The expedient design, assembly and erection of WWII internment facilities, and their subsequent transformation for post-war detention and commemoration has produced a legacy of camp environments associated with citizenship.
These intense experimental sites expose racial differences, human displacements and national hostilities occurring during the Pacific War.
Through comparative case studies in Australia, Singapore and the USA, this project will examine how expertise in architecture and related fields was mobilised in their production. Resultant discourses of citizenship, community and commemoration will be studied. Their significance for understanding political, racially-inscribed and temporal environments will be explored.
Australian Research Council Future Fellowship 2015-2018 FT140100190
Australia and New Zealand
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Tatura Group
Tatura Group, Victoria. © Anoma Pieris. -
Murchison Camp 13
Murchison Camp 13, Victoria. Remains of pond. © Anoma Pieris. -
Tatura German Cemetery
Tatura German Cemetery. © Anoma Pieris. -
Cowra Japanese Garden
Cowra Japanese Garden. © Anoma Pieris. -
Japanese War Cemetery
Japanese War Cemetery, Cowra. © Anoma Pieris. -
Loveday Group
Loveday Group, South Australia. © Anoma Pieris. -
Featherston Peace Garden
Featherston Peace Garden, New Zealand. © Anoma Pieris.
International
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Manzanar National Historic Site
Manzanar National Historic Site, California, Merritt Park. © Anoma Pieris. -
Nikkei Internment Memorial Centre
Nikkei Internment Memorial Centre, New Denver, BC. © Anoma Pieris. -
Changi Museum
Changi Museum, Singapore. © Anoma Pieris. -
Naoetsu Peace Memorial Park
Naoetsu Peace Memorial Park, Japan. © Anoma Pieris. -
Changi Prison
An overhead perspectival view of Changi Prison, after drawing by H.E. McKenzie, “A Japanese internment hell in Singapore: Changi Criminal Jail,” The Illustrated London News, 27 October 1945, 451. Redrawn by Anoma Pieris. -
Changi POW Camp
Changi POW Camp, Kitchener Barracks. © Anoma Pieris. -
Black and White Bungalow
Black and White Bungalow, Adam Park, Singapore. © Anoma Pieris.
Anoma Pieris, an Australia-based architectural historian and geographer, has published widely on issues of nationalism, citizenship and sovereignty, specializing in penal architecture from the colonial period to the Pacific War. Her recent publications highlight human displacement, war related spatial violence and border politics.
Lynne Horiuchi is an independent architectural historian whose interdisciplinary work on the planning, design and construction of Japanese American incarceration crosses over into Asian American and diasporic studies with a focus on citizenship, space and race. She has created community based exhibits, course work and planning models using oral history and family photographs.
Publications List
Pieris, A. "Antipodian Architectures of Displacement" 383-398 in Adey et al., Handbook of Displacement (Palgrave MacMillan 2021).
Pieris, A. 2019. “Divided histories of the Pacific War: Revisiting Changi’s (post) colonial heritage,” 107-24 in Sybille Frank and Mirjana Ristic eds, Urban Heritage in Divided Cities: Contested Pasts (Routledge).
Pieris, A. 2019. ‘Introduction’ 1-11 in Pieris, A (ed.), Architecture on the Borderline: Boundary politics and built space, Routledge.
Pieris, A. 2019. ‘The Remembered Village Between Europe and Asia-Minor: Nea Magnisia at Bonegilla’ 197-220 in Pieris, A (ed.), Architecture on the Borderline: Boundary politics and built space, Routledge.
Pieris, A. 2019.“Intersecting sovereignties: Border camps and border villages in wartime North America” pp. 36-56 in Pieris, A (ed.), Architecture on the Borderline: Boundary politics and built space, Routledge, UK, USA, FT140100190 (2014-2018)
Pieris, A. 2019.Re-reading Singapore’s ‘Black and White’ architectural heritage: the aesthetic affects and affectations of adaptive reuse, Architectural Theory Review 22 (3), 364-85.
Pieris, A. 2018. “Displacement, labor and incarceration: a mid-twentieth century genealogy of camps” Chap. 30, 413-28 in F. Karim and F. Ferdous (eds) Routledge Companion to Architecture and Social Engagement (London; New York: Routledge).
Horiuchi, L. and Pieris, A. 2017. Temporal Cities: Commemoration at Manzanar, California and Cowra, Australia, Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas 3, 292-321.
Pieris, A. 2016. “Architectures of the Pacific Carceral Archepelago: Second World War Internment and POW Camps” Fabrications 26:3, 255-285.
Pieris, A. 2016. “Changi: A penal genealogy across the Pacific War”, Fabrications 26:1, 50-71.
Pieris, A. 2017. “Internment Homes as Material Texts: The Architecture of Canada’s New Denver Internment Camp” in Hartoonian, G. and Ting, J.QUOTATION, Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand (SAHANZ): 34, 561-572.
Pieris, A. 2016. “Sociospatial genealogies of wartime impoverishment: Temporary farm labour camps in the USA” in Brennan, AM and Goad, P. eds, GOLD, Proceedings of SAHANZ: 33 (Melbourne School of Design, The University of Melbourne), 558-567.
Pieris, A. 2014. “Cowra, NSW, Architectures of Internment” SAHANZ 2014, in Schooner, C. ed. Translation, Proceedings of the Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand: 31) (Auckland, New Zealand SAHANZ and Unitec ePress), 785–796.
