INDIABRIDGE

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

INDIABRIDGE is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie research project entitled “Privacy on the move: two-way Processes, Data and Legacy of Danish metropolitan and colonial Architecture and Urbanism.” It is authored by Nuno Grancho, hosted by the Centre for Privacy Studies (PRIVACY), University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020, Research and Innovation programme (Grant No. 895924).

Nuno Grancho is an architect, an urban planner and an architectural historian and theorist who works at the intersection of architecture, planning, material culture and colonial practices and its relationship with the transatlantic world and postcolonial Asia.

Grancho’s research examines how architectures and cities of struggle have shaped the modernity of South Asia. He is particularly interested in how architecture and urbanism are conceived as a medium, and how this conception informs the legitimation of architecture and urbanism as social and cultural practices.

Grancho’s research projects are focused on questions of human and material agency, the epistemology and geopolitics of architecture and urbanism as a technique of social intervention.

Grancho’s research and writing sit squarely within the architecture, urbanism and the humanities and focus on urban environments in South Asia from the sixteenth until the twentieth-century. Of special importance to his work are the spatial-morphological arrangements in architecture and cities that identify and enable the private, as withdrawal from the world, and the public, as engagement with that same world and, simultaneously, the tension between these dichotomies; i.e. the relationships between architecture and urbanism; urbanism and landscape; inside and the outside; center and periphery; theory and practice; those in power and those subjected to that power; intent and contingency; and the relationships between social and political processes and urban transformation.

He holds a Ph.D. in Architecture and Urbanism at the University of Coimbra since 2017.

In 2014, he was a Visiting Researcher in the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.

Since 2017, he is a Postdoctoral researcher at Dinâmia’CET_Iscte, University Institute of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal.

Since 2021, he is a Visiting Researcher at the Royal Danish Academy – School of Architecture, Design and Conservation, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Since 2021, he teaches at the Royal Danish Academy – School of Architecture, Design and Conservation, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Since 2021, he is a Postdoctoral researcher and a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow at the Centre for Privacy Studies, University of Copenhagen. Grancho research project is entitled “Privacy on the move: two-way Processes, Data and Legacy of Danish metropolitan and colonial Architecture and Urbanism”.

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Nuno Grancho on Dinâmia’cet_Iscte, University Institute of Lisbon

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About INDIABRIDGE

 

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 India. Accordingly, I will conduct the research through systematic, site-based, interdisciplinary spatial analysis of the history, visual rhetoric, and spatial politics of privacy as an epistemological vantage point for Danish architecture and urbanism in Europe (Copenhagen and Altona, a former Danish port city and a present westernmost urban borough of Hamburg) and beyond Europe (Tranquebar and Serampore, 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 address the spatial-morphological arrangements in architecture and cities (buildings, architecture, urban layout and spatial structure of the city) in metropolitan Denmark and in colonial Denmark beyond Europe that identify and enable the private, as withdrawal from the world, and the public, as engagement with that same world and, simultaneously, I will explore the tension between these dichotomies.  I will argue that the act to selectively allow and rescind access to oneself, to one’s assets, and to the world about one’s life can be a lens to examine the architectural and urban disciplines connected histories.

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.

Research team

Researcher

Nuno Grancho

Supervisor

Peter Thule Kristensen, Professor in History of Architecture and Interiors, Head of the master programme of Spatial Design, Institute of Architecture and Design, The Royal Danish Academy – Architecture, Design, Conservation, Copenhagen, Denmark.

International reference group and external advisors

Professor Rahul Mehrotra, Harvard University GSD, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

Professor Maarten Delbeke, ETH, Zürich, Switzerland

Professor Daniel A. Barber, University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design, Philadelphia, USA

Research Output

PUBLICATIONS

Single-authored books

• In Press, book forthcoming 2025, Diu: a Social Architectural and Urban history, Primus Books, New Delhi, India.
• In Press, book forthcoming July 2025, A History of Privacy in Danish and Indian Architecture: Urbanism of Colonialism, Routledge, “Routledge Architecture Series”, United Kingdom.

