Anna Bokov
CASA Fellow from October 2021–September 2022
Anna Bokov is a former member of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. She is a faculty member at the Cooper Union and the City College. Anna has taught at Parsons, Cornell University, Yale School of Architecture, Northeastern University, and Harvard Graduate School of Design. She worked as an architect and urban designer at OMA, NBBJ, Ennead, and the City of Somerville. She served as an editor for Project Russia and Project International magazines. Anna is a recipient of multiple awards, including the Mellon Fellowship, the Beinecke Research Grant, and the Graham Foundation Grant. Her scholarly work has been published by The Journal of Architecture, Perspecta, Walker Art Center Primer, MoMA Post, Palimpsest, Venice Biennale, Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, and Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. She holds a Ph.D. from Yale University, a Master of Architecture from Harvard Graduate School of Design, and a Bachelor of Architecture from Syracuse University. Anna's recent book Avant-Garde as Method: Vkhutemas and the Pedagogy of Space, 1920–1930 (Park Books, 2020) is dedicated to the Russian counterpart of the Bauhaus.
Avant-Garde as Method: Vkhutemas and the Pedagogy of Space, 1920-1930
Active in Moscow in the 1920s, the Higher Art and Technical Studios, known as Vkhutemas, translated radical experiments in art, architecture, and design into a systematized body of knowledge. This educational undertaking of unprecedented scale and complexity served as one of the major platforms for the institutionalization of the avant-garde movement. Dr. Bokov’s recent book Avant-Garde as Method: Vkhutemas and the Pedagogy of Space, 1920-1930 (Park Books: Zurich, 2020) examines this interdisciplinary design school through the lens of an ideological campaign for mass education and traces the development of a new pedagogical model based on the school’s “objective method.” This event will discuss the school’s decade-long existence and seeks to rediscover its vast creative legacy within the history of modernism.
