Symposium Chapter 2:
Plantation Architectures
Istituto Svizzero, Rome, March 2026

The second chapter of the Voyaging Vapors symposium took place in Rome. Take a look a the instagram page for a review of our favorite bits: @voyagingvapors and stay tuned for a youtube page with recordings from the livestream.

Keynote lecture by: Sylvia Lavin (Princeton University)
Workshop by: Giah De los Reyes-Geronimo "Residues of Touch"
Guided tour by: Angela Gigliotti (Syracuse Architecture) and Ilyas Azouzi (Istituto Svizzero)

Program:

Session 1

"Call it by its name: shaping a Ticinese plantation architecture in the Italian Kingdom (1887–1947)
" Angela Gigliotti, Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences, ETH Zurich and Syracuse University

"Fugitive Conquerors: Palms from Exotic Ornament to Ecological Actor" Francesca Frassoldati, Politecnico di Torino; Valentina Labriola, Politecnico di Torino and Tsinghua University, Beijing

"Re/Claimed: Dredging Settler Colonial Plantations in Florida and Italy" Vyta Pivo, University of Miami

Response: Sylvia Lavin, Princeton University

Session 2

"Spatial Conversion. From the garden of the enslaved on a Bahian coffee plantation, to the villa park gardens of a Swiss bourgeois city" Denise Bertschi, Collegium Helveticum

"Unruly Plant Histories: Manoomin from the Great Lakes to the Kew Waterlily Pond" Émélie Desrochers-Turgeon, Dalhousie University

"From Sundanese Tea Plantations to World’s Fair: Local Material Culture and its Imperial Refiguration in Chicago 1893" Geraldus Martimbang, TU Munich

"Pineapple Architecture: Performing Plantation Histories in São Miguel Island" Fernando P. Ferreira; Daniel Duarte Pereira, Space Transcribers

Response: Ilyas Azouzi, Istituto Svizzero

Session 3

"Plantation Architectures in Colonial Goa: The Spatial Politics of Conversion, Caste, and Extraction" Nuno Grancho, University Institute of Lisbon, DINÂMIA’CET – IUL, Lisbon, Portugal; The Royal Danish Academy, Copenhagen, Denmark

"Soft Crop, Hard Labor: An Ottoman Imperial Farm and the Circulation of the American Plantation System across the Empires" Asya Ece Uzmay, Cornell University

"Sugar and Coffee: Two Lives of Paulista Plantations" Cecília Resende Santos, Columbia University

"Reclaiming the Smokehouse: Appropriating Colonial Architecture for Living Heritage in the Banda Islands, Indonesia" Joëlla van Donkersgoed, University of Luxembourg

Response: Eva Schreiner, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz - Max-Planck-Institut

Session 4

"Sharp gradients: comparing Saint Domingue (Haiti)’s and Jamaica’s co-located spas, hothouses, hospitals and early imperial botanic gardens" Finola O’Kane, University College Dublin

"The Proefstation: Rubber Research Center, in Medan, East Sumatra in the Twentieth Century" Budi Agustono and Muhammad Rasyidin, University of Sumatera Utara, Indonesia

"Staging the Subtropics: Tsikhisdziri Limonarium and the Architecture of Citrus Monoculture" Salome Katamadze and Duccio Fantoni, Politecnico di Milano

"Thirsty plants: irrigating plantations and the architecture of water" Davide Martino, Université Libre de Bruxelles

Response: Sascha Roesler, Università della Svizzera italiana

Session 5

"Nitrogen Wonder. Cultural Film, Soil Fertility, and the Scaffolding of Optimal Growth" Ella Neumaier, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)

"Plantation Legacies and Urban Design: Medan’s Transformation from Deli Plantations to the 'Paris van Sumatra'" Sri Shindi Indira, Sumatra Heritage Trust / National Institute of Science and Technology

"The Bamboo that Made Made in Italy" Rebecca Carrai, KU Leuven

Response: Ewan Harrison, University of Manchester

Lecture at Syracuse Architecture, Florence, Feb 2026

Thanks to Syracuse Architecture in Florence for giving me the chance to share my research in progress for Voyaging Vapors.

