This chapter offers an account of the concept of technē in classical Greek culture, with particular attention to its social, epistemological, and pedagogical dimensions. It draws on literary, documentary, and art historical sources to reconstruct technē as a lifelong, economically embedded profession characterized by specialization, teachability, and use of rationality. Four core aspects are emphasized: (1) the low social status of dēmiourgoi; (2) the close relationship between technē and teaching, including apprenticeship; (3) the necessity of specialization, with practitioners typically mastering only one trade; and (4) the rationality of technē, evidenced through causal reasoning, written protocols, and the use of mathematics. The chapter also explores the contested status of elite practices – such as warfare, poetry, and rhetoric – as technai, and the sophists’ self-presentation as professionals. By situating technē within the lived realities of ancient Greek labor and education, the chapter sets the stage for Plato’s philosophical use of the concept.

The following chapter examines the reception of Byzantium through the lenses of the Church and Orthodoxy. The conventional term ‘Byzantium’ — though currently disputed — remains the most widely used name for the Eastern Roman Empire. Byzantine reception surpasses mere texts; it encompasses Byzantine literature, art, culture and the liturgical tradition. This brief survey opens with a general discussion on Byzantine reception up to the modern era, offering several examples that illustrate how Orthodoxy and the Church, broadly defined, were (re)appropriated in the period following the Fall of Constantinople. It then delves into aspects of Byzantium’s reception intricately tied to the concept of the Church, encompassing both architectural structures and artifacts, as well as religious identities and traditions.

Written over a period of five decades (1973–2013), Peter Maxwell Davies’s ten symphonies occupy a central position in his output. Having established a reputation in the 1960s as the ‘enfant terrible’ of British music, chiefly as a result of a number of radical music-theatre works, the appearance of a ‘Symphony’ in the following decade surprised critics. Yet Davies was long attracted to the abstract qualities of the genre – an interest deepened by his move to Hoy, Orkney, in the early 1970s. This chapter considers how landscape, place and the natural world, issues of form and genre, the symphonic legacy of Sibelius and Mahler, and architecture – especially the works of Brunelleschi and Borromini – shaped these symphonies. It argues that acknowledging and appreciating the symphonies from these multiple musical and extra-musical perspectives can illuminate the richness of the composer’s symphonic imagination.

An analysis of households and communities in the lower Segura and Vinalopó river valleys between the eighth and fifth centuries BCE provides an in-depth understanding of interactions between Indigenous and Phoenician groups and how people deployed various techniques for the spatial production of locality. In a context of intensive contacts between people of diverse origins, the production of places, economies and rituals of the households and their integration in wider communities and regional networks are considered. Particular attention is given to the role of settlements, neighbourhoods and houses as locales for materializing and structuring social relations within and among households.

The first decade of the nineteenth century was a crucial period in the development of Haiti and Black identity in the Caribbean. This chapter focuses on the first half of the decade: L’Ouverture’s reign during the abolition of slavery, his capture and exile, and Dessalines’s declaration of Haitian independence. I trace evolving attitudes towards architectural destruction and renovation, focusing on three stages: uncertainty about violence; creolization, mimicry, and renovation; and acceptance of the obliteration of the architectural archive as an anti-colonial act. Drawing on texts by Romantic authors including John Thelwall, William Wordsworth, Marcus Rainsford, and Leonora Sansay, I recover how Romantic ideology and revolutionary practice were not merely transmitted across the Atlantic then passively accepted in the Caribbean. Haitians actively adapted and complicated Romantic and revolutionary ideology, using the common tropes of the period to reimagine their place in the world and assert their rejection of objectification and colonialism

This chapter investigates the architecture of belonging by examining how built environments can foster genuine emotional connection and a sense of place. Drawing insights from a Melbourne-based panel hosted by Six Degrees Architects, it explores how planners, developers, and architects can design precincts that nurture a profound sense of belonging. Emphasising the importance of emotional wellbeing and ecological sustainability, the discussion integrates Indigenous perspectives on place and custodianship, contrasting them with human-centric Western planning practices. Case studies, including Melbourne’s Public Office precinct, Canberra’s Dairy Road, and Hobart’s In the Hanging Garden precinct, illustrate creative strategies for revitalising urban spaces through adaptive reuse, community engagement, and landscape-led design. The chapter underscores the need to prioritise values of Country in architectural and urban-planning processes, advocating systemic change in procurement and planning practices, fostering authentic engagement, and promoting reconciliation through the collaborative stewardship of the built environment.

