housing and Planning, Perugia, Italy, 6–11 September 1959.
Credits Source: Archives of the University of Geneva (Switzerland), Fund Calsat.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/3390/img-5.jpg
File image/jpeg, 148k
Titolo Figure 6: Henri-Jean Calsat, Report Planification, organization et architecture hospitalière au Soudan, who-mission, SU.22 Khartoum – Genève – Paris, 1964–1965. Table of contents.
Credits Source: Geneva (Switzerland), Archives of the University of Geneva, Fund Calsat.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/3390/img-6.jpg
File image/jpeg, 68k
Titolo Figure 7: Henri-Jean Calsat, Report Planification, organization et architecture hospitalière en Indonesie Soudan, who-mission, searo 0.103 Djakarta– Genève – Paris, 1967–1968. Scheme “Maison de la santé & organigramme général”.
Credits Source: Geneva (Switzerland), Archives of the University of Geneva, Fund Calsat.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/3390/img-7.jpg
File image/jpeg, 63k
Titolo Figure 8: Henri-Jean Calsat, Report “Planification, organization et architecture hospitalière en Indonesie Soudan,” who-mission, searo 0.103 Djakarta– Genève – Paris, 1967–1968. Scheme “Dispositifs favorisant la ventilation transversale”.
Credits Source: Geneva (Switzerland), Archives of the University of Geneva, Fund Calsat.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/3390/img-8.jpg
File image/jpeg, 58k
Titolo Figure 9: Henri-Jean Calsat, handwritten notebook of the 1964–1965 mission to Sudan.
Legenda Pages showing the collection of climatic data for various sites.
Credits Source: Geneva (Switzerland), Archives of the University of Geneva, Fund Calsat.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/3390/img-9.jpg
File image/jpeg, 62k
Titolo Figure 10: Henri-Jean Calsat, handwritten notebook of the 1964–1965 mission to Sudan. Opening page.
Credits Source: Geneva (Switzerland), Archives of the University of Geneva, Fund Calsat.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/3390/img-10.jpg
File image/jpeg, 91k
Titolo Figure 11: Henri-Jean Calsat, handwritten notebook of the 1964–1965 mission to Sudan.
Legenda Analytic drawings of existing hospitals, North Khartoum, with critical notes.
Credits Source: Geneva (Switzerland), Archives of the University of Geneva, Fund Calsat.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/abe/docannexe/image/3390/img-11.jpg
File image/jpeg, 95k
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Johan Lagae, «Unlocking the archive of a transnational expert»ABE Journal [Online], 4 | 2013, online dal 01 juillet 2014, consultato il 28 mars 2024. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/abe/3390; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/abe.3390

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Johan Lagae

Senior Lecturer, Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

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