Demetra Vogiatzaki
I am a licensed architect-engineer and a historian of 18th-century architecture, holding a Ph.D. in History of Architecture from Harvard University. I currently hold a visiting lectureship position at the gta institute at ETH Zurich, while previously I have taught at Harvard University, UMass Amherst, Pratt Institute, and Wentworth institute.
My doctoral research focused on the politics of architectural imagination in the Enlightenment, while my current work is geared towards the critical infrastructure of the French colonial state in Canada. As a trained designer, I care deeply about architectural form, and my pedagogy revolves around the history and theory of architecture in its ecological, gendered, and colonial dimensions. I am particularly invested in questions of collectivity and collaboration, researching the theorization of these idea(l)s in the context of the French Enlightenment and beyond.
My interest in diversifying, decolonizing, and collectivizing historical narratives is by no means limited to my research. In 2023 I was elected Emerging Scholar Board Member-at-large at HECAA (Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture) following a three-year volunteering tenure at the HECAA Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee. I am a proud organizer of DocTalks (www.doctalks.net) spearheading the “DocTalks x MoMA” collaboration, which is currently running its third season, amplifying the voices of early career researchers. In the past years, I represented the Harvard Graduate School of Design in the Harvard-wide Mental Health Task Force, authoring concrete proposals on the enhancement of advising structures at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Finally, during the pandemic, I also joined forces with colleagues from various institutions on discussions and events foregrounding queer perspectives in design, and the importance of labor and social justice movements as part of the Queer Space Working Group initiative.
Feel free to reach out should you have questions or interest in participating in any of these initiatives.
My doctoral research focused on the politics of architectural imagination in the Enlightenment, while my current work is geared towards the critical infrastructure of the French colonial state in Canada. As a trained designer, I care deeply about architectural form, and my pedagogy revolves around the history and theory of architecture in its ecological, gendered, and colonial dimensions. I am particularly invested in questions of collectivity and collaboration, researching the theorization of these idea(l)s in the context of the French Enlightenment and beyond.
My interest in diversifying, decolonizing, and collectivizing historical narratives is by no means limited to my research. In 2023 I was elected Emerging Scholar Board Member-at-large at HECAA (Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture) following a three-year volunteering tenure at the HECAA Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee. I am a proud organizer of DocTalks (www.doctalks.net) spearheading the “DocTalks x MoMA” collaboration, which is currently running its third season, amplifying the voices of early career researchers. In the past years, I represented the Harvard Graduate School of Design in the Harvard-wide Mental Health Task Force, authoring concrete proposals on the enhancement of advising structures at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Finally, during the pandemic, I also joined forces with colleagues from various institutions on discussions and events foregrounding queer perspectives in design, and the importance of labor and social justice movements as part of the Queer Space Working Group initiative.
Feel free to reach out should you have questions or interest in participating in any of these initiatives.
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Published Essays by Demetra Vogiatzaki
Key episodes from his work on French architecture in the 1930's are examined here against the backdrop of his early research collaborations, which centered on post-colonial buildings in the United States. Considering that some of Kimball's greatest contributions to the field pertain to themes of creative authorship and labor distribution in 18th-century architecture, this closer look at his own relationships and dependencies is an opportunity to reflect on the historiographical ramifications of authoriality, and the often unstated value of collaboration in historical research. Most importantly, ti enables us to question the singularity of the creative subject, looking at the broader networks of support that make writing history possible.
In 1499, the editio princeps of Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, or, Poliphilo’s Strife for Love in a Dream, made its enigmatic appearance in the renowned press of Aldus Manutius in Venice. Poliphilo was a lover of architecture and, above all, a heartbroken man who fell asleep and dreamed. He dreamed of a magic world made up of dense forests, heavenly islands, and countless outlandish monuments populated by promiscuous nymphs and sinister dragons. Perhaps the most curious, and as a consequence, the most scrutinised objects produced by Poliphilo’s prolific imagination are the marvelous architectural projects that populate this dreamworld; monuments impossible in both conception and execution that forge fragments of classical architecture into excessive (in scale), obsessive (in detail), and unlikely (licentious) combinations. Amplified by its enigmatic authorship, the elaborate continuum of architecture and dreams staged by Hypnerotomachia put significant pressure on the status quo of architecture, right at the moment of its definition as a reborn, rational discipline.
Conference Panels by Demetra Vogiatzaki
Drawing inspiration from quilts, and collaborative creative practices, this workshop invites the HECAA@30 participants to reflect, exchange and experiment on the question of an equitable, inclusive, and expansive scholarship of eighteenth-century art and architecture. Participants will be divided in groups, each of which will work - or, “stitch” - resources and ideas, around a predetermined topic for one hour.
In small, moderated group discussions, participants will discuss one of six broad themes that have been compiled by the DEI committee. Overlap between these themes of professional and scholarly activity are encouraged; we expect that participants can learn from conversations about research, teaching, and curation in different contexts.
* image credit: Eighteenth-Century Patchwork Chair Seat Covers, 1700-1760. The Quilter's Guild Collection.
