The Long 2020: Daniel Barber, Beatriz Colomina, and David Gissen

Join us for a conversation with Daniel Barber (University of Pennsylvania), Beatriz Colomina (Princeton University), and David Gissen (The New School) as part of our Spring series, The Long 2020. Barber will discuss how the pandemic—and the inequities it mirrored and intensified—has begun to change the discussion around architecture and climate. Colomina will discuss the history of modern architecture and disease, tuberculosis in particular, engaging Alvar Aalto’s idea that the architect should always design for the person in the weakest position. Gissen will question the often narrow and curative character of “healthy” and modernized architectural environments through a critical politics of human impairment and disability.

If you plan to attend, please register for the Zoom webinar here.

Virtual event: Once the event starts you can join the Zoom webinar, view the live video below, or watch on our YouTube channel.

About the Speakers:

Daniel Barber is Associate Professor of Architecture and Chair of the Graduate Group in Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design. His research and teaching are organized around two major trajectories: the first involves an archivally-rich revisionist history of architectural modernism, demonstrating the significance of environmental concerns to historical developments in the field. The second involves providing a theoretical framework for architects and others to engage the climate crisis. Barber’s latest book, Modern Architecture and Climate: Design Before Air Conditioning (Princeton 2020) explores how leading architects of the twentieth century incorporated climate-mediating strategies into their designs, and shows how regional approaches to climate adaptability were essential to the development of modern architecture.
 
Beatriz Colomina is Founding Director of the interdisciplinary Media and Modernity Program at Princeton University and Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the School of Architecture. Her books include Are We Human? Notes on an Archeology of Design (Lars Müller 2016), The Century of the Bed (Verlag für Moderne Kunst 2015), Das Andere/The Other: A Journal for the Introduction of Western Culture into Austria (MAK Center for Art and Architecture 2016), Manifesto Architecture: The Ghost of Mies (Sternberg 2014), Clip/Stamp/Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X-197X (Actar 2010), Domesticity at War (MIT 2007), Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media (MIT 1994), and Sexuality and Space (Princeton Architectural Press 1992).
 
David Gissen is a Professor of Architecture and Urban History at The New School Parsons School of Design, where he works at the intersection of architecture, history, and experimental design. Gissen is the author of several books, including a materialist exploration of architecture and urban environmental degradation, Subnature: Architecture’s Other Environments (Princeton Architecture Press 2009) and a history of New York City told through the design of the city’s air, Manhattan Atmospheres (Minnesota 2014).