Keynote lecture and colloquium on architectural methodology
March 6–7, 2026
6100 Main Street
Houston Texas 77005
United States
The Rice School of Architecture invites you to join us for a colloquium of international doctoral students discussing new research in the history and theory of architecture, urbanism, landscape architecture, and design as approached through the lens of architectural methodology.
As political boundaries shift and national identities evolve, as economic dependencies grow more volatile, as the scale of globalization expands in concert with ever more intensive resource extraction and planetary warming, reference frames within architectural history are also shifting and, with them, the discipline’s approaches to methodology, epistemology, and practice. The colloquium will address these pressing issues by presenting new research in architectural history—in its broadest sense—while also rethinking the field’s narratives, periodization, geographic reach, and methods for collecting historical evidence. An open platform for the exchange of ideas and questions about architectural methodology, the colloquium will illuminate how internal and external disciplinary forces not only advance but shape the field’s historiography.
A highlight of this two-day event, which aims to address and further strengthen the position of architectural history as an amalgamating force in inter- and intra-university humanistic research, is the public keynote lecture, “Control and Communication: Architecture, Industry, and Spatial Autarchy,” by renowned architectural historian Claire Zimmerman. Respondents will include faculty from multiple departments at Rice University, as well as from the universities of Houston and Toronto.
Keynote lecture
Friday, March 6, 6pm, Farish Gallery, MD Anderson Hall
Claire Zimmerman, University of Toronto
"Control and Communication: Architecture, Industry, and Spatial Autarchy"
Presentations
Saturday, March 7, 9:30 am–4:00 pm, William Ward Watkin Auditorium (Room 117), MD Anderson Hall
Alican Taylan, Cornell University
"Environmental Modernities: Trans-Imperial Histories of Architecture in the Nineteenth-Century Sahel"
Respondent: Deepa Ramaswamy, University of Houston
Devin Jernigan, Yale University
"Spectacular Nomadism: The Modernization of Space in the American Traveling Circus"
Respondent: Igor Marjanović, Rice University, School of Architecture
Jolanda Devalle, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
"Before Architecture Without Architects: Raoul Hausmann in Ibiza 1933–1936"
Respondent: Gökçe Günel, Rice University, Department of Anthropology
Soetje Marie Beermann, Berlin University of the Arts
"Konrad Wachsmann’s 1955 Tokyo Seminar: Exploring Perspectives on Didactics, Modular Design, and Cultural Exchange in a School Pavilion"
Respondent: Reto Geiser, Rice University, School of Architecture
Jared Miguel Fantasia, Universidade do Porto
"Maison de la Radio Tropicale: The Architecture of Broadcasting in Francophone Sub-Saharan Africa at the End of Empire (1956–1962)"
Respondent: Farshid Emami, Rice University, Department of Art History
Piergianna Mazzocca, Cornell University
"Architectures of Improvement: Rural Housing and the Racialization of Eradication, 1958–1965"
Respondent: Claire Zimmerman, University of Toronto.
The 2026 Rice Architecture Dissertation Colloquium is convened by Associate Professor Reto Geiser. The event is free and open to the public.
About The Rice School of Architecture
The Rice School of Architecture is an international center of design research, experimentation, and debate that engages and reconstructs our world in the most imaginative and holistic ways. We educate the next generation of architects to stand at the forefront of our discipline and to embody the dual role of public intellectual and agile practitioner as they design for a world in flux.
To learn more about the Rice School of Architecture, visit arch.rice.edu.
© 2026 Rice University, School of Architecture, 6100 Main Street, MS-50, Houston, Texas 77005.