First used in English in Rev. John Wilkins’s Discovery of New World (1638) as a climatic term, the word atmosphere came to gradually yield its literal meaning to a figurative one over the course of the eighteenth century; by 1817 we find it in Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria denoting a ‘moral environment.’ Drawing from twentieth-century phenomenology, new aesthetics, and affect studies, contemporary theories of the atmospheric seem to oscillate between the two approaches in an attempt to map it in conceptual, aesthetic and philosophical terms, whether defining it as the intangible space that opens up ‘in-between’ the individual and the collective, or as a space that is increasingly conceived in its comprehensive ecological, racial, and gendered dimensions.
This session seeks to retrace the origins of an ideologically tense atmosphere by exploring how scientists, philosophers, artists, and architects -among others- began to envision and visualize the world ‘in-between’ in the Age of Reason. From the materialist contig/nuities of Diderot’s rêve to Mesmeric utopianism; from Bernulli’s Hydrodynamica to the urban response to the threat of miasma; and from Montesquieu’s political theory of climates to the climactic articulation of sensational interiors: what were the figurative, conceptual, and even material means mobilized to grasp the shifting notion of atmospheres in the eighteenth century? What was the role of non-Western perspectives and the agency of marginalized individuals or groups in its shaping? We particularly invite proposals that foreground the ideological repercussions of this atmospheric awareness in the arts and sciences of the time.
Session: How 'Byzantine' was the Eighteenth Century? New Insights on the Christian Orthodox Art and Architecture of the Late Ottoman Empire (Chairs: Demetra Vogiatzaki and Nikolaos Magouliotis)
Part I : Alper Metin, Theocharis Tsampouras (p. 7)
Part II: Alexandra Courcoula, Maria Georgopoulou, Cosmin Minea (p. 11)
The full program is avaliable at the following link:
https://www.asecs2022.org/_files/ugd/acf0d2_d9b207742a814758ae15737c05852348.pdf
Conference Presentations by Demetra Vogiatzaki
Coordinator/Instructor: Carrie Lambert-Beatty • Professor, History of Art, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Harvard University
Invited Talks by Demetra Vogiatzaki
https://www.cca.qc.ca/en/events/90881/reimagining-post-pandemic-collective-pedagogy-in-architectural-history
This presentation investigates the continuum of dreams and architecture staged in Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, a 1499 publication that exerted significant influence in art and architecture for more than two centuries. Published by the press of Aldo Manuzio, the bizarre narrative of Hypnerotomachia unfolds in a series of imaginary worlds dreamed up by the protagonist and is accompanied by 172 woodcuts, most of them illustrating monuments whose designs forge fragments of classical architecture into unlikely combinations. The painstaking, imaginative architectural descriptions and the elaborate illustrations of the book have sparked controversy regarding its authorship; most scholars contend that it was written by a monk, while others argue that an architect must have assisted in its preparation. Despite the importance of the book, to this day little work has been done on the architectural logic of the described forms, less so on their linkage to the associative and creative nature of dreams.
What is the role of the dream in the formation and presentation of these architectural compositions? In what ways did the fantastical designs of this fictional tale intersect with the system of rules subsequently articulated in architectural treatises?
Instructor: Panayotis Tournikiotis • Professor, Theory of Architecture, School of Architecture, National Technical University of Athens, Greece
Key episodes from his work on French architecture in the 1930's are examined here against the backdrop of his early research collaborations, which centered on post-colonial buildings in the United States. Considering that some of Kimball's greatest contributions to the field pertain to themes of creative authorship and labor distribution in 18th-century architecture, this closer look at his own relationships and dependencies is an opportunity to reflect on the historiographical ramifications of authoriality, and the often unstated value of collaboration in historical research. Most importantly, ti enables us to question the singularity of the creative subject, looking at the broader networks of support that make writing history possible.
In 1499, the editio princeps of Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, or, Poliphilo’s Strife for Love in a Dream, made its enigmatic appearance in the renowned press of Aldus Manutius in Venice. Poliphilo was a lover of architecture and, above all, a heartbroken man who fell asleep and dreamed. He dreamed of a magic world made up of dense forests, heavenly islands, and countless outlandish monuments populated by promiscuous nymphs and sinister dragons. Perhaps the most curious, and as a consequence, the most scrutinised objects produced by Poliphilo’s prolific imagination are the marvelous architectural projects that populate this dreamworld; monuments impossible in both conception and execution that forge fragments of classical architecture into excessive (in scale), obsessive (in detail), and unlikely (licentious) combinations. Amplified by its enigmatic authorship, the elaborate continuum of architecture and dreams staged by Hypnerotomachia put significant pressure on the status quo of architecture, right at the moment of its definition as a reborn, rational discipline.
Drawing inspiration from quilts, and collaborative creative practices, this workshop invites the HECAA@30 participants to reflect, exchange and experiment on the question of an equitable, inclusive, and expansive scholarship of eighteenth-century art and architecture. Participants will be divided in groups, each of which will work - or, “stitch” - resources and ideas, around a predetermined topic for one hour.
