Almost Nothing: A Reading & Conversation w/ Adrienne Economos-Miller and Sam Schuermann

This event will include three parts: a contextualizing introduction to Nora Wendl’s book “Almost Nothing: Reclaiming Edith Farnsworth” (University of Illinois Press, 2025) by Professor Adrienne Economos-Miller; an illustrated reading of excerpts of this book by Wendl; and a conversation between Professors Wendl, Economos-Miller, and Sam Schuermann on the themes and topics of the book. Almost Nothing is a critical history of the Edith Farnsworth House (Mies van der Rohe, Plano, Illinois, 1951) written in the form of an auto-theoretical memoir. As such, it engages in  topics and questions related to architectural historiography, feminism, preservation, memory, and authorship.

Biography

Nora Wendl
Associate Professor of Architecture
University of New Mexico,

Nora Wendl is an essayist, artist, editor, and associate professor of architecture at the University of New Mexico, where she teaches studio and theory.

Wendl’s work, across scales and media, subverts the received narratives that underpin architectural historiography, engaging feminist archival practices to create essays, books, installations, photographs and films that offer new forms and frameworks for historicizing built and unbuilt environments. These works have been supported by the Graham Foundation, Santa Fe Art Institute, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation, among other institutions. She has exhibited and published widely, and her most recent book, Almost Nothing: Reclaiming Edith Farnsworth (University of Illinois Press, 2025), was shortlisted for the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize. From 2021-24, she was the Executive Editor of the Journal of Architectural Education.