Redlines is a collection of interviews with editors that make today's most provocative architectural publications come to life. While architecture is traditionally concerned with buildings, materials, and scale, their importance and historical impact are recorded through words, books, and images that are often organized, published, and disseminated. Redlines seeks to understand the pedagogical and design frameworks that shape this process.

In this session, we talk to Natalia Escobar about her publication, Oblique, a publication she founded while an instructor at Harvard Graduate School of Design and which is presented as a collective effort of the school's faculty and its students all in the same. 

What is the role of publications today?

One of the greatest and most urgent challenges of our time is to dismantle the oppressive mechanisms by which dominant cultures systematically exclude certain portions of the population and their alternate worldviews. As a scholars and educators of present and future generations, it is our responsibility to come up with more inclusive definitions of society that shape and are shaped by how we conceive and present knowledge through academic publications.

My interest in academia, architectural history, and later on architectural conservation, emerges from the possibility to rewrite and renegotiate “hegemonic history” and to create socially inclusive narratives. Oblique is a journal on architectural conservation theory that provides a platform and new methods for rethinking the ideological and social implications of dealing with the past through architecture. I define Critical Conservation as the possibility to perpetuate and reaffirm, but also, reject and subvert a narrative from the values of the present.

What is the history behind the publication?

In  2015, a series of experiences, questions, and desires merged producing this project. At that time, I joined the faculty at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in order to teach a seminar on based on my dissertation project. For three years, I worked on redefining the curriculum of the Critical Conservation program towards a more diverse and international approach along with its founders Profs. Michael Hays and Rahul Mehrotra.

Through this seminar and my research experiences at the time that included trips to Latin America, Europe, and East Asia, I began addressing contemporary conservation issues around the world, such as the destruction of artifacts in Syria, the continuous earthquakes in Latin America, complex urban development in Cuba, and the destruction of rural villages in China. I realized that these issues posed new questions that required responses beyond the canon of traditional conservation. Oblique emerged from this research and teaching experiences, as a response to a conceptual void.

How are the issues constructed?

One of the aims of the journal is the possibility of mapping emerging contemporary conservation practices or reinterpretations of existing building that may not have been considered within the field before. As a result, we reject the idea of proposing specific topics for each volume, and rather, ask scholars, architects, and students, to contribute theorizing case studies that they consider relevant for present and future practices.

One of the aims of the journal is the possibility of mapping emerging contemporary conservation practices or reinterpretations of existing building that may not have been considered within the field before. 

After we receive the articles, we frame them under common themes and provide explanations for conceptual innovations that they represent for the conservation field. On the one hand, we draw from historiography, theories of memory, and political theory for explaining and developing new interpretive methods. On the other hand, we select architectural works that are usually considered at the conceptual edge or outside of the traditional field. The final publication consists of interviews, theoretical essays, and cases-studies that provide new means for theorizing and designing architectural conservation projects.

Who runs the publication and how are the editors organized?

Since the beginning, Oblique has been the product of a collective effort of faculty and students at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. I founded the publication in 2016, and run it with the collaboration of past and present students of my seminar without which this publication would have not been possible. Other scholars and architects in the field have also provided us with invaluable advice and support. Professor Michael Hays helped us shape the journal at the early conceptual phase and continued to support us throughout its production. In addition, we counted with the support of the Harvard Prof. Charles Waldheim, the conservation architect and ex-president of DOCOMOMO US David Fixler, the distinguished engineer Prof. Robert Silman, and the Emeritus Prof. David Lowenthal.

The students collaborating with me in the first issue were Javier Ors as the main coordinator, Francesca Romana Forlini, and Yoonjee Koh, while in the second issue, they were Francisco Colom, and Enrique Aureng-Silva. At present, Francisco Brown and Francisco Colom are working on the production of the upcoming issue. Erica Rothman has been the text editor for the past and upcoming issues. Having been a student of the seminar, she has a deep understanding of the material, and her editions of texts go far beyond a pragmatic approach.

Is there any other medium to it but the printed object?

