Alena Rieger

Black-and-white street scene: two men ride in an open truck past ornate historic buildings, evoking a busy, gritty urban atmosphere.
Image credit: Marcel M. Celis, Transport and installation of the remains of the Maison du Peuple. Courtesy of urban.brussels.

Friction and Failure: A Proposal for Architectural History

Alena Rieger is an architect and PhD fellow at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design. Since graduating from the University of Manitoba’s Environmental Design program in 2017, she has basically stayed in school. Her research focuses on moments of transition in architectural history, with a particular focus on failure, regulation, and dispute. This talk will take a broad look at her work, from enthusiastic undergraduate student to today, as she concludes her PhD.

PhD Abstract

Demolition, Disapearance, Theft: Interludes in Architectural History

“It seems obvious to me that someone should reconstruct the entire file from the elements that we each have, and make a precise chronological analysis of it,” wrote one of the key custodians of Victor Horta’s art nouveau icon Maison du Peuple (1895–1899) in 1986.⁠ The fable of the demolition and reappearance of Maison du Peuple is well known. But why, eight decades after construction, two after demolition, was this an obvious necessity? And why, now six decades after demolition, does it remain relevant to do so?

As Maison du Peuple disappeared, its likeness proliferated. Between 1965 and 1988, Maison du Peuple was negotiated through photographs, documents, descriptions, and disputes, as it was taken apart, stored, and stolen by a new cast of characters. Reassembled and reorganized, their archives reveal a matrix of egos, ad-hoc efforts, and emergencies, document decades of committed effort, whole architectural careers turned into Horta-crazed preservationists, and tens of thousands of documents distributed among many archives which themselves were produced, kept, moved, and collected, and yet remain largely uninterpreted. Histories of Maison du Peuple have found meaning in its author, its form, the circumstances of its demolition, and its various reuses. Focusing on three ostensible crises—demolition, disappearance, theft—this dissertation turns toward how things happened rather than why: focusing more on the building’s interlude than its first or final setting, more on the demolition contractors, thieves, and temporary custodians than its original author, and more on the extended provenance in a period of architectural instability, than on the static narratives of a monument that developed as a result of it. As architectural history increasingly stretches the bounds of its subject from extraction to afterlives, this dissertation asks that we consider revealing moments of transfer, dispute, failure, and irresolution in between.

Biography

Alena Rieger is an architect and PhD fellow at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design. Her writing has appeared in Future Anterior, Metode, online through the Canadian Centre for Architecture, and in the collection "Provenance in Architecture: A Dictionary of Terms.” Rieger has presented widely, including recently at Yale University, Columbia University, and the Architectural Association in London. Her research has been supported by grants and fellowships from the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Manitoba Arts Council. She was awarded the J.B.C. Watkins Award in Architecture (2024) and is a recipient of the SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship (2023–2027). She is an enthusiastic teacher and a pleasant colleague.