The end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Early Iron Age (ca. 1200–1050 BCE) on Crete is known in ceramic terms as the Late Minoan (LM) IIIC period. The LM IIIC period is often considered to represent the start of the Early Iron Age as iron was present, though objects of that material were extremely rare on the island before the eleventh century. The period was characterized by a dramatic shift in settlement patterns and in many aspects of material culture, including settlement organization and architecture, burial and cult practices, and sociopolitical structures. Although these changes mark a clear break from the previous period of Mycenaean influence, there are also elements of continuity. In addition, the island was defined by a high degree of regionalism in LM IIIC (and throughout the EIA), perhaps most visible in variations in settlement patterns, cult activity, burial practices, and ceramic styles. This regionalism was probably influenced by geography, previous traditions, sociopolitical organization, population size, and cultural identity.

During the Geometric period (ca. 900–700 BCE), the sociopolitical structure of Big Men became collaborative aristocratic rule. Most Geometric buildings had fieldstone foundations, mudbrick walls, and pitched thatch roofs, or, in the Cyclades and Crete, fieldstone walls and flat roofs. Larger dwellings were usually apsidal or rectangular, smaller dwellings often oval. In the eighth century, a large household could include separate buildings and areas inside an enclosure (Oropos, Eretria). By 700, multi-room rectangular houses with a courtyard appear (Zagora). Sanctuaries in settlements were usually open-air. Sanctuaries outside settlements proliferated in Late Geometric as sites of elite display and competition; rituals included animal sacrifice, communal feasting, and votive offerings. Monumental temples were built 725–700 at Eretria, Amarynthos, Naxos, Samos, Kalapodi, and Ano Mazaraki, all extra-urban except Eretria. Geometric burials were generally inhumations, though cremation was common in Athens/Attica. On pottery, angular geometric motifs replaced Protogeometric circular designs. Figured scenes (funerals, battles) appear in the mid-eighth century and possibly mythological scenes in the late eighth century. Greeks, probably Euboeans, borrowed the Phoenician alphabet ca. 800 BCE; early inscriptions were scratched on pottery, some in poetic meter. By ca. 700, many settlements had developed into the politically organized community called a polis.

Corinth is often associated with the emergence of Greek monumental architecture. The long absence of worked stone in post-Mycenaean architecture cannot be explained by the loss of the necessary tools and techniques. Worked stone slabs were used in pit and cist graves in the northeastern Peloponnese from the Mycenaean through the Geometric periods, and large monolithic sarcophagi appeared at Corinth ca. 900 BCE. Such burials, sometimes containing valuable grave goods, apparently belonged to high-status individuals. By contrast, until the early seventh century BCE at Corinth and elsewhere, buildings had fieldstone foundations, mudbrick walls, and thatched roofs; isolated worked stones occurred rarely, e.g., as beddings for wooden thresholds. In the second half of the eighth century, grave goods disappeared from Corinthian burials, and the elite displayed their status with rich dedications in sanctuaries. During these years, Corinth became increasingly wealthy, first under the oligarchic Bacchiads and later in the tyranny of Kypselos. The first Greek temples with single-skin walls of cuboid stone blocks and roofs of terracotta tiles, built ca. 680–650 at Corinth and Isthmia, represent elite dedications. As with the worked stone in elite Corinthian burials, the quarried stone blocks used in these temples enhanced their display of wealth.

Architecture and design; housing and town planning; mechanization and the everydayness of machines; rationalization and scientific management; cars and romance of the road; scientific mastery of the natural world and the non-European globe; the physics revolution and natural science – these were the material frontiers of forward-facing progressivist expectancy between the wars. The excitements of innovation reached from the blueprints of Le Corbusier and the design departures of Bauhaus to Schütte-Lihotzky’s modular kitchens and Lubetkin’s modestly scaled public commissions. From photography, cinema, and X-rays, through electricity, mechanical tools, and small appliances, to automobiles and aeroplanes, machines harnessed enthusiasm and energized the imagination. Whether through new technologies, applied science, or theoretical chemistry and physics, laboratory science was universally mobilized for governance, especially in medicine and public health, industrial organization, agrarian research, and armaments. The epistemological foundations, theoretical directions, and experimental organization of laboratory science opened new vistas of policy-driven governmentality.

