Joan Ockman

Joan Ockman is a widely published architectural historian, critic, and educator. She is the Vincent Scully Visiting Professor of Architectural History and Director of Doctoral Studies at Yale School of Architecture, and also holds senior teaching appointments at the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design and the Cooper Union School of Architecture. After beginning her career in the mid–1970s at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York as an editor of Oppositions journal, she taught for many years at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, where she also served as director of the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture. Her books include Architecture School: Three Centuries of Educating Architects in North America (2012) and Architecture Culture 1943–1968: A Documentary Anthology (1993). She is currently collaborating on a new history of modern architecture, to be published in 2025.
Keynote 1. theme Intent 14.6.2023

Ruth Verde Zein

Architect, FAU-USP, Brazil, 1977. Ph.D. in Theory, History and Critique, PROPAR-UFRGS, Brazil, 2005. CAPES National Prize for a Doctoral Thesis, 2006. Professor of Modern and Contemporary Architecture and Design in Graduate and Post-Graduate Studios at Mackenzie Presbyterian University, São Paulo, since 1997. Member of DOCOMOMO, SAH, EAHN, CICA. Former senior editor of Projeto (1983-1996). Former Member of the editorial board of Architectural Histories Journal (2015-2018). Member of the editorial board of En Blanco journal and Arquitexto/Vitruvius. Frequent contributor to Brazilian and Iberoamerican magazines. Participant in international seminars, debates, conferences, and courses as a visiting professor. Author of dozens of articles and several books, including Critical Readings (Austin/São Paulo: Nhamérica/Romano Guerra, 2019), which was awarded the Bruno Zevi CICA Prize 2020, and Historiographical Revisions: Modern Brazilian Architecture (Rio de Janeiro: Riobooks, 2022).
Keynote 2. theme Authorship 15.6.2023

Klaus Härö

International award-winning Finnish film director Klaus Härö has also selected the winner of the 2022 Finlandia Prize for Architecture. His latest film direction is My Sailor, My Love (2022). Klaus Härö’s film The Fencer (2015) was nominated for the Golden Globes as well as Oscar shortlisted in the Best Foreign Film Category. Elina (2003), Mother of Mine (2005), and Letters to Father Jacob (2009) were selected to represent his native country Finland in the Best Foreign Film Category at the Oscars. Altogether Härö’s films have won more than 60 prizes at festivals all over the world including The Crystal Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and the prestigious Ingmar Bergman prize, the winner of which was chosen by Ingmar Bergman himself. Cultural landscapes and architecture play an important role in his films.
Keynote 3. theme Legacy 15.6.2023

Paper-presentations and themes:

INTENT:
Ruth Baumeister: Behind an iron curtain: Working in Aalto
Viola Corbari: Classless holidays: The Eni village in the Dolomites
Eva Eylers: What was modern about the hygienic style?
Meiling Gong: The role of citizen participation in the temporary-use practices of urban abandoned buildings
Christiane Irxenmayer: Modern architecture and the promotion of the private realm for “Mrs. Consumer” in postwar Europe
Phoebus Panigyrakis: Hidden persuaders of architecture: Advertising and publishing initiatives of US Media in mid-century Modernism
Dorotea Petrucci: Modernism in Italy: The case of the Institute for Foreign Trade
Szymon Ruszczewski: The good, the bad, and the ugly: A view on modern architecture in Jerzy Sołtan’s texts
Karita Rytivaara: Layers of the invisible: Space within Finland’s disappearing concrete structures of the 1960s and 1970s
Liza Sedler: Kitchen designer as a social agent In the Estonian SSR
Joshua Tan: Say hello, wave goodbye: The concrete aspirations of the Pearl Bank Apartments in Singapore
Adefolatomiwa Toye: Building Nigeria’s first universities: From grand aspirations to negotiated outcomes

AUTHORSHIP:
Petra Čeferin: Rethinking Plečnik’s human-centred design
Marianna Charitonidou: Alvar Aalto’s flexible standardisation and László Moholy-Nagy’s biotechnik
João Miguel Couto Duarte and Maria João Moreira Soares: Elizabeth Mock’s renewal of Modernism and the echoes of Alvar and Aino Aalto’s oeuvre
Elizabeth Darling and Jessica Kelly: “The Modern Movement in England was mostly talk” – Modernism as media in inter-war Britain
Alborz Dianat: Translating Walter Gropius for Britain
Jaime J. Ferrer Forés: Alvar Aalto and Aarne Ervi
Gareth Griffiths: Timo Penttilä against architecture theory
Epp Lankots: Architect as a researcher: Asta Palm and leisure planning In Estonia
Laura Martínez de Guereñu: Conditions to gain the status of a masterpiece: Endurance, autonomy, and sole authorship in the Barcelona Pavilion
Patricia Morgado: Diego Rivera and the “building” of modern Mexican architecture
Maryia Rusak: Modernism(s), mass-produced
Jørgen J. Tandberg: Kringkastingshuset, Oslo: An open work

LEGACY:
Stella Maris Casal: Antonio Vilar’s legacy and its importance in modern architecture in Argentina
Patrick Doan: Kahn’s shadows
Laura Ingerpuu: A Modernist collective farm architecture in today’s political context
Iida Kalakoski and Riina Sirén: On the shoulders of a giant: Architecture students’ perceptions of Alvar Aalto
Jonas Malmberg: Säynätsalo Town Hall as a Gesamtkunstwerk
Anne-Maija Malmisalo-Lensu: Who are the visitors of Alvar Aalto houses?
Daniel Naegele: Marketing Modernism: Not the ruffles, lace, and pleats of Goff’s 1955 Frank House
Snehal Nagarsheth and Aditi Vashisht: Dwelling with the ‘Modern’
Shiyu Qian: Living with the Bauhaus: The conservation of a Bauhaus landscape – Renovation of Ben Ami Street in the White City of Tel Aviv
Vincenzo Riso: The value of modern legacy for ordinary people illustrated by micro-histories of conservation in Portugal
Lei Sun: Conservation strategies for the modern industrial heritage – The case of the Toppila Pulp Mill

New WHOSE MODERNISM? book on seminar proceedings, ed. Aila Svenskberg, published by Alvar Aalto Foundation, will be on sale during the seminar 14.-15.6.2023 at the Aalto2 Museum Centre, Jyväskylä. All paper speakers 2023 with their articles will be introduced at the new book.