Edited books

• Grancho, N., editor, with Colonnese, F. and Schaeverbeke, R.(eds.), Approaches to Drawing in Architectural and Urban Design.  Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholar Publishing, 2024. PRINT ISBN  9781527565807 EBOOK ISBN 9781527565913

Book chapters

• In Press, book chapter forthcoming 2025, The Material Legacies of Nordic Empire, Thor J. Mednick and Bart Pushaw (eds.), Duke University Press, United Kingdom.

• In Press, article forthcoming 2025, “Domestic space, race and gender in the eighteenth-century Danish colonial home”, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Special Issue "Speaking Texts: Interrogating the Norms of Domestic Space, Race, and Gender."

• In Press, book chapter forthcoming 2024, “Public shared places and private absent divides. Identity and Space of Colonial Urbanism under Portuguese, French and Danish Rules: Diu, Pondicherry and Tranquebar”. The Routledge Companion to Art and Challenges to Empire, Alice Price and Emily Burns (eds.). Vol. 2 . Routledge, United Kingdom, 2024.

• Grancho, N, with Colonnese, F. and Schaeverbeke, R., “Introduction”, Approaches to Drawing in Architectural and Urban Design. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholar Publishing, 2024, pp. ix-2.  PRINT ISBN  9781527565807 EBOOK ISBN 9781527565913 ().

• Grancho, N, “Subaltern Drawings: Can Architecture, Urbanism and Fieldwork strike back?”, Approaches to Drawing in Architectural and Urban Design. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholar Publishing, 2024, pp. 220-242. PRINT ISBN  9781527565807 EBOOK ISBN 9781527565913 (

• Grancho, N, “Hybridity as an appellation of twentieth-century Islamic built environment”. Europe’s Islamic Legacy: 1900 to the Present. Elizabeth Drayson (ed.). Leiden: Brill & Nijhoff Publishers, 2023, pp. 69-97 (https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004510722_006).

Journal Articles

• Grancho, N, “Drawing the “colour line”: race, ethnicity and religion in Diu”, Journal of Race, Ethnicity and the City, October 2022, pp. 1-26. (https://doi.org/10.1080/26884674.2022.2117110 ).

• Grancho, N. et al., “Mapping for Change”, an investigation into the role of critical mapping in supporting progressive socio-environmental urban transformation. Institute for Urban & Regional Planning (ISR), Technische Universität Berlin | TU Berlin, Berlin, May 2022 (https://mapping-change.labor-k.org/overview/ ).

LECTURES BY INVITATION

• “Temporalities of the Colonial City in South Asia”, National University of Singapore, NUS CITIES Lecture Series, Department of Architecture - College of Design and Engineering, Singapore, 25th July 2024.

• “Serampore and other colonial cities in East India”, Serampore Girls College, Serampore, India, 8^th February 2023.

• “Danish colonial cities in East India. Tranquebar and Serampore, compared through time”, The Centre for Studies in Social Sciences (CSSSC), Calcutta, India, 31^st January 2023.

• “Comparison and Contrast in European Colonial Cities on the Coromandel Coast”, Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai, India, 23^rd January 2023.

• “Time and comparison. Pondicherry, Tranquebar and Serampore, European colonial cities in East India” French Institute of Pondicherry, Pondicherry, India, 16^th January 2023.

• “INDIABRIDGE”, poster presentation. EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF) “Crossing Borders, Engaged Science, Resilient Societies”. Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Satellite Event. Invitation by the European Commission. Leiden, 12 and 13^th July 2022.

• “Never Again was there a City like Diu: Architecture, History, and Culture in Colonial Gujarat”. Indian Ocean World Center Podcast, McGill University, Montreal, Canada, 16^th February 2022.

• “Writing Social Architectural and Urban Histories through Privacy.” Network for History and Cultural Studies at The Royal Danish Academy – Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation, Institute of Architecture and Design. Copenhagen, Denmark, 12^th January 2022.

SELECTED PRESENTATIONS, CONFERENCES and ADVANCED TRAINING

• International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS13) Crossways of Knowledge. Session: Seeing from the Neighbourhood: States, Communities and Human Mobility, “Time, spatial culture and the colonial city in South Asia”. The International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) and Universitas Airlangga (UNAIR). Universitas Airlangga, Surabaya, Indonesia, 31^st July 2024.

