"Sites of Construction: Connected Histories"

We are please to announce the publication of Sites of Construction: Connected Histories, one of the concluding chapters of the EOS project Above and Beyond Construction History: What History Can Do for Construction History, edited by Laurence Heindryckx and Dave De ruysscher.

Sites of Construction: Connected Histories reconceptualises construction as a dispersed, multi-sited, and interdisciplinary field of practice. Challenging the traditional centrality of the building site, the book explores the many places, actors, institutions, intellectual realms and knowledge practices that shape the production of the built environment. The contributors illuminate how expertise, labour, regulation, and material flows are formed across a range of unexpected sites, from vocational schools and chambers of the investigating judge to distribution centres, business lunches, protest-filled streets, warehouses that temporarily housed colonial labourers, and depots storing surplus brick. Combining empirically grounded historical case studies with methodological reflection, this book reveals how construction was, and remains, constituted through networks of actors, institutions, and knowledge practices that operate far beyond the fence line.

Many thanks to the EOS researchers and authors: Igor Bloch, Tom Broes, Louis Debersaques, Michiel Dehaene, Simon De Nys-Ketels, Dave De Ruysscher, Rika Devos, Robby Fivez, Johan Lagae, Stephanie Van de Voorde, Mirte Wambacq, Ine Wouters, and everyone involved in the project.

We are equally grateful to the external contributors who helped enrich the volume through their distinctive perspectives: Réjean Legault, Christine Wall, Martin Kohlrausch, Linda Clarke, Lionel Devlieger, Carl H. Nightingale, Tijl Vanneste, Jean Souviron, Amit Srivastava, and Peter Scriver.

Details of the book launch will be announced soon. We look forward to celebrate the publication with contributors, colleagues, and friends of the project, and to continue the discussions sparked by this edited volume.

Sites of Construction: Connected Histories is now available:
https://www.borgerhoff-lamberigts.be/owl-press/shop/boeken/sites-of-construction-connected-histories

The book is Open Access, you can download it by clicking on the download icon on the left.

Heindryckx L, De ruysscher D (Eds.) Sites of Construction : Connected Histories. Gent: OwlPress; 2026.

Print and open access
241 mm × 172 mm, PDF
Paperback / softback
312 pages
Text in English
ISBN 9789493470118

Cover and design: Wouter van Nes