Architecture matters: Doing television history at ground zero

Abstract

This article grounds television historiography within physical places of television, arguing that they function as vantage points that offer raw access into television's past and unearth politicized histories of television. Making use of material culture approaches as interventions within the politics of television history writing, the article treats the Television Centre in Bucharest as a historical record that offers insights into what has been discarded, silenced or taken for granted in the writing of television history under a repressive regime. Looking at how the Television Centre was planned and lobbied for, how it was built, designed and prepared for production and how it accommodated everyday work practices, the article traces how television in communist Romania challenged the politics of the regime and of the nation state.