cities -- urbanity -- design
Design and Building Histories
The idea that we design our buildings and they design us is commonplace, but incomplete. After all, the relationship between people and built environments is never predictable, straightforward, or determinative. Just as often, we inhabit landscapes that we did not design, and we are compelled to adapt them to new needs and desires. I studied architectural history with Henry Glassie, one of the founders of the field of Vernacular Architecture, and with the cultural historian Casey Blake. From them I learned methods in the close study of buildings and sites, and to pay attention both to the ordinary buildings and landscapes that surround us in our everyday lives, and to the cultural, social, and political forces that shape our built environments.
"Queens is the Future." Introduction to Rafael Herrin-Ferri, All The Queens Houses. (Berlin: Jovis, 2021).
"Living in the Diagram: Colonia Federal and Urban Planning in Twentieth Century Mexico City." Published online in the Journal of Urbanism, 31 May 2020.
The Science and Art of City-Making. The Model Street at the 1904 World's Fair." In Robert Freestone and Marco Amati, eds., Exhibitions and the Development of Modern Planning Culture (London: Ashgate Press, 2014).
The Promenade Plantée: Politics, Planning, and Urban Design in Post-Industrial Paris.Journal of Planning Education and Research 33, 2 (2013).
"Ephemeral City: Design and Civic Meaning at the 1904 World's Fair." Journal of Design History 26, 1 (2013).
"Heritage in the Dynamic City: The Politics and Practice of Conservation on the Swahili Coast." International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 37, 1 (2012).
Dust and Design "The Architecture of the Farm Security Administration Migrant Camps, 1937 - 1942." Special issue of Onsite Review on "Architecture and Dirt," (Fall 2011).
Film. The Pruitt-Igoe Myth. Directed by Chad Friedrichs, released 2011. Substantial contributor of research and expertise, on-air informant, frequent panelist at screenings.
Building Typology Performance Study. New York site supervisor for national study undertaken by the Preservation Green Lab and the National Trust for Historic Preservation, September 2011 - May 2012
"In the Nature of a Clinic: The Design of Early Public Housing." Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 70, 1 (March 2011).
"Berlin and Vienna did—can St. Louis? The Transatlantic Moment in Mass Housing, 1920-1960." Lecture at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. November 2010
"The Value of Architecture: Bruce Lindsey Brings the Lessons of the Rural Studio to the Metropolis." Metropolis magazine, May 2007.
"Score One for Modernism." Planning 72, 11 (December 2006).
"Vertical City: The Life and Design of Pruitt-Igoe." Curator.
Constructing the World's Fair. Gateway Heritage (April 2004).