“Nature” in Architecture, Craft, Science was a roundtable discussion with historians and scholars organized to advance the topics of the exhibition. The roundtable focused on the definition, sites, and treatments of “nature” within three overlapping disciplines–architecture, craft, and science.

Participants

Graham Burnett is a historian of science, a writer/editor, and a 2013-2014 Guggenheim Fellow in residence as a Research Fellow at the Bard Graduate Center in New York City.

Christina Cogdell is Professor of Design at UC Davis. Her recent book Towards a Living Architecture? Complexism and Biology in Generative Design (University of Minnesota Press, 2018) examines architecture’s relation to recent scientific theories of self-organization and emergence, development and evolution, and complex adaptive systems.

Melissa Lo is a feminist historian of early modern science, medicine, and visual culture. As a freelancer, she writes about the politics of art, cultures of images, and histories of contentious knowledge. Based in Los Angeles, she serves as on the board of the Feminist Center for Creative Work.

Michael Osman is Associate Professor of architectural history at UCLA. He works on the technological, environmental, and economic aspects of architectural history in the twentieth century.

Jenni Sorkin is Associate Professor of art history at UC Santa Barbara. She writes on the intersections between gender, material culture, and contemporary art. Her current book project, Art in California, written for Thames & Hudson’s acclaimed World of Art series, will be released in the fall of 2021.