Introduction

This interdisciplinary conference brings together scholars studying the survival and the demise of structures, landscapes, and cityscapes in the societies bordering the Pacific basin in a period marked by an increased European presence. Some participants will consider the role climate and geology played in constraining the ambitions of the Pacific area’s residents and shaping its architecture. Others will focus on conflicts over the built environment among “big business,” colonizers, and indigenous populations; the determination of creole populations to put their stamp on a recalcitrant physical environment; and the way historical memory has been molded by surviving buildings and surviving buildings have been refigured by historical memory.