In recent years, as material culture has become more central to the study of all aspects of the ancient Mediterranean and new materialism has gained greater traction across a variety of academic disciplines, growing numbers of scholars have begun to explore how material objects and notions of materiality feature in Pindar’s work. This chapter offers an introduction to some of the main tendencies of such work. It discusses Pindar’s propensity to speak about his songs in terms normally applied to material crafts, such as weaving or carpentry; the role of tools and instruments in Pindar’s conception of composition and creation, both as applied to song and in a broader sense; the materials of the built environment; Pindar’s relationship with the contexts of his musical performances, real and imaginary; and the earth itself as a significant facet of Pindar’s conception of the material world.

The conclusion summarizes the book’s core arguments – specifically, that studying the reception of ancient architecture at the world’s fairs at Chicago, Nashville, Omaha, St. Louis, and San Francisco furthers our understanding of the complex and possibly conflicting and contradictory ways in which the ancient world and its architecture were understood in the United States between 1893 and 1915. The appropriation of classical architecture for museums and fine art galleries emerges as a major theme. While classical architecture could be used to justify empire and institutional racism, it could also symbolize democracy and cultural sophistication. The fluidity and flexibility of ancient architecture underscore why it was so widely and creatively adapted in the United States. The physical legacy of these fairs – the buildings that survived and the parks – is also considered. In addition, the conclusion discusses the decline of ancient architecture as one of the most potent ways in which fair organizers expressed their cultural, political, and economic goals; the rejection of historical forms was vital to the birth of architectural Modernism. In sum, neo-antique architecture at American world’s fairs helped the nation and various cities to forge imagined ties to a glorious past, frame the present, and envisage the future.

There is an autobiographical turn in Elizabeth Bowen’s writing in the 1940s and 1950s, which can be traced to the aftermath of the Second World War and the postwar losses that she experienced with the death of her husband and the selling and razing of her ancestral home. Rather than writing a straightforward autobiography, Bowen filters her personal writing into semi-autobiographical fictional characters and into other life-writing genres such as essays, family histories, and travel books. In two such works, a family history, Bowen’s Court, and a travel book, A Time in Rome , Bowen refuses to present identity as an independent, self-directed entity. Instead, she focuses on architecture and the built environment in order to show how houses, hotels, streets, and monuments shape her sense of self into shifting forms. These spaces are never neutral containers. In gothic fashion, Bowen’s places and spaces exert an influence of their own, not merely revealing the shape of the self, but forming it in their own image. Writing about these places after the Second World War, Bowen creates an autobiography of ruins, describing what happens when we lose the spaces that once defined our sense of self.

This chapter tests those Indigenous directions and artistic visions of learning environments with close readings of local-level expressions of religious and cultural learning. Anchored in Huejotzingo and Calpan, but contextualized with valley-wide initiatives, the chapter exposees Indigenous contributions to learning environments in ethno-spatial analysis. Artwork and architecture developments from 1550s are exemplified as local interpretations of Christianity and local traditions beyond European prescriptions. The chapter argues for a multicultural reading of the lessons imparted in church courtyards, showing how place-based pedagogy and preexisting modes of learning could have informed convent-goers’ takeaways. Instead of wholly Christian convents were partial and un-wholistic pedagogical expressions, ripe for Burkhart’s slippages. Practice and place-based observances could cause a survivance of local history and Indigenous knowledge to persist, working effectively alongside the dogmatic reading of church art. Here, the overarching vision of learning emerges with critical visual and material culture studies of biblical figures, placements, enjambments, and reassessments of Indigenous sources that may have offered some friction in design choices of architects of the perfect classrooms of colonialism.

Chapter 5 begins to draw the reader into the core case studies of the book. The movement of colonial education into the provincial countryside is revealed with a focus on the Puebla-Tlaxcala valley. This helps to build a local-regional component into the theory of learningscapes in An Unholy Pedagogy. Education is shown to be an introduced and foreign system of instruction, though it incorporated indigenous practices from collegians’ influence, and this didactic trajectory bordered the wholistic and preordained expertise of Ibero-Christian systems of learning. Though examining Christian official records, the chapter also seeks local identity and community efforts to navigate regional impacts with the introduced, augmented systems. One core note is that locals participated in the Mesoamerican countryside’s encounter with texts and architects. Against a tragic backdrop, towns established convents via skilled labourers’ hands under the discretion of Indigenous church people. The chapter studies the concept to placemaking in an account of Motolinía, reading against the hagiographic take to note how these active decades of church growth identified local participation and agency in planning developments and using the grounds of new convents and courtyards. A new provincial learningscape takes shape in this portion of the book, with the shining examples drawn from the Indigenous towns of Huexotzinco, Calpan, and Quauhquechollan.