Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies CLALSIS
McNeil 473
Join us for a book talk by CLALS-affiliated faculty Vanessa Grossman, Assistant Professor of Architecture at Weitzman School of Deisgn.
One of the most acclaimed architects working in Brazil since the mid-twentieth century, Paulo Mendes da Rocha (1928–2021) began building in the 1950s, championing an approach often associated with “Brutalism” but expanding well beyond it. He is widely recognized for having transformed the urban imprint of São Paulo. His best-known buildings include the Brazilian Museum of Sculpture, remarkable for its engagement with the site and its daring structure; the renovation of the Pinacoteca do Estado, with audacious metallic inserts; and outstanding private houses, starting with his own. In 2006, he became the second Brazilian architect, after Oscar Niemeyer, to win the Pritzker Prize.
This retrospective catalogue is the first major publication on Mendes da Rocha since the establishment of his archive at the Casa da Arquitectura, in Portugal, in 2021. A team of international scholars provides a comprehensive view of the architect’s trajectory and the collective dimension of his work, along with thematic essays. Mendes da Rocha’s identity as a South American architect interested in the geographic relation between nature and culture is underlined. The book’s contributors explore his concern with the social and anthropogenic impact of the continent’s development, as well as its colonial past and postcolonial future. The volume centers around twelve of his most important buildings and reprints two important essays on Mendes da Rocha’s work. This will be an essential book on this significant figure of global modernism and will point the way for future scholarship on Mendes da Rocha and the architecture of contemporary Brazil.
Her recent books include A Concrete Alliance: Communism and Modern Architecture in Postwar France (Yale University Press, 2024)—with a French translation, Une alliance de béton: Les architectes et le Parti communiste français, forthcoming in 2026 with Editions de la Villette—Constructed Geographies: Paulo Mendes da Rocha (Casa da Arquitectura/Yale University Press, 2024), Everyday Matters: Contemporary Approaches to Architecture (Ruby Press, 2021), and Oscar Niemeyer en France: Un exil créatif (Éditions du patrimoine, 2021). She is also the co-editor of AUA, une architecture de l'engagement, 1960–1985 (Cité de l’architecture/Éditions Dominique Carré, 2015) and Modernity: Promise or Menace? France, 101 Buildings, 1914–2014 (Institut français/Éditions Dominique Carré, 2014). Grossman has co-curated exhibitions and symposia at leading venues worldwide, including the Centro Cultural São Paulo, São Paulo’s Sesc 24 de Maio, the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine in Paris, the Venice Architecture Biennale, Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam, Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design. In addition to her curatorial work, Grossman has been appointed Exhibitions Review Editor for the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (JSAH) and serves on the editorial board of Manifest: A Journal of the Americas. She is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Weitzman and is an affiliated faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies.
Grossman holds a professional diploma in architecture and urbanism from the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at the University of São Paulo. an MA in the History of Architecture from the Paris-1 Panthéon-Sorbonne Department of Art and Archaeology, and both an MA and PhD in the History and Theory of Architecture from the Princeton University School of Architecture. Grossman has received several prestigious awards, including the 2015 Carter Manny Award for doctoral dissertation writing from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and the 2013 Chateaubriand Fellowship in Humanities and Social Sciences from the Embassy of France in the United States. Her research has also been supported by the University of Pennsylvania’s Mellon-funded Humanities Urbanism and Design (H+U+D) Initiative, the Barr Ferree Foundation Fund for Publications at Princeton University’s Department of Art and Archaeology, and two Grants to Individuals from the Graham Foundation (2019 and 2021). Additionally, she has been awarded a Doctoral Exchange Fellowship from Sciences Po Paris, a Lassen Fellowship from the Princeton University Program in Latin American Studies, a Collection Research Grant from the Canadian Centre for Architecture, a Bourse Master Île-de-France, and an Award for Scientific Publication and Scientific Initiation Scholarship from the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP).