A Nation Builds Its Own Face: Eight Styles of Identity from Bosnia to Cambodia

Begin with an identity chosen from outside. After the Austro-Hungarian occupation began in 1878, the new administration used Moorish Revival as a deliberate political choice for public buildings, meant to promote a distinct Bosnian identity without recalling either the Ottoman Empire or the pan-Slavic movement. Its best known example is the Vijecnica in Sarajevo, built from 1891 to 1896.

Here the search for a national style came from Romanian architects themselves. Ion Mincu and Ion N. Socolescu were among those who tried to establish a specifically Romanian architecture, reacting against the French-inspired Classicist Eclecticism that had dominated, and the style reached its peak in the interwar period, in Bucharest and across Greater Romania.

Neo-Mudéjar looks back to a mixed heritage rather than a single national one. This late nineteenth and early twentieth century revival began in Madrid and Barcelona and spread through Spain and Portugal, bringing the horseshoe arch, arabesque tiling and abstract brick ornamentation onto the facades of modern buildings.

Heimatschutz ties identity to locality. It took shape around 1904, when the Deutsche Bund für Heimatschutz was established in Dresden, and rejected both historicist imitation and Art Nouveau ornament, using local materials such as brick in the north of Germany and wood in Alpine areas as a reformist reaction against industrial urbanization.

Noucentisme shows a regional identity defined partly against a rival movement. The term was coined in 1906 by Eugeni d'Ors, and the Catalan movement arose largely as a reaction against Modernisme, with Enric Prat de la Riba's La nacionalitat catalana among its foundational texts.

In Turkey the new republic and the old empire meet. Most prevalent between 1908 and 1930, this movement drew on Ottoman and Anatolian Seljuk architecture for modern buildings, led by architects including Ahmet Kemaleddin and Vedat Tek, and was most prevalent in the first decade of the Republic of Turkey.

Independence could also mean choosing a different foreign model. Jengki, or Yankee style, developed in Indonesia after independence and was popular from the late 1950s to the early 1960s. It reflected American influence after centuries of Dutch colonial rule, and Johan Silas has suggested it expressed the spirit of freedom among Indonesians.

End with a style tied closely to one political programme. In Cambodia, after independence from France in 1953 and the 1955 election win of Prince Norodom Sihanouk's Sangkum Reastr Niyum movement, New Khmer Architecture blended the Modern movement with the Angkor tradition and vernacular houses. It reached its height in the 1960s and ended abruptly in 1970 with Sihanouk's overthrow.