• International Colloquium Gages d’affection et Patrimoine de l’océan Indien/Love Tokens and the Heritage of the Indian Ocean, “Tranquebar, Serampore, Diu and Zanzibar: Urban Landscapes in the Indian Ocean Realm”, University of Reunion Island and Reunion Island’s Fine Arts School, Saint-Denis, Reunion Island, 16 – 18^th November 2023.

• International Conference of the Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture (HECAA): Environments, Materials, and Futures in the Eighteenth Century, WORKSHOP: QUILT! INCLUSIVITY IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STUDIES, Roundtable Making Space / Space and Geography [13^th October], UMass Boston; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Brown University; Dartmouth College; the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS); and Samuel H. Kress Foundation; Boston, Cambridge, and Providence,  USA, 12 – 14th October 2023.

• International Conference of the Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture (HECAA): Environments, Materials, and Futures in the Eighteenth Century, “Domestic Space, Race and Gender in the Eighteenth-Century Danish Colonial Home” [12^th October], UMass Boston; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Brown University; Dartmouth College; the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS); and Samuel H. Kress Foundation; Boston, Cambridge, and Providence, USA, 12 – 14th October 2023.

• International Workshop Past and Present Representations of Historical Urban Spaces, “The Mirror-Cities of Denmark. The Private and the Public in Tranquebar and Copenhagen,” Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History, Rome | Institute of Art History, Zagreb, in CAAS – Center for Advanced Academic Studies, University of Zagreb, Dubrovnik, Croatia, 21 - 23^rd September 2023.

• International Conference Privacy Matters. How Interiors Make and Break our Cities, Centre for Privacy Studies, University of Copenhagen; The Royal Danish Academy, Institute of Architecture and Design, Center for Interior Studies and Spatial Design (MA programme); The Royal Danish Academy, Institute of Architecture, Urbanism and Landscape, Urbanism & Societal Change (MA programme), “Summary and Concluding remarks”, at The Royal Danish Academy, Copenhagen, Denmark, 20 and 21st April 2023.

• International Conference 49^th Association for Art History Annual Conference 2023, “The history of Water and its Ecologies in the visual and spatial cultures of Serampore,” University College London, London, UK, 12^th to 14^th April 2023.

• International Conference STAY HOME: New perspectives on the Home, “The Hybrid Danish Colonial Home”, Centre for Privacy Studies, University of Copenhagen, and the Royal Danish Academy - Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation, Copenhagen, Denmark, 10 and 11^th November 2022.

• International and Multidisciplinary Conference Crossings in the Indian Ocean Memory and Heritage, “Places in-between: Zanzibar, Diu and Tranquebar. Hybridity in architectural and urban colonial cultures from the Indian Ocean realm,” CHAM, New University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal, Camões Institute for Cooperation and Portuguese Language, Lisbon, Portugal, The Museum of Indian Ocean, SUZA, The State University of Zanzibar, Zanzibar, Stone Town of Zanzibar, Tanzania, 8 and 9^th November 2022.

• International Conference Timely Histories, “How to Draw Time in the Danish colonial city in India,” Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient - Berlin, Germany, and Centre for the Study of Developing Societies – New Delhi, India, New Delhi, India, 12 to 14^th October 2022.

• International Workshop Colonial Cities and Border Regimes in the Long 19th Century in Inter-imperial and Intra-imperial Comparisons, “Three Port Cities in the Border between East and West: Diu, Tranquebar, and Pondicherry,” Herder Institute for Historical Research, Leibniz Association, Marburg, Germany, 26 to 29^th September 2022.

• International Symposium The Architecture of Copies | Copies of Architecture, “Privacy in the Architecture of Copies in Danish Colonial India”, Department of Art History, Aesthetics & Culture and Museology, School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark, 22 and 23^rd September 2022.

• 15th International Conference of the European Association for Urban History Inequality and the City. "Religion and Co-spatiality in a former European colonial city in India", Antwerp, Belgium, 31^st August to 3^rd September 2022.

