Prof. Dr. Alla Vronskaya

Alla Vronskaya is the Professor of the History and Theory of Architecture at the University of Kassel. Her book, Architecture of Life: Soviet Modernism and the Human Sciences (University of Minnesota Press, 2022), explores the intersections of architecture, labor management, and human sciences in modern Russia. Prior to joining the University of Kassel, she was an assistant professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology and a visiting lecturer at ETH Zürich. She received her PhD in the History, Theory, and Criticism of Architecture and Art from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She was a senior fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., a member at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and a recipient of other residential fellowships from the Getty Research Institute and the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library, among other awards.

E-Mail: vronskaya@uni-kassel.de

Research interest

Alla Vronskayas research examines the history of knowledge, organization, and the regulation of architecture and space. Building on her earlier work on the intersections between architectural theory, labor management, and experimental psychology, it links the history of the designed and built environment to science and technology studies (STS), media studies, and intellectual history. She is particularly interested in the connections between the theories of settlement and the development of a regulatory apparatus for architecture in Europe and Eurasia between the late nineteenth and the late twentieth centuries, as it informed three domains of modern architectural theory: the notions of the city and the countryside, the relationship between housing reform and settlement (including standardization techniques), and the adaptation of modernist architecture to different climatic and natural environments.