Visiting Kawan Pustaha in Yogyakarta,
Feb 2026

Will, Rasyid, and Stella visited the group known as Kawan Pustaha (Friends of Writing) in Yogyakarta, as preparation for their upcoming research visit to Switzerland in Summer 2026. Kawan Pustaha will join Sidd, Will, and Beranda Warisan Sumatra in the archives of the Völkerkundemuseum Zürich as they put together an exhibition at Villa Patumbah, opening in Spring 2027.

Lecture at University of North Sumatra (USU) in Medan, Feb 2026

Thanks to the Department of History for inviting me to give a lecture about my different research projects, great questions from the students and faculty.

Symposium Chapter 1: Plant Histories
Singapore Botanic Garden, January 2026

A dream come true to hold a symposium for Voyaging Vapors at the Singapore Botanic Gardens. Take a look a the instagram page for a review of our favorite bits: @voyagingvapors and stay tuned for a youtube page with recordings from the livestream.

Keynote lecture by: Sophie Chao (University of Sydney)
Workshop by: Giah De los Reyes-Geronimo "Thinking with Nipa Palms"
Workshop by: Lily Chishan Wong "Rubberizing Histories"
Artist talk by: Yutong Lin
Guided tour by: Nura Abdul Karim (Singapore Botanic Gardens)

Program:

Session 1

"The States of Rubber: Transporting the Devil’s Milk from Southeast Asia to the Metropoles" 
Robin Hartanto Honggare, National University of Singapore

"From Gutta-Percha to Rubber: The Singapore Botanic Gardens and the Development of a Tree Crop" S.K. Ganesan, Singapore Botanic Gardens

"Failed Ficuses: Circulations of Rubber-Producing Plants and the Horticultural Construction of South Florida, 1896-1950" Lily Chishan Wong, University of Miami

Response: Ying Zhou, University of Hong Kong

Session 2

"The Activist Life of Hevea brasiliensis: RESEX and The Management of Post-productive Landscapes" Gabriela Sad, ETH Zürich

"Environmental Degradation and the Disintegration of Urban Heritage: A Spatial Transformation of Belawan Port" Asrilia Syahfira Lubis, Beranda Warisan Sumatra, Medan

"Rice, Polders, and Planthoppers: Rice as an Agent of Transformation in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta" Lizzie Yarina, Northeastern University

Response: Rixt Woudstra, University of Amsterdam

Session 3

"Botanical Resistance in the Brazilian Atlantic: Enslaved Women, Plant Practices, and Plantation Architectures" Ana Ozaki, University of Pennsylvania

"Vegetal Entanglements: Settler-colonial plant governance, biopolitics, and the material relations of a Garry Oak landscape" Sara Jacobs, University of British Columbia

"Hands in the Soil: Indo-Fijian Embodied Knowledge and the Living Plantation" Ipsita Dey, University of Washington, Seattle

Response: Jiat Hwee Chang, National University of Singapore

Session 4

“Lightly Plying the Globe: Tea Plantations, Birch Forests, and Plywood as Modern Material” Nushelle De Silva, Fordham University

“Cartographies of Contingency: The (un)making of plantation geographies in Colonial Indo-Burma” Debasish Borah, ETH Zürich

“Thinking-with Rattan: Material Histories and Contemporary Practices in Southeast Asian Furniture Design” Yun Teng Seet, Asian Civilisations Museum Singapore

Response: Lilian Chee, National University of Singapore

Session 5

“Hybrid Plantation, Hybrid Fruit: The Han Rambutan Orchard in Singapore” Chee Kien Lai, National University of Singapore

“Remapping tropicality: Chinese-Malaysian travelogues and world-making beyond extraction” Zhou Hau Liew, National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan

