Description

Sarton Lecture and handing over of the Sarton Medal 2023-2024 for the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture to 
Prof. dr. M.Arch. Lucia Allais (Columbia University)

‘The Protective Matrix: Monuments, Sandbags, and Apotropaia since 1900’
A remarkable expressive architecture was invented over the course of the twentieth century through the international practice of protecting monumental structures with lattices of sandbags. This lecture unfolds the history and significance of this practice, from the history of the humble sandbag, to the evolving legal norms that surrounded debates about the “humanization of war” at the League of Nations. Ultimately Allais detects a spectrum of aesthetic ideologies behind this protective matrix, which all have in common a belief in apotropaia: the power of images to repel evil.

with laudatio by prof. dr. ir.-arch. Maarten Liefooghe, and with a drink offered by the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture