April 16-17, 2010
This inaugural Buell Conference on the History of Architecture considered emerging directions in scholarly publishing on architecture and related fields within the North American academy. Conceived bibliographically, the conference brought together recent authors on diverse subjects to present new, unpublished work to be discussed in relation to their books and those of their colleagues. Its subject matter encompassed architecture, urbanism, and modernity broadly understood.
Publication remains central to maintaining those overlapping spheres in which discourse forms, circulates, is reproduced, and is contested. By inquiring into different modes of history writing, the conference explored interactions between architectural scholarship, interdisciplinary exchange, and shifting discursive contours.
In particular, the conference asked: What kinds of intellectual constellations, if any, are forming in the new scholarship? What are their primary concerns, their premises, and their debates? What role(s) do books play in these formations? At a time when academic publishing is under increased pressure, the conference also affirmed the contributions made by such work to defining the parameters of academic inquiry more broadly, and of architecture and urbanism more specifically.
Friday, April 16
2:00 - 2:15 Welcome and Introductory Remarks
Reinhold Martin, Director, Buell Center, Columbia University
2:15 - 4:15
Daniel M. Abramson, Tufts University, "Books and Buildings: Obsolescence and Sustainability"
Richard Wittman, University of California, Santa Barbara, "Space, Information, and the Public Sphere"
Response: Ed Eigen, Princeton University,
4:30 - 6:15
Erika Naginski, Harvard University, "Desprez’s Linneanum: Classification, Hybridization and the Question of Architectural Order"
David Serlin, University of California, San Diego, "Experiencing Architecture and Embodying Citizenship in the Early Republic"
Response: Can Bilsel, University of San Diego
Saturday, April 17
9:15 - 11:00
Hadas Steiner, University of Buffalo, "Birds of a Feather"
Larry Busbea, University of Arizona, "Arcosanti vs. Onecity"
Response: Mary Louise Lobsinger, University of Toronto
11:15 - 1:00
Jennifer S. Light, Northwestern University, "Building Virtual Cities: 1895-1945"
Jonathan Massey, Syracuse University, "What Is a House?"
Response: David Smiley, Barnard College
2:00 - 3:45
Brian L. McLaren, University of Washington, "Modern Architecture, Colonialism and Race in Fascist Italy"
Joanna Merwood-Salisbury, Parsons The New School for Design, "Inventing Early Modern Architecture at the Museum of Modern Art"
Response: Claire Zimmerman, University of Michigan
3:45 - 5:30
Tom McDonough, Binghamton University, "Beyond the Quotidian: Narratives of Modern Architecture and Everyday Life in France"
Aron Vinegar, The Ohio State University, "Habitations: On Bodily Habit and Architecture"
Response: Zeynep Çelik Alexander, Columbia University
