Paper draft for gta papers, 2025.
How does one establish the price of a building project when several international parties are involved in its construction? What currency is to be used for this price tag, and what happens when the cost is exchanged across several national currencies? These questions became increasingly pertinent in the era of Bretton Woods. The system ensured the convertibility of global currencies to the US dollar tied to the value of gold and enabled the free circulation of goods, objects, and people. For architecture, this heralded a new era of international projects, carried out under the slogan of “development” and administered via the institutions of the World Bank. The Bank converted abstract “development” needs into concrete calculations of manpower, then matched them with necessary building programs—schools, universities, managerial institutions with a price tag, then constructed via tenders and contractors approved by the Bank.
This contribution is particularly interested in the complex layers of value “exchangeability” embedded in transnational architectural projects. Through a case study of the University of Zambia, a World Bank project co-sponsored by the Nordic countries, the essay proposes to conduct a long-durée financial investigation of a single architectural project, illustrative of the macro-economic logic of the Bretton Woods era. Based on the original archival sources, the essay builds on key focal points at which the building’s value was “exchanged” or “converted.” How were abstract societal needs translated into building programs and values of labour and materials converted across currencies? The essay argues that the financial negotiations of the project reflected the tacit priorities of the new capitalist world order translated via architecture, often endowed with nearly esoteric values. Zambia offers a particularly relevant case study since its rise and fall within the Western financial institutions reflected the precarious conditions of the seemingly immutable monetary system dissolved in 1971.