Beatriz Colomina
Howard Crosby Butler Professor of the History of Architecture
Director of Graduate Studies, Ph.D. Program
Director, Program in Media and Modernity
Titulo de Arquitecto and Ph.D., Escola Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Barcelona, Universidad Politécnica de Barcelona
Office: Architecture Building S114 (first floor)
Email: colomina@princeton.edu
Phone: 609-258-5021
Beatriz Colomina is an internationally renowned architectural historian and theorist who has written and curated extensively on questions of architecture, art, technology, sexuality, and media. She is the Howard Crosby Butler Professor of the History of Architecture, the founding director of the Media and Modernity program at Princeton University, and the Director of Graduate Studies (Ph.D. program) in the School of Architecture.
Her scholarly work has been published in more than 25 languages. Her books include Radical Pedagogies (MIT Press, 2022), X-Ray Architecture (Lars Muller, 2019), Are We Human? Notes on an Archeology of Design (Lars Müller, 2016), The Century of the Bed (Verlag für ModerneKunst, 2015), Das Andere/The Other: A Journal for the Introduction of Western Culture into Austria (MAK Center for Art and Architecture, 2016), Manifesto Architecture: The Ghost of Mies (Sternberg, 2014), Clip/Stamp/Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X-197X (Actar, 2010), Domesticity at War (MIT Press, 2007), Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media (MIT Press, 1994), and Sexuality and Space (Princeton Architectural Press, 1992).
Colomina has lectured extensively at universities, museums, biennales, festivals, and foundations on every continent—including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Architectural Institute of Japan, the Guggenheim in New York, the Center for Contemporary Art and Architecture in Stockholm, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the DIA Art Foundation in New York, Tate Britain in London, Harvard University, Yale University, Columbia University, ETH in Zurich, Delft University of Technology, Bauhaus University in Weimar, Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Lebanese American University, University of Beirut, Seoul University, Tongji University, Technion Institute of Technology in Haifa, Maxxi Museum in Rome, Universidad Catolica de Chile, University of Melbourne, and the South African Institute of Architects in Johannesburg.
She has curated a series of international exhibitions, based on archival and oral history research, as interfaces to communicate research to a wider audience with physical installations, digital platforms and new forms of publication. These exhibitions, many of which traveled to multiple international locations, include: Clip/Stamp/Fold (2006-2013), Playboy Architecture (2012-2016) and Radical Pedagogies (2014-2016). Colomina was the chief curator of Curated by Vienna: The Century of the Bed, a show involving a network of 22 art galleries in Vienna in 2014. In 2016 she was chief curator with Mark Wigley of the third Istanbul Design Biennial on the theme Are We Human? The Design of the Species and contributed an installation on the question of social media to the inaugural biennale of Architecture and Urbanism in Seoul, which opened in September 2017. Her latest exhibition Sick Architecture opened at CIVA in Brussels in 2022.
Colomina has been the recipient of diverse awards and fellowships, including the Samuel H. Kress Senior Fellowship at the CASVA (Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts), SOM Foundation, Le Corbusier Foundation, Graham Foundation, the CCA (Canadian Centre for Architecture), The American Academy in Berlin, the Getty Center in Los Angeles, the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, and the Wissenschaftkolleg in Berlin. She is on the advisory board of multiple institutions, including The Norman Foster Foundation in Madrid, The Istanbul Design Biennial, The Institute for Innovation and Creative Strategies in Architecture in Lyon, ARCH+ in Berlin, The Oslo Center for Critical Architectural Studies (OCCAS), Beyond Media in Florence,and The Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York. In 2005 she received the Princeton University President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching. In 2018 she was made Doctor Honoris Causa by the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and in 2020, she was awarded the Ada Louise Huxtable Prize for her contributions to the field of architecture. In 2022 she was inducted into the Royal Academy of Doctors of Spain.