Due to our interest in the open dissemination of knowledge, Oblique is mainly an online journal that can be downloaded from www.criticalconservation.com with no costs for the audience. We also provide the possibility of acquiring the physical printed version through a printing by demand service, what allows us to reduce the prize to printing costs. However, we are currently transitioning to the online-version-only for the third issue after analyzing that this has been the preferred channel for our global audience. We are also present in Facebook and Instagram, were we keep our audience informed of news and upcoming events related to the publication.

How often is it released and what is the long-term goal of the publication?

Our philosophy is more idiosyncratic than it is for most periodic publications, and although the tendency has been to publish an issue per year, we do not impose in principle a timeframe. Our objective is long-term in nature: we are providing consistent theories and examples for a renewed understanding of architectural conservation that will be built overtime, and in this sense the issues are produced prospectively. We also believe that this flexibility is beneficial for the quality of the content, and for absorbing the natural contingencies of life of everyone voluntarily contributing to this publication.

Insisting on this philosophy, first, rather than having a specific call for papers we are always open to receiving proposals and inviting new people with their own interests. Second, we do not have a specific limit to the amount of articles that we include in every issue; the length rather depends on a qualitative criterion such as how certain themes or approaches create interesting dialogues within one issue. Third, we tend to include new people on the working team each year in order to bring in fresh ideas. The most precise answer I can give you is that each issue is released when we consider that we have received and processed enough innovative material to make a strong contribution to the architectural conservation field.

What has been the most interesting issue in your eyes so far?

The second issue of the publication has one of the latest articles written by the distinguished professor and conservation theorists David Lowenthal, who passed away last year at the age of 95. We invited him to deliver a lecture at the Harvard GSD in 2014 and to publish a revisited version of “Material Preservation and It’s Alternatives” on the second issue of Oblique. This piece was highly influential in the 1980s, and we discussed and agreed with us on the possibility of rethinking it from the present and publish it in Oblique. His contribution to the theorization of the field has been immense. From the challenging of the dichotomy between cultural and natural heritage, the development of the notion of intangible heritage, and the questioning of the uses and abuses of the past in nationalistic discourses. With the publication of his revised article, we wanted celebrate his generosity contribution to knowledge.

This issue also contains an interview with Anne Lacaton conducted in person by Francesca Romana Forlini. The interview deepens on Lacaton’s ideological position on architectural conservation. Through a discussion of her Parisian project LE PLUS, she explains her preference for recycling existing buildings and for putting conservation at the services of specific social needs.

What weaknesses does the publication have?

Oblique is conceived in a way that is remarkably resilient: we do not impose rigid timeframes, neither constraining themes, we continuously incorporate new people who are inspired by the project, and it does not represent a big economic burden. Therefore, in the material sense, we do not foresee many obstacles for its continuation.

...our biggest challenge is the correct transmission of its message and purpose. 

However, our biggest challenge is the correct transmission of its message and purpose. The traditional understanding of conservation, limited to the material, aesthetic, and documental functions of architectural heritage are not within the main interests of this publication. What we are doing is to develop a complementary ideological and socio-political dimension that we consider fundamental for our present, and has not received enough attention throughout the 20th century when the field was institutionalized through standards and academic institutions. We are aware that Introducing the publication as an architectural conservation journal is limiting because it sets certain expectations for the audience, however, at the same time, we think that the misalignment of its content and approach with the readers’ expectations is also its greater strength.

How involved is the affiliated academic institution?

The journal, although based at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, is independent from this institution and it does not aim to represent the institution or the conservation program. We do count on the advice and support of some faculty interested in our work, and the journal is discussed with the GSD community through the students’ group Time Matters, and produced with the contribution of present students and alumni, but we are building a body of knowledge that is distinct, autonomous, and complementary to existing institutional views.

Tell us something someone would not know from turning the pages of the publication itself.

In 2017, the publication obtained the Haskell Award from the AIA New York Center for Architecture that allowed us to print a stock and assure its digital perpetuation. That year we were invited to present the journal at the Chicago architectural Biennial and to the Chile’s Architectural Biennial. This year, we are presenting some of its views at the University of Southern California’s Spring Lecture Series in April.