Vanessa Grossman

Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in Architecture (CASA) from August 2019–July 2020.

Biography

Vanessa Grossman is an architect, a historian, and a curator working on architecture’s intersections with ideology, power, and governance, with a special focus on global practices in Cold War era Europe and Latin America. In 2018, she completed her PhD in History and Theory of Architecture at Princeton University. She also holds a professional diploma in Architecture and Urban Planning from the University of São Paulo and a Master's degree in History of Architecture from the Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University. Before joining the CASA she taught at Princeton University, the University of Miami and the National School of Architecture of Versailles.

Grossman was the co-curator, together with Charlotte Malterre-Barthes and Ciro Miguel, of the 12th International Architecture Biennale of São Paulo (2019) titled Todo dia/Everyday. She was also the associate curator of Une architecture de l'engagement: L'AUA (1960–85) at the Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine in Paris (2015–2016), and the assistant curator of La modernité, promesse ou menace? the French Pavilion at the 14th Venice International Architecture Biennale (2014), which received a special mention from the jury. She worked on both exhibitions and their respective catalogs in collaboration with Jean-Louis Cohen.

Current Research

Her current book-length manuscript, tentatively titled “A Concrete Alliance: Communism and Modern Architecture in Postwar France,” investigates the long-lasting alliance established in the Cold War between architects and the French Communist Party (PCF), which found its fertile terrain in the formerly industrial peripheries of France's major cities, the banlieue. Covering almost two decades of architecture and urban history, the book project examines how Marxist attitudes toward social change and historical action, which dominated the conversation within the French Left, also had a concrete effect on the built environment, and in the languages and temporal inscriptions of modernism.

Her next research project arises organically out of her doctoral dissertation as an investigation, on the other side of the Cold War spectrum, of the relationship between architecture and political power during the Brazilian “miracle,” the spurt of economic growth and rapid urbanization under the rule of the military government (1964–1985). Based on a case study method, the research will scrutinize the fate of Brazilian modernism, and the implications for cities, landscapes, and natural resources, as a result of the politics of architecture and land that the military regime fostered.

Publications

Grossman is the author of A arquitetura e o urbanismo revisitados pela Internacional situacionista (Annablume/FAPESP, 2006, the recipient of the 8th Young Architects Award for Critical Essays by the São Paulo Department of the Institute of Architects of Brazil), Le PCF a changé! (B2, 2013), an introduction to Carlos Marighella’s Mini-manuel du guérillero urbain (B2, 2014) and the associate editor, with Jean-Louis Cohen, of AUA, une architecture de l’engagement, 1960–1985 (Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine/ Dominique Carré Éditeur/La Découverte, 2015) and of Modernity: promise or menace? France, 101 buildings, 1914–2014 (Institut français/ Dominique Carré Éditeur/La Découverte, 2014). Among her forthcoming books are Everyday: Stories, Resources and Maintenance in Architecture, with Charlotte Malterre-Barthes and Ciro Miguel (Ruby Press, 2020); L'Œuvre d’Oscar Niemeyer en France, with Benoît Pouvreau (Éditions du patrimoine, Collection Carnets d’architectes, 2020) and Architecture de Parti. Oscar Niemeyer à Fabien, 1965–1980 (Dominique Carré Éditeur/La Découverte, 2020).

Links

external pageGraham Foundation, Carter Manny Award 2015
external pageGraham Foundation, Everyday: Stories, Resources and Maintenance in Architecture (publication)
external pageThe International Architecture Biennale of São Paulo (12th BIA)
external pagee-flux, 12th International Architecture Biennale of São Paulo, Todo dia/Everyday