Pieris, A. 2015. Editorial: In-between Spaces for border thinking, Fabrications 25:3, 301-304.
Pieris, A. 2015. Report: Borders in focus: IPCS seminar and symposium, Fabrications 25:3, 419-421.
Pieris, A. 2015. “Australian architectures of internment”, Architecture Australia 104: 4 (Jul/Aug), 64, 67-68.
Media
2021
SAUH Asia Book TalkArchitecture on the Borderline, April 23
2020
Presenter: ‘Border Thinking through Border camps’, SAHANZ Roundtable Diasporic Architecture and Australia’s Unfinished Histories, 24 Nov
Carceral Architectures of the Pacific War, 3 March 2020, UC Berkeley
MSD at Home with Anoma Pieris, 30 September 2020
View on YouTube.
2019
Anoma Pieris, The Greek refugee village at Bonegilla, Neos Kosmos 11 January 2019
2018
Pursuit, 12 Jan., Sophie Hill, Australia’s top 10 iconic Architectural sites [A. Pieris on Cowra Japanese Garden].
Museum of Modern Art New York, CMAP series, speaker
2017
Carceral Archipelago, keynote for Asian Australian Identities 6 Symposium at the Immigration Museum, Melbourne, Oct, 25-6.
2016
Architects for Peace panel, Freedom Stories, Melbourne, 1 July.
Architectures of Internment, Kate Sarkodee, Anoma Pieris, 19 September 2016
International study leads to POW Camp, Cowra Guardian, 24 November 2016
Unlikely monument a reminder of dark episode in S’pore’s history, Melodie Zachcheus, Straits Times, 13 October 2016
Border Thresholds and Intersections, student run workshop Nov 15, MSD (mentor) convened by Renee Miller-Yeaman
2015
“Architectures of Internment” in Designing for War/Design and Ethics, plenary, organised by Paul Carter and James Parker, RMIT Design Hub, 24 Feb., 2015.
War Panel, Institute of Postcolonial Studies, 26 Aug., 2015, with Gerry Simpson, organised by Swati Parashar, Monash University.
Temporal Cities, Provisional Citizens: Architectures of Internment, SARUP Urban Edge 2015 Prize Positions & Methods Seminar, University of Milwaukee, both organised by Manu Sobti, 15 Oct. 2015.
“Victims and Perpetrators: Comparing Australian POW sites in the Asia Pacific”, ARCUSFall 2015 Colloquium on Race, Space and Ethics, organised by Lynne Horiuchi and Greig Crysler, UC Berkeley,15 Sept. 2015.
CAMEA Summit at the University of Adelaide, Overview of current ARC Future Fellowship research at the University of Melbourne, Friday 31 July.
Academic Conference Papers
2019
‘A geography of Camps’, Malaysia, Singapore Studies Association of Australia 26-7 Sep. Monash University
The Featherston Incident: physical genealogies of incarceration, 12 July SAHANZ University of Sydney
The remembered village: refugee inscriptions at the Europe-Asia border, Cultural stability or conflict: Border straddling heritage in West-Asia, 30-31 January
2018
Exploring carceral heritage: POW and internment architectures of the Pacific War, Association of Critical Heritage Studies, Zeijiang U, Hangzhou, 24-30 September.
Domesticating Sovereignty: Australian camps for Europeans after the Second World War, IASFM Conference (Refugee Studies), U of Macedonia, Thessaloniki 24-27 July.
‘Trojan Garden: Aesthetic exchanges of dissonant heritage between Australia and Japan, SAUH Built Env. Stream, ASAA Conference, Sydney, 2-4 July.
2017
Domesticating the Sovereign Border: The Trojan Village at Block 19, Situated Domesticities, National University of Singapore 14-16 Dec.
Trojan House: The Vienna Room in East Malvern, Migration and Architecture, Deakin University, Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, 17 Nov.
Internment “Homes” as material texts: The architecture of Canada’s New Denver Internment Camp, SAHAANZ, Quotations, Canberra, July 4-6
Subaltern Affects and Affectations Architectural typologies of the Pacific War, CAMEA SAH-Asia 2 Conference July 2-3
Southeast Asia as imperial border region: a carceral geography of the Pacific War”, SEAARC Conference, National University of Singapore, Architecture, Jan. 5-7.
2016
Carceral Archipelago: Confinement Architectures of the Pacific War, Carceral Geographies Conference, University of Birmingham, Dec.13.
Temporal cities and provisional citizens: architectures of internment, South Asian Diaspora Research network, Monash University, 19 Oct.
Sociospatial genealogies of wartime impoverishment:Temporary farm labour camps in the USA, SAHANZ, GOLD July 6-9.
Inter Asian spatial perspectives: Intellectual border-thinking in architecture, urbanism and heritage, Spaces in Transition, University of Melbourne, MSD, 4-5 July
2015
In defence of civility: Manzanar, incarceration and the urban grid, at Border Thinking/Thinking About Borders, 24 June 2015 at the Institute of Post Colonial Studies.
Commemorating Spatial Violence: Two case studies of wartime internment in Australia and the USA, for Workshop 2: Documenting UNESCO in Australia and Sites of International Heritage, 21 Aug. 2015, Melbourne School of Design, University of Melbourne
2014
COWRA, NSW: Architectures of Internment, for SAHANZ 2014, Translations, Auckland