Livestream or Recording:

Design after Destruction: On Relocating, Rebuilding and Repairing

Elisa Dainese is a historian and theorist of architecture and urbanism. Currently an Assistant Professor of History and Theory of Architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology, she specializes in the history of the production and transnational circulation of architectural knowledge with a focus on cross-cultural exchanges between Europe, North America, and historically underrepresented communities, including ones in the sub-Sahara and, more recently, the Arctic. Her research and teaching deal with twentieth and twenty-first century architecture; cross-cultural exchange; Indigenous material cultures and epistemologies; western/non-western modernisms; collective memory, representation, and identity construction. She has published widely in architectural books and magazines (JSAH, JA, e-flux, Thresholds, Bauhaus, OASE, and Planning Perspectives), and her research has received grants and awards from Columbia University, the Bruno Zevi Foundation, CCA, SSHRC, GAHTC, the Graham Foundation, the University of Pisa, SESAH, and Georgia Tech. She is the co-editor of the collection entitled War Diaries: Design after the Destruction of Art and Architecture (University of Virginia Press, 2022) which examines the effects of violence on art, architecture, and cultural memory; and she is author of Africa Fever (forthcoming) in which she explores the key role that African traditions played in the historical and conceptual refashioning of modern and post-war Euro-American architecture. Dr. Dainese has served in research and professional boards, among them that of the Directors of the Society of Architectural Historians and is co-chair of the SAH 78th Annual International Conference.