Sylvia Lavin: From the Postmodern to Postmodernization (on-line)

While the history of architectural postmodernism constantly addresses primarily the problems of visual style, the radical impact of postmodernization on architectural practices continues to be largely overlooked. The book Architecture Itself and Other Postmodernist Myths foregrounds the information-driven logic of the late twentieth century within the counter-narrative of postmodern architecture.

Sylvia Lavin received her doctorate in 1990 from the Department of Art and Archaeology at Columbia University, after receiving fellowships from the Getty Center, Kress Foundation, and Social Science Research Council. Her first two books, Quatremère de Quincy and the Invention of a Modern Language of Architecture (1992) and Form Follows Libido: Architecture and Richard Neutra in a Psychoanalytic Culture (2005), were published by MIT Press. Her most recent publications include Kissing Architecture (Princeton University Press, 2011), Flash in the Pan (AA Publications, 2014), and Architecture Itself and Other Postmodernization Effects (Spector Books, 2020). Lavin is also an active curator of architecture and design, having curated, among other exhibitions, Architecture Itself and Other Postmodernist Myths (CCA, Montreal, 2018) and Everything Loose Will Land (MAK/Schindler House, Los Angeles; Yale School of Architecture, New Haven; Graham Foundation, Chicago, 2013–14). She serves as a professor of architecture at Princeton University, having previously directed the master's and doctoral programs at the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, which she led from 1996 to 2006. Sylvia Lavin is the recipient of the Arts and Letters Award in Architecture, awarded by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The lecture will take place via Zoom, register for the event here