Madlen Kobi
Biographic Data
| ID | 669166 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Madlen Kobi |
| GIVEN NAMES | Madlen |
| FAMILY NAME | Kobi |
| SIGNATURE | KOBI M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Fribourg |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6644-4083 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 16 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Urban circularity in practice: Knowledge, relationships, and governance of building material reuse
Circular economy, a key concept of sustainable urban development, is generally discussed in relation to commodity production and consumption. This special issue, however, engages with circularity in the construction sector. From a social science perspective and by focusing on local, contextualized, and bottom-up perspectives, we outline ways in which governance, knowledge, and relationships shape and enable circular construction in contemporary c…
Building Shanghai in the borderlands: A visual approach to the restructuring of the Uyghur City in Xinjiang
Buildings and material infrastructure in cities are not just there; rather, they are embedded in complex political and social planning and construction contexts. In China, spatial transformations and urbanisation in its eastern and coastal regions have received a great deal of attention. This article investigates the relatively little explored urban development in China’s Northwestern Uyghur homeland of XUAR (Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region). B…
Urban energy landscape in practice: Architecture, infrastructure and the material culture of cooling in post-reform Chongqing, China
Until the 1990s and the spread of air-conditioning, cooling down during the hot, humid and windless summers in the city of Chongqing (Southwest China) was mainly practised outdoors: sleeping on the rooftops of multistorey buildings, playing mah-jongg in the streets, fanning oneself with a hand fan or installing bamboo beds in the compounds’ leafy courtyards. With the availability of affordable electricity and the popularisation of mechanical cool…
The spectacle of the Chinese city: Urban Atmospheres, the Built Environment and Everyday Practices
The Concrete Plateau: Urban Tibetans and the Chinese Civilizing Machine, written by Andrew Grant
In the rhetoric of the Chinese state, ethnic minorities are often represented in terms of folkloric or rural identities.Tibetans, for instance, are depicted by the state media wearing their colourful dresses and jewellery, drinking milk tea and herding yaks.In this book, Andrew Grant takes us to Xining, one of the many mid-sized cities in China's interior -or what he calls 'the Western periphery of China' -to narrate stories of urban Tibetans who…
Sensing the Cold: Biopolitics of Heating Infrastructures in Chongqing (China)
This mixed-media collaboration between artist Katja Jug and ethnographer Madlen Kobi foregrounds the infrastructural politics underlying changes to daily rhythms in frigid environments
Urban Climate Indoors: Rethinking Heating Infrastructure in China's Non-Heating Zone
The aim of this paper is to broaden the Eurocentric architectural history of climate control by introducing a discussion of the interrelation of architecture and thermal practices in the Southern Chinese “non-heating” zone. Based on a governmental policy that dates from the 1950s, China is divided into a heated North, where urban houses enjoy the amenities of a district heating infrastructure, and a non-heated South, which lacks this infrastructu…
Warm bodies in the Chinese borderlands: Architecture, thermal infrastructure, and territorialization in the arid continental climate of Ürümchi, Xinjiang
Architectural research often considers buildings as local material adaptations to climate, particularly when it comes to the analysis of architecture in rural and small-scale settlements. Based on ethnographic data from the rapidly urbanizing oasis metropolis Ürümchi in China’s northwestern borderlands, this paper goes beyond such a localized view of climate responsiveness. It analyzes how individual thermal practices of residents are linked to t…
Contours of an urban architectural anthropology: Built environment, climate control and socio‐material practices in winter in Chongqing (south‐west China)
The materiality of and daily life in urban high‐rise buildings has barely been researched, especially when compared to the rich anthropological and architectural studies that exist on rural architecture. This article engages with indoor climate control in an urbanising environment. It considers urban architecture as a social field characterised by the interaction of diverse actors such as architects, policymakers, investors and residents. Based o…
Constructing Cityscapes: Locality, Materiality and Territoriality on the Urban Construction Site in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Northwest China
Urbanization in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (Northwest China) has gained momentum in the last three decades. The Chinese government supports infrastructure development in this border region and construction sites have been emerging everywhere. Often framed as a planned nation-state project of sinicization from above, from an ethnographic perspective infrastructure development involves a much more diverse set of actors and their different mo…
Building transregional and historical connections: Uyghur architecture in urban Xinjiang
Economic investment and the growing immigration of Han Chinese from other parts of China to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region over the last three decades have increased the presence of eastern Chinese architecture in the urban built environment. This paper refers to the making of, residing in and speaking about the materiality of urban architecture by Turkic-speaking Muslim Uyghur middle-class actors. Besides creating personal comfort through…
The Rise of Xinjiang Studies: Ajasnew Author Forum
Perhaps no area of China-related scholarship has taken longer to recover from the access limitations of the mid-twentieth century than the study of Xinjiang. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the study of Xinjiang was so fashionable that it had a wide following in the Western popular press, where the region was better known as Chinese Central Asia, Chinese Turkistan, or Eastern Turkistan. When the turmoil of the Republican and…