“Losing Sight of the Subaltern: The Spectral Historiographies of Malaya’s Rubber Plantations in Priyageetha Dia’s TURBINE TROPICS (2023)” Clara Lee, Northwestern University

Response: Siddharta Perez, NUS Museum

Workshop: Bahay Kubo, Kahit Munti!
Jan 2026

The Alfredo F. Tadiar Library and Puón in La Union, Philippines hosted a workshop by Will and Giah in January based on their collective research around the popular Filipino nursery rhyme: Bahay Kubo, Kahit Munti. The nursery rhyme encouraged children to learn all 18 of the vegetables of the traditional Philippine garden. The plants surround the quintessential Philippine house, the bahay kubo. The workshop delved into some of the histories of these plants, many of which or not native to the Philippines, and the narratives that surround the humble house of bamboo and nipa palm.

In the workshop participants made a group tapestry from the natural dye of the bahay kubo song vegetables with pictures and text. Many thanks to all involved!

Lecture at Manchester University, Nov 2025

Giving an invited lecture in my hometown was an honor, very grateful to Dr. Kim Förster for the invitation and the hosting of the department of architecture, as part of the Manchester Architecture Research Group lecture series.

"Melting Into the Jungle" was an overview of my forthcoming monograph Palm Politics: Warfare, Folklore, and Architecture (University of Texas Press).

Plants & People: Botanical Stories of Architecture, Sept-Dec 2025

I taught the Autumn semester history and theory course "Plants and People: Botanical Stories of Architecture" at the Academy of Architecture, Mendrisio. The course included an excursion to the Ticino palm groves and bamboo stands of Tegna (Ticino) led by the researchers from WSL Cadenazzo: Marco Conedera, Boris Pezzati, Vincent Fehr. The course ended with a workshop led by Milan-based Filipina artists Giah De los Reyes and Lea Bartolo on weaving Ticino palm leaves.

Course description:

Woven walls, thatched roofs, invading palms, highland camouflage: plants are part of global architectural histories in surprising ways. This course explores how plants have animated architectures of people and places around the world, examining colonial attitudes to land, health, resource extraction, and human coexistence through the lens of plants in architecture. In parallel to these historical and theoretical explorations, the course takes the local example of the Ticino palm (Trachycarpus fortunei), as example of a building material to experiment with in collaboration with local artists and researchers. Case studies will link Ticino to the tropics and vice versa, and will also draw on the research and activities of Dr. Davis’s SNSF project “Voyaging Vapors: Plant Histories of Plantation Architectures.” Plants provide a lens to critically assess architecture in its climates. In tropical places, soft materials like bamboo and palm are more environmentally sustainable and structurally resilient than concrete or steel; rising sea-levels mean that land itself is unstable, which means that architecture is also a problem of sovereignty. Under this definition, it is a way of seeing and comprehending physical environments and how humans place themselves within them. 

Learning together: presentations, reading, writing, harvesting, making.

More than Capitalism, July 2025

Organized by Dr. Tomas Bartoletti, "More than Capitalism" was a small conference at ETH Zürich. Speakers included: Stuart McCook, Aparajita Majumdar, Claudia Leal, Marta Macedo, Salma Abouelhossein, Hohee Cho, Corey Ross, among others.

I was happy to share new research and reflections on two model houses (scale model replicas of houses in Sulawesi and Sumatra) at the Heiden Museum in Appenzell.

Plantation Talks, May 2025

The second round of Plantation Talks took place in May 2025. The first was a sharing session held at the AVROS Museum in Medan with members of Beranda Warisan Sumatera and the Faculties of Architecture and History at Universitas Sumatera Utara, and a round table discussion at NUS Museum.

