Built Orders and World Polities: Mapping the Global Moravian Network

How did ‘the global’ emerge as a scale of human society? What types of architecture were used to traverse the physical and cultural distance that this scale engendered? This lecture explores these questions through the prism of the modern Moravian movement. It argues that the Moravians’ elaborate corporate geography—spanning the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries and all five continents except Antarctica—constituted a form of parallel globalisation. This geography was dependent upon a network of carefully constructed settlements and attendant infrastructures that has largely alluded architectural historians. This presentation introduces the main themes and questions of Jasper Ludewig’s fellowship in the “Architectures of Order” LOEWE research cluster.

Jasper Ludewig is a fellow in the LOEWE research cluster “Architectures of Order” during the 2021 summer semester. This talk marks the start of his fellowship.