Hayes, Anna Clarke, Michael: Inside Xinjiang. Space, Place and Power in China’s Muslim Far Northwest
Welche Altstadt und für wen: Urbane Transformation, soziale Stratifizierung und ethnische Repräsentationen in Kaxgar (China)
Urban space use and the perception of Kaxgar’s old town (P.R. China) are shaped by an intertwined process of material and social, perceived and imagined, politicized and economic realities. Based on ethnographic fi eldwork, this article discusses diff erent approaches to the construction and transformation of the old town space. In particular, it highlights interpretations of ethnic marginality, gentrifi cation, and touristic representation as ex…
Physical and Social Spaces 'Under Construction: Spatial and Ethnic Belonging in New Residential Compounds in Aksu, Southern Xinjiang
Urbanisation in Xinjiang in the last two decades has been accompanied by immigration, a real-estate construction boom and changing residential patterns. This paper discusses how the construction of new residential compounds occurs simultaneously to the construction of social, spatial and ethnic belongings in oasis towns in southern Xinjiang with a particular focus on the city of Aksu. While investment considerations and the promise of a modernise…
Urban energy landscape in practice: Architecture, infrastructure and the material culture of cooling in post-reform Chongqing, China
Until the 1990s and the spread of air-conditioning, cooling down during the hot, humid and windless summers in the city of Chongqing (Southwest China) was mainly practised outdoors: sleeping on the rooftops of multistorey buildings, playing mah-jongg in the streets, fanning oneself with a hand fan or installing bamboo beds in the compounds’ leafy courtyards. With the availability of affordable electricity and the popularisation of mechanical cool…
Physical and Social Spaces 'Under Construction: Spatial and Ethnic Belonging in New Residential Compounds in Aksu, Southern Xinjiang
Urbanisation in Xinjiang in the last two decades has been accompanied by immigration, a real-estate construction boom and changing residential patterns. This paper discusses how the construction of new residential compounds occurs simultaneously to the construction of social, spatial and ethnic belongings in oasis towns in southern Xinjiang with a particular focus on the city of Aksu. While investment considerations and the promise of a modernise…
The spectacle of the Chinese city: Urban Atmospheres, the Built Environment and Everyday Practices
Warm bodies in the Chinese borderlands: Architecture, thermal infrastructure, and territorialization in the arid continental climate of Ürümchi, Xinjiang
Architectural research often considers buildings as local material adaptations to climate, particularly when it comes to the analysis of architecture in rural and small-scale settlements. Based on ethnographic data from the rapidly urbanizing oasis metropolis Ürümchi in China’s northwestern borderlands, this paper goes beyond such a localized view of climate responsiveness. It analyzes how individual thermal practices of residents are linked to t…
Building transregional and historical connections: Uyghur architecture in urban Xinjiang
Economic investment and the growing immigration of Han Chinese from other parts of China to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region over the last three decades have increased the presence of eastern Chinese architecture in the urban built environment. This paper refers to the making of, residing in and speaking about the materiality of urban architecture by Turkic-speaking Muslim Uyghur middle-class actors. Besides creating personal comfort through…
The Rise of Xinjiang Studies: Ajasnew Author Forum
Perhaps no area of China-related scholarship has taken longer to recover from the access limitations of the mid-twentieth century than the study of Xinjiang. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the study of Xinjiang was so fashionable that it had a wide following in the Western popular press, where the region was better known as Chinese Central Asia, Chinese Turkistan, or Eastern Turkistan. When the turmoil of the Republican and…
Constructing Cityscapes: Locality, Materiality and Territoriality on the Urban Construction Site in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Northwest China
Urbanization in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (Northwest China) has gained momentum in the last three decades. The Chinese government supports infrastructure development in this border region and construction sites have been emerging everywhere. Often framed as a planned nation-state project of sinicization from above, from an ethnographic perspective infrastructure development involves a much more diverse set of actors and their different mo…
Welche Altstadt und für wen: Urbane Transformation, soziale Stratifizierung und ethnische Repräsentationen in Kaxgar (China)
Urban space use and the perception of Kaxgar’s old town (P.R. China) are shaped by an intertwined process of material and social, perceived and imagined, politicized and economic realities. Based on ethnographic fi eldwork, this article discusses diff erent approaches to the construction and transformation of the old town space. In particular, it highlights interpretations of ethnic marginality, gentrifi cation, and touristic representation as ex…
Physical and Social Spaces 'Under Construction: Spatial and Ethnic Belonging in New Residential Compounds in Aksu, Southern Xinjiang
Urbanisation in Xinjiang in the last two decades has been accompanied by immigration, a real-estate construction boom and changing residential patterns. This paper discusses how the construction of new residential compounds occurs simultaneously to the construction of social, spatial and ethnic belongings in oasis towns in southern Xinjiang with a particular focus on the city of Aksu. While investment considerations and the promise of a modernise…
Hayes, Anna Clarke, Michael: Inside Xinjiang. Space, Place and Power in China’s Muslim Far Northwest
Building transregional and historical connections: Uyghur architecture in urban Xinjiang