AVROS sharing session:

Kiki Maulana Affandi (History, Universitas Sumatera Utara)
Muhammad Rasyidin (History, Universitas Sumatera Utara)
Edy Saputra (Beranda Warisan Sumatera)
Junaidi Nasution (History, Universitas Sumatera Utara)
Indira Shindi (Beranda Warisan Sumatera)
Asrilia Syafira (Beranda Warisan Sumatera)
Isnen Fitri (Architecture, Universitas Sumatera Utara)
Inooi Nurazizah (Beranda Warisan Sumatera)
Siddharta Perez, Will Davis, Pina Haas (Voyaging Vapors)

NUS Museum roundtable:

ila (artist)
Faizah Zakaria (Southeast Asian Studies and Malay Studies, NUS)
Anthony Medrano (Environmental Studies, Yale-NUS College)
Robin Hartanto Honggare (Architecture, NUS)
Siddharta Perez, Will Davis, Pina Haas (Voyaging Vapors)

Photographs in Medan by Will Davis; in Singapore images courtesy of NUS Museum.

"I Will Burn Tuan’s House: Tobacco, Opium, and the Villa Patumbah"

Article by Will Davis published in Architecture Beyond Europe, Transactional Spaces special issue edited by Michael Faciejew and Rixt Woudstra, December 2024

Link to article: https://doi.org/10.4000/13937 

Abstract:

It could simply be that guilt, rather than philanthropy, was the reason that Anna Grob-Zundel, widow of the tobacco planter Karl Fürchtegott Grob, donated their luxurious family home Villa Patumbah to a charity organization in 1910. When asked why she had made this gift to Diakoniewerk Neumünster, she said that she could not live in a place built with the blood of enslaved hands. This paper considers the Zurich mansion, completed in 1885 to plans by the Swiss architects Chiodera and Tschudy, alongside the plantation in Sumatra on whose profits it was constructed. Rather than working backwards from villa to plantation, I shall consider the villa itself as a plantation by thinking through it alongside the planter economy that funded it. Here I take up Tania Murray Li and Pujo Semedi’s points, that the plantation is both “alien, strange, and unpredictable,” and yet it takes life under control, “space, time, flora, fauna, water, chemicals, people.” Western Europe’s colonial “reckoning” of recent years has provided new methodological opportunities for historians of built and destroyed environments, and in turn new forms of criticality for understanding sites in erstwhile metropoles and distant colonies. This paper reads material from the architectural archive: photographs from tobacco plantations in Sumatra alongside plans and drawings of the Villa Patumbah. Chiodera and Tschudy’s stylistic excesses ingratiated the Swiss public for the better part of a century, but material and metaphorical licentiousness also provides a lens for understanding the plantation in its European metamorphosis. In Switzerland, conditions of tropical violence were required for visitors to comprehend a tropics of material indulgence. Towards the end of this paper, a cryptic letter is translated. It is a clue: the villa is a site of colonial encounter without having to house the violence of the colonial act itself. Like the swirl of exhaled tobacco smoke, the plantation transmutes, absorbs, engulfs.

Out of Context workshop, Dec 2024

Plants. People. Earth. Buildings. The history of the global plantation is a history of things forced into unfamiliar contexts. In this open workshop, participants brought an object of their choosing made of naturally occurring material. By the end of the workshop these objects formed a collective story in the TAM space at the Academy of Architecture, Mendrisio.

Plantation Talks, Oct—Dec 2024

Plantation Talks explored the architectural legacies and realities of plantation landscapes in different geographies. The series invited speakers to share research that considered the plantation as conceptual model and practical method for understanding resource extraction in scarred landscapes. Budi Agustono (Universitas Sumatera, Indonesia) presented on the old town of Medan, the Kesawan, which rose to prominence during the late nineteenth-century tobacco boom in Sumatra. Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi (Barnard College, Columbia University, New York) discussed the abolitionist plantation for refugees from the Indian Ocean slave trade in the nineteenth century. Siddharta Perez and Rixt Woudstra presented their research as part of a workshop under the SNSF Voyaging Vapors working group.