• International Seminar Mapping Public Ritual in the Early Modern Portuguese Empire, “Public Ritual and Urban Space in Diu”, ICS Institute of Social Sciences, Lisbon, Portugal, 25^th October 2021.

SELECTED SESSIONS

• International Conference 2022 Conference of the Universities Art Association of Canada. Session “Privacy and Architecture: constructing a history” (author and chair). University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, 27 to 29^th October 2022.

ORGANIZATION OF ACADEMIC EVENTS AND SCIENTIFIC MEETINGS

• Concept author, Curator, Organizer and Convener. International Conference Privacy Matters. How Interiors Make and Break our Cities, Centre for Privacy Studies, University of Copenhagen; The Royal Danish Academy, Institute of Architecture and Design, Center for Interior Studies and Spatial Design (MA programme); The Royal Danish Academy, Institute of Architecture, Urbanism and Landscape, Urbanism & Societal Change (MA programme), at The Royal Danish Academy, Copenhagen, Denmark, 20 and 21^st April 2023.

• Concept author, Co-curator and co-member of the Organizing committee (with Natacha Klein Käfer and Natália da Silva Perez). International Symposium Privacy and Colonialism, Centre for Privacy Studies, University of Copenhagen, 6 and 7^th October 2022.

• Curator and Organizer. International Research Seminar with Professor Maria José Goulão “The effigial tombs of Pedro I and Inês de Castro at Alcobaça (c. 1360-67): building up a narrative of female virtue, from private biography to public display.” Centre for Privacy Studies, University of Copenhagen, 3^rd May 2022.

PRIZES, AWARDS AND FELLOWSHIPS

• Grant from The Carlsberg Foundation to support the International Conference “Privacy Matters. How Interiors make and break our Cities”, 20 and 21^st April 2023. The event was a joint venture of the Centre for Privacy Studies, University of Copenhagen and The Royal Danish Academy - Center for Interior Studies, The Royal Danish Academy - Spatial Design (MA programme) and The Royal Danish Academy - Urbanism & Societal Change (MA programme).

• Grant from Asian Dynamics Initiative, University of Copenhagen, for Short Term Scientific Mission in Tranquebar, Serampore, Chennai and Calcutta, India, to conduct research for the Marie Skłodowska-Curie research project “Privacy on the move: two-way Processes, Data and Legacy of Danish metropolitan and colonial Architecture and Urbanism”, 2023.

• Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions fellow of the week, European Union flagship fellowship programme for researchers, European Research Council and H2020, April 2022 (https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=279702194352781&set=a.220070506982617 ).

Grants

• Grant from The Carlsberg Foundation to support the International Conference “Privacy Matters. How Interiors make and break our Cities”, 20 and 21st April 2023. The event was a joint venture of the Centre for Privacy Studies, University of Copenhagen and The Royal Danish Academy - Center for Interior Studies, The Royal Danish Academy - Spatial Design (MA programme) and The Royal Danish Academy - Urbanism & Societal Change (MA programme).

• Grant from Asian Dynamics Initiative, University of Copenhagen, for Short Term Scientific Mission in Tranquebar, Serampore, Chennai and Calcutta, India, to conduct research for the Marie Skłodowska-Curie research project “Privacy on the move: two-way Processes, Data and Legacy of Danish metropolitan and colonial Architecture and Urbanism”, 2023.

• Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions fellow of the week, European Union flagship fellowship programme for researchers, European Research Council and H2020, April 2022.

News

February 16, 2022, in the Indian Ocean World Centre podcast (McGill University, Montreal; Canada), Nuno Grancho discusses his research into the architecture of the island city of Diu, Gujarat, West India.

October 6 and 7, 2022, in the symposium Privacy and Colonialism, researchers specializing in colonial history will interrogate the politics and poetics of privacy, understood historically, in places where indigenous and native peoples were displaced from their land for the purposes of extraction and expansion that benefitted European empires in pre-modern times.

 

Contact

Centre for Privacy Studies,

Karen Blixens Plads 16,

2300 København S,

Denmark

 

Room 5C.0.07

Email nuno.grancho@teol.ku.dk

Support:

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 895924 (01/09/2021 to 31/08/2024)