Economic investment and the growing immigration of Han Chinese from other parts of China to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region over the last three decades have increased the presence of eastern Chinese architecture in the urban built environment. This paper refers to the making of, residing in and speaking about the materiality of urban architecture by Turkic-speaking Muslim Uyghur middle-class actors. Besides creating personal comfort through…
The Rise of Xinjiang Studies: Ajasnew Author Forum
Perhaps no area of China-related scholarship has taken longer to recover from the access limitations of the mid-twentieth century than the study of Xinjiang. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the study of Xinjiang was so fashionable that it had a wide following in the Western popular press, where the region was better known as Chinese Central Asia, Chinese Turkistan, or Eastern Turkistan. When the turmoil of the Republican and…
Contours of an urban architectural anthropology: Built environment, climate control and socio‐material practices in winter in Chongqing (south‐west China)
The materiality of and daily life in urban high‐rise buildings has barely been researched, especially when compared to the rich anthropological and architectural studies that exist on rural architecture. This article engages with indoor climate control in an urbanising environment. It considers urban architecture as a social field characterised by the interaction of diverse actors such as architects, policymakers, investors and residents. Based o…
Constructing Cityscapes: Locality, Materiality and Territoriality on the Urban Construction Site in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Northwest China
Urbanization in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (Northwest China) has gained momentum in the last three decades. The Chinese government supports infrastructure development in this border region and construction sites have been emerging everywhere. Often framed as a planned nation-state project of sinicization from above, from an ethnographic perspective infrastructure development involves a much more diverse set of actors and their different mo…
Urban Climate Indoors: Rethinking Heating Infrastructure in China's Non-Heating Zone
The aim of this paper is to broaden the Eurocentric architectural history of climate control by introducing a discussion of the interrelation of architecture and thermal practices in the Southern Chinese “non-heating” zone. Based on a governmental policy that dates from the 1950s, China is divided into a heated North, where urban houses enjoy the amenities of a district heating infrastructure, and a non-heated South, which lacks this infrastructu…
Warm bodies in the Chinese borderlands: Architecture, thermal infrastructure, and territorialization in the arid continental climate of Ürümchi, Xinjiang
Architectural research often considers buildings as local material adaptations to climate, particularly when it comes to the analysis of architecture in rural and small-scale settlements. Based on ethnographic data from the rapidly urbanizing oasis metropolis Ürümchi in China’s northwestern borderlands, this paper goes beyond such a localized view of climate responsiveness. It analyzes how individual thermal practices of residents are linked to t…
Sensing the Cold: Biopolitics of Heating Infrastructures in Chongqing (China)
This mixed-media collaboration between artist Katja Jug and ethnographer Madlen Kobi foregrounds the infrastructural politics underlying changes to daily rhythms in frigid environments
The Concrete Plateau: Urban Tibetans and the Chinese Civilizing Machine, written by Andrew Grant
In the rhetoric of the Chinese state, ethnic minorities are often represented in terms of folkloric or rural identities.Tibetans, for instance, are depicted by the state media wearing their colourful dresses and jewellery, drinking milk tea and herding yaks.In this book, Andrew Grant takes us to Xining, one of the many mid-sized cities in China's interior -or what he calls 'the Western periphery of China' -to narrate stories of urban Tibetans who…
Building Shanghai in the borderlands: A visual approach to the restructuring of the Uyghur City in Xinjiang
Buildings and material infrastructure in cities are not just there; rather, they are embedded in complex political and social planning and construction contexts. In China, spatial transformations and urbanisation in its eastern and coastal regions have received a great deal of attention. This article investigates the relatively little explored urban development in China’s Northwestern Uyghur homeland of XUAR (Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region). B…
Urban energy landscape in practice: Architecture, infrastructure and the material culture of cooling in post-reform Chongqing, China
Until the 1990s and the spread of air-conditioning, cooling down during the hot, humid and windless summers in the city of Chongqing (Southwest China) was mainly practised outdoors: sleeping on the rooftops of multistorey buildings, playing mah-jongg in the streets, fanning oneself with a hand fan or installing bamboo beds in the compounds’ leafy courtyards. With the availability of affordable electricity and the popularisation of mechanical cool…
The spectacle of the Chinese city: Urban Atmospheres, the Built Environment and Everyday Practices
Urban circularity in practice: Knowledge, relationships, and governance of building material reuse
Circular economy, a key concept of sustainable urban development, is generally discussed in relation to commodity production and consumption. This special issue, however, engages with circularity in the construction sector. From a social science perspective and by focusing on local, contextualized, and bottom-up perspectives, we outline ways in which governance, knowledge, and relationships shape and enable circular construction in contemporary c…
Geography (14 works) · China (12 works) · Archaeology (11 works) · Political science (11 works) · China's Ethnic Minorities and Relations (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Engineering (6 works) · Anthropology (5 works) · Architectural engineering (5 works) · Architecture (5 works)