‘Architecture of Life’ author Alla Vronskaya to speak at ISU College of Design Aug. 26

08/12/22

AMES, Iowa — Alla Vronskaya, a professor of architectural history and theory at Kassel University in Germany, will kick off the Iowa State University Department of Architecture’s 2022-2023 Public Programs Series with a guest lecture on “Architecture of Life: Soviet Modernism and the Human Sciences.”

Vronskaya’s talk will be at 4 p.m. Friday, Aug. 26, in Kocimski Auditorium, 101 College of Design.

Presenting research from her new book of the same title, Vronskaya will examine how Soviet architects of the interwar period sought to mitigate Fordist production methods with other, ostensibly more human-oriented approaches that drew on the biological and psychological sciences.

About the speaker

Vronskaya holds a PhD in the history, theory and criticism of art and architecture from the Massachussetts Institute of Technology. Her research centers on the history of the theory of modern architecture, particularly in the Soviet Union and other state-socialist countries, with a focus on architecture’s engagement with modernism’s ideals of efficiency and productivity and their effects upon citizens and nature.

Vronskaya is the author of Architecture of Life: Soviet Modernism and the Human Sciences, forthcoming from the University of Minnesota Press. She is also an area editor for “The Former Soviet Union” section in The Bloomsbury Global Encyclopedia of Women in Architecture (Bloomsbury, in progress).

She was a member in residence at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, during the 2019-2020 academic year and a visitor there in summer 2022. She is a recipient of residential fellowships from the Getty Research Institute and Dumbarton Oaks Research Library as well as the MIT Presidential Fellowship and the Swiss Government Execllence Scholarship, among other awards.

Prior to joining Kassel University, Vronskaya was an assistant professor in the Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture and a visiting lecturer at ETH Zurich.

Contacts

Vladimir Kulić, Architecture, vkulic@iastate.edu
Kimberly Zarecor, Architecture, 515-294-5026, zarecor@iastate.edu
Heather Sauer, College of Design Strategic Communications, hsauer@iastate.edu

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August 12, 2022 12:35 pm

Tags: Lecture,Public Programs