Guest Speakers: Can Bilsel and Juliana Maxim Professors of Architecture
MLTW/Moore Turnbull, Church Street South Housing, New Haven, Connecticut, 1966-1969, view of Station Court. Photo: Lawrence Speck. Published in Patricia A. Morton, “Public Life and Public Housing: Charles Moore’s Church Street South”
In October 2018, Friends of San Diego Architecture welcomed Can Bilsel and Juliana Maxim, Professors of Architecture at the University of San Diego, to speak about a book they were co-editing. This book, Architecture and the Housing Question was published recently (Routledge), so we invited them back to discuss “the mechanisms whereby architecture has come to frame the question of housing in its social and political implications.” Their talk will cover a selection of case studies from several countries included in the book.
How have architects acting as housing experts helped alleviate or enforce class, race, and gender inequality?
What are the implications of taking on shelter for the multitude as an architectural assignment and responsibility?
Can Bilsel and Juliana Maxim
Can Bilsel, Professor of Architecture at USD, is specialized in histories of modern architecture, modern housing, museum displays, histories of archaeology, the repatriation material culture and the intersections of architecture and politics in Europe and the Middle East. His first book, Antiquity on Display: Regimes of the Authentic in Berlin’s Pergamon Museum was published by Oxford University Press. Before joining the University of San Diego, Bilsel completed his Masters at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and PhD in Architecture at Princeton University, and was a Fellow at the Getty Research Center in Los Angeles for two years. Shortly after Bilsel arrived at the University of San Diego he and his colleagues designed a B.A. in Architecture Program. For nearly a decade, Bilsel served as the Chair of the Department of Art, Architecture and Art History, and founding director of the University of San Diego’s Architecture Program. Starting with a small space in the lower level of Camino Hall, the students now also occupy a new 2000 square foot studio building designed by Rob Quigley, FAIA. Housed with the Visual Arts and Art History Programs, the Architecture Program provides not only a strong foundation in liberal arts education, but also prepares students for academic and career paths in architecture and allied fields.
Juliana Maxim, Professor and Chair of the Art, Architecture + Art History program at USD, is an art and architectural historian whose work focuses on the history of modern aesthetic practices — from photography to urbanism — under the communist, centralized states of the Soviet Bloc. She completed her PhD dissertation in the history, theory and criticism of architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2006. Maxim was a recipient of the National Council for East European and Eurasian Research Award (2008–10) and was an American Council for Learned Societies post-doctoral fellow (2012–13). Her latest book titled The Socialist Life of Modern Architecture: Bucharest, 1948–1965 (Routledge), explores the intense and multifaceted architectural activity in postwar Romania and the mechanisms through which architecture was invested with political meaning. Maxim also contributes critical essays about contemporary art and architectural practices on both sides of the US-Mexico border.
Our lecture will be held in the auditorium at the NewSchool of Architecture and Design at 1249 F Street in downtown San Diego.
Please arrive 10-15 minutes early for coffee, snacks, and catching up with old friends. The event is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served. A $5 donation is requested.
