The City as a Laboratory – Building, Urban Infrastructures and Knowledge-Making in the Early Modern Period
Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut Essen (KWI)
Goethestraße 31, 45128 Essen
Organisers: Christine Beese (Ruhr-Universität Bochum) and Merlijn Hurx (KU Leuven)
Registration and organisational enquiries:
With the generous support of Fritz Thyssen Stiftung.
Programme:
30.09.2026 Wednesday
Welcome and Introduction
09:30–10:15 Christine Beese (Bochum, Germany) and Merlijn Hurx (Leuven, Belgium)
Session: Public Institutions as Trading Zones of Knowledge-Making
10:15–11:00 Nicole Falconi (Bochum, Germany): Constructing Anatomical Theatres in Ibero-American Hospitals: Surgeons, Architects and Craftsmen as Collaborators in the 18th and 19th Centuries
11:00–11:15 Coffee Break
11:15–12:00 Giedrė Jarulaitienė (Drammen, Norway): Johan Daniel Berlin: Architect of the Enlightenment City
12:00–12:45 Sebastian Fitzner (Bochum, Germany): Scaling the City – Architectural Models as Knowledge Repositories in the Early Modern Period
12:45–13:45 Lunch
Session: Conceptualising the City
13:45–14:30 Marc Nötges (Kaiserslautern, Germany): Imagined Cities, Model Worlds: Fiction, Knowledge, and the Early Modern City
14:30–15:15 Pedro Gonçalves (Paris, France): Pierre Patte’s Organic Vision of the City
15:15–15:30 Coffee Break
15:30–16:15 Caroline Fußbach and Maurice Parussel (Bochum, Germany): The City Book ‘Civitates Orbis Terrarum’ Between Geography and Chronography
16:15–17:00 Marie Krüger (Bochum, Germany): Shaping the City of Knowledge: The Leiden University Print Series
Keynote
17:15–18:45 Bert De Munck (Antwerp, Belgium): Crafting the Urban Body Politic: The Epistemological Foundations of the Early Modern City
01.10.2026 Thursday
Session: Shaping Urban Ecologies
09:30–10:15 Davide Martino (Brussels, Belgium): Terraqueous Cities: The Early Modern Art of Governing Water
10:15–11:00 Fatma Sarıkaya-Işık (Ankara, Turkey): Measured Waters: Water Infrastructure and Urban Knowledge in Early Modern Istanbul
11:00–11:15 Coffee Break
11:15–12:00 Ludovica Galeazzo (Padua, Italy): Building and Governing a Watery Periphery: The Venetian Lagoon Archipelago in the Early Modern Period
Session: The Building Site as Experiment
12:00–12:45 Emma Bekaert (Leuven, Belgium): From Gallery to Ground: The Venetian Arsenal and the Development of Early Modern Foundation Expertise
12:45–13:45 Lunch
13:45–14:30 Vincent Vanhamme (Leuven, Belgium): Searching for Knowledge: Governing Innovation in the Construction of the Sassevaart
14:30–15:15 Nicoletta Marconi (Rome, Italy): Building in Rome Between the 17th and 19th Centuries: A Crossroads of Practices, Technical Experimentation, and Dissemination of Knowledge
15:15–15:30 Coffee Break
15:30–16:15 Elisabeth Deans (Cambridge, England): Architectural Intelligence: Building as a Matter of the State
16:15–17:00 Anna-Luna Post (Leiden, The Netherlands): Cities, Essay Prizes, and Academies in the Eighteenth-Century Dutch Republic
02.10.2026 Friday
Session: Science and Technology in Urban Construction
09:30–10:15 Cristiano Guarneri and Ines Ivić (Venice, Italy): Circulation of Architectural Knowledge in Ragusa (Dubrovnik) After the Great Earthquake of 1667
10:15–11:00 Charles van den Heuvel (Amsterdam, The Netherlands): Mechanics Mosaics: Interwoven Knowledge of Engineering in the Low Countries (ca. 1570–1670)
10:00–11:45 Karel Davids (Amsterdam, The Netherlands): The Limits of Innovations: Urban Infrastructures in Early Modern Amsterdam Compared with Other European Cities
Final Discussion
11:45–12:30
