Architectural Histories of Latent Cooperation in the British Empire

(VISION ERC0525/0017, Co-funded by the European Union through the Research and Innovation Foundation, 2026-2028)

Cyprus, despite its lack of resources, operating only as a chokepoint in the Eastern Mediterranean for the British Empire, developed a strong cooperative movement (one of the strongest per capita). Imperial intentions to safeguard political and financial stability in the colonies were, indeed, the prevailing motive for spreading cooperative movements across the Empire. Whereas the power dynamics of the cooperative movement as an economic and governance model, driven by shared financial goals are often well-documented, and one is expected to find relevant information in the colonial archive, this project treats Cyprus as a testing ground for a larger theoretical and methodological investigation around cooperative qualities associated with social capital (networks of mutual trust and solidarity) and informal socialisation in everyday spaces of labour that are often silent or excluded in archival documentation.

On Buildings That No Longer Exist: Colonial Architectures of Entangled Agency in Cyprus

(UCY Starting Grant, Internal grant by the University of Cyprus, 2025-2027)

This project investigates three buildings/sites as spaces of "entangled agency" on the contested island of Cyprus. The buildings/sites were constructed during the colonial period of Cyprus, when the island was under British rule, and are now demolished or abandoned. This project builds upon the previous project of "uneasy but shared" (USHer) architectural heritage, exploring the physical and ideological forces of erasure and negligence, and the role of architectural history when producing narratives of absence. What is the role of architectural history when the building as the tangible evidence of architectural historiograpgy is absent? The project involves an exploration of transmedia storytelling and its role in public engagement approaches of architectural history.

Uneasy but Shared Heritage: Modern Architecture on a Divided Island

(EXCELLENCE/0421/0343, Co-funded by the European Union through the Research and Innovation Foundation, 2022-2024)

From the outset of independence from British rule in 1960, Cyprus was marked by intercommunal conflict between Greek- and Turkish-Cypriots, which led to the abrupt division of the island in 1974; a key moment in Cyprus’s modern history, fragmenting the island with buffer and military zones. Inevitably, modern architecture, once embraced as a vehicle for nation-building and a path to modernity, became entangled with decolonial struggles, intercommunal conflict, and the island’s current physical and socio-political division, comprising some unintended heritage whose value is ambiguously defined.

Many of these buildings, once paradigmatic of modern architecture in Cyprus, are now abandoned, ruined, or militarised, while others have been radically altered and bear little resemblance to their past. Recent events that threaten the imminent destruction of some of these buildings have exposed the complex relationships between conflict and heritage and have prompted this proposed research. This project interrogates the contests that surround the past-present use, appropriation, or suspension of a selection of case studies that are paradigmatic of modern heritage in Cyprus, to expose the competing narratives and interpretations that have remained hidden or lost behind these buildings' present physical condition. Conducted as an encounter of modern architectural history with critical heritage studies, this project draws on archival research, fieldwork, and oral histories to provide a critical history of the different interpretive agendas that surround these hotels, ultimately asking:

How can the insights of architectural history shed light on the potentiality of these buildings to serve as modern heritage that can be shared between the diverse communities of the island?

This research project further introduces USHer, a mobile app devised as a methodological experiment informed by contemporary debates that challenge official heritage lists and the role of digital tools in opening the meaning(s) of value—what is defined as heritage and why, by whom, and for whom—to a broader audience. In this project, the role of such technological tools is investigated as a mediation of the intangible value of architectural heritage in contested territories.

The USHer app, which deviated from the initial research endeavour of this project to raise awareness and achieve public engagement about the island's modern architecture, now includes 100 buildings constructed on the island from 1900 to 1974. The app is developed as an alternative 'guide' of modern architectural heritage in Cyprus—a conceptual 'archive that listens,' utilising crowdsourcing to invite the public to 'share' other stories, or contribute to the fixed reading of the 'USHer story.' Indeed, since the development of the app, the condition of various buildings has changed, and one can trace this temporality and fluidity of a building's 'present' through the buildings' chatrooms. 

As of October 2025, USHer is a web app: www.usherarchitecture.com 

Arc

Last Updated on January 27, 2026