Book launch and discussion: Writing Architectural History

Please join the Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative and the Buell Center for an event marking the release of Writing Architectural History: Evidence and Narrative in the Twenty-First Century (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021). This event will feature discussant Matthew Jones (James R. Barker Professor of Contemporary Civilization at Columbia University) in conversation with editors Daniel Abramson (Professor in the History of Art and Architecture at Boston University), Zeynep Çelik Alexander (Associate Professor of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University), and Michael Osman (Associate Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the University of California, Los Angeles), moderated by Lucia Allais (Director, Buell Center).

Daniel Abramson is Professor of Architectural History and Director of Architectural Studies at Boston University.  He is the author of three monographs, most recently Obsolescence: An Architectural History (Chicago, 2016), as well as being co-editor of Writing Architectural History: Evidence and Narrative in the Twenty-First Century (Pittsburgh, 2021), his second volume with the Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative of which he is also a founding director.  Current work relates to the architecture of American government centers, citizenship, the state, and capitalism since 1900.

Zeynep Çelik Alexander is an architectural historian who teaches at Columbia University’s Department of Art History and Archaeology. She is the author of Kinaesthetic Knowing: Aesthetics, Epistemology, Modern Design (2017) and a co-editor of Design Technics: Archaeologies of Architectural Practice (2020) and Writing Architectural History: Evidence and Narrative in the Twenty-First Century (2021). She is also an editor of the journal Grey Room and a co-director of Columbia’s Center for Comparative Media. 

Matthew L. Jones is the James R. Barker Professor of Contemporary Civilization at Columbia University, where he focuses on the history of science and technology in early modern Europe and on recent information technologies. With his collaborator Chris Wiggins, he is completing How Data Happened, a history of the science, politics, and power of data, statistics, and machine learning from the 1800s to the present, to appear from Norton soon. Chicago published his Reckoning with Matter: Calculating Machines, Innovation, and Thinking about Thinking from Pascal to Babbage in 2016.

Michael Osman is Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture and Urban Design at UCLA where he currently directs the MA and PhD programs in architectural history. He is the author of Modernism’s Visible Hand: Architecture and Regulation in America (Minneapolis, 2018), as well as a co-editor of Writing Architectural History: Evidence and Narrative in the Twenty-First Century (Pittsburgh, 2021), developed under the auspices of the Aggregate Architectural History collaborative. His current work focuses on the political economies of construction.

This event will be presented in-person (Room 114 of Avery Hall on Columbia University’s Morningside Campus) for Columbia University affiliates with a Green Pass, and can be joined virtually by the general public; please register in advance for the Zoom: webinar link here.

The in-person event is open to Columbia University affiliates with a Green Pass. Virtual participation by Zoom Webinar does not require an account; advanced registration is encouraged. GSAPP is committed to providing universal access to all of our virtual events. Please contact events [​at​] arch.columbia.edu to request disability accommodations. Advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility needs.