In small, moderated group discussions, participants will discuss one of six broad themes that have been compiled by the DEI committee. Overlap between these themes of professional and scholarly activity are encouraged; we expect that participants can learn from conversations about research, teaching, and curation in different contexts.
* image credit: Eighteenth-Century Patchwork Chair Seat Covers, 1700-1760. The Quilter's Guild Collection.
First used in English in Rev. John Wilkins’s Discovery of New World (1638) as a climatic term, the word atmosphere came to gradually yield its literal meaning to a figurative one over the course of the eighteenth century; by 1817 we find it in Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria denoting a ‘moral environment.’ Drawing from twentieth-century phenomenology, new aesthetics, and affect studies, contemporary theories of the atmospheric seem to oscillate between the two approaches in an attempt to map it in conceptual, aesthetic and philosophical terms, whether defining it as the intangible space that opens up ‘in-between’ the individual and the collective, or as a space that is increasingly conceived in its comprehensive ecological, racial, and gendered dimensions.
This session seeks to retrace the origins of an ideologically tense atmosphere by exploring how scientists, philosophers, artists, and architects -among others- began to envision and visualize the world ‘in-between’ in the Age of Reason. From the materialist contig/nuities of Diderot’s rêve to Mesmeric utopianism; from Bernulli’s Hydrodynamica to the urban response to the threat of miasma; and from Montesquieu’s political theory of climates to the climactic articulation of sensational interiors: what were the figurative, conceptual, and even material means mobilized to grasp the shifting notion of atmospheres in the eighteenth century? What was the role of non-Western perspectives and the agency of marginalized individuals or groups in its shaping? We particularly invite proposals that foreground the ideological repercussions of this atmospheric awareness in the arts and sciences of the time.
Session: How 'Byzantine' was the Eighteenth Century? New Insights on the Christian Orthodox Art and Architecture of the Late Ottoman Empire (Chairs: Demetra Vogiatzaki and Nikolaos Magouliotis)
Part I : Alper Metin, Theocharis Tsampouras (p. 7)
Part II: Alexandra Courcoula, Maria Georgopoulou, Cosmin Minea (p. 11)
The full program is avaliable at the following link:
https://www.asecs2022.org/_files/ugd/acf0d2_d9b207742a814758ae15737c05852348.pdf
Coordinator/Instructor: Carrie Lambert-Beatty • Professor, History of Art, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Harvard University
https://www.cca.qc.ca/en/events/90881/reimagining-post-pandemic-collective-pedagogy-in-architectural-history
This presentation investigates the continuum of dreams and architecture staged in Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, a 1499 publication that exerted significant influence in art and architecture for more than two centuries. Published by the press of Aldo Manuzio, the bizarre narrative of Hypnerotomachia unfolds in a series of imaginary worlds dreamed up by the protagonist and is accompanied by 172 woodcuts, most of them illustrating monuments whose designs forge fragments of classical architecture into unlikely combinations. The painstaking, imaginative architectural descriptions and the elaborate illustrations of the book have sparked controversy regarding its authorship; most scholars contend that it was written by a monk, while others argue that an architect must have assisted in its preparation. Despite the importance of the book, to this day little work has been done on the architectural logic of the described forms, less so on their linkage to the associative and creative nature of dreams.
What is the role of the dream in the formation and presentation of these architectural compositions? In what ways did the fantastical designs of this fictional tale intersect with the system of rules subsequently articulated in architectural treatises?
Instructor: Panayotis Tournikiotis • Professor, Theory of Architecture, School of Architecture, National Technical University of Athens, Greece
Abstract from the book:
"A discussion about the edges of sleep; where those in love regain their consciousness in one moment; where fairy tale landscape stretches out to the realm of sleep; where Little Red Riding Hood's forest is a Heimat (homeland); where Sleeping Beauty changes death into sleep."
Στο δοκίμιο αυτό επιχειρείται μια εναλλακτική ανάγνωση του συμβολισμού και της λειτουργίας της Καλύβας στο παραμύθι της Κοκκινοσκουφίτσας. Η ανάγνωση αυτή στηρίζεται στο βιβλίο του Michel Serres Το παράσιτο, που διερευνά πολύπλευρα τις παρασιτικές σχέσεις αποδίδοντάς τους φιλοσοφικές προεκτάσεις. Ύστερα από την έκδοσή του βιβλίου το 1980 πολλά πεδία, ανάμεσά τους και αυτό της αρχιτεκτονικής έβαλαν τον όρο παράσιτο στο λεξιλόγιό τους. Η ξύλινη Καλύβα και οι σχέσεις που αναπτύσσονται γύρω της χρησιμεύουν σαν αφορμή για να διερευνηθούν οι χωρικές προεκτάσεις της φιλοσοφικής θεώρησης του Serres και να αντιπαρατεθούν στις σύγχρονες αρχιτεκτονικές χρήσεις του όρου “παράσιτο”, εκθέτοντας την επιφανειακή λογική που στρέφεται γύρω από καθαρά μορφολογικές προκείμενες.