Governing on the Move: American-Sponsored Exhibitions in Europe at Mid-20th Century

Óskar Örn Arnórsson, arkitekt og arkitektúrsagnfræðingur, heldur opinn fyrirlestur miðvikudaginn 26. apríl kl.12:15 í fyrirlestrarsal A, Þverholti 11, 

Hann er nýráðinn lektor við Listaháskóla Íslands og doktorsnemi við arkitektúrdeild Columbiaháskóla í New York, (GSAPP), þar sem hann er á lokastigi við ritun ritgerðar sem ber heitið "The Architectures of the Marshall Plan in Europe, 1948-1952. Í ritgerðinni skoðar Óskar hvernig Bandaríkin stjórnuðu "Vestur-Evrópu" í gegnum hið byggða umhverfi á árunum eftir seinni heimstyrjöldina, með greiningu á dæmum í Vestur-Þýskalandi, Frakklandi og Grikklandi. Meðal viðfangsefna Óskars eru arkitektúr alþjóðlegra stofnana, arkitektúr þróunar (e. development) og samband arkitektúrs og umhverfis. Í vinnu sinni leggur Óskar áherslu á þróunaráform Bandaríkanna í hinum ýmsu myndum, heimssvæðum og heimsvaldaformum, frá þrælastríði til okkar daga.

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In the lecture held April 26th in Þverholt 11, Oskar will review a chapter of his forthcoming doctoral dissertation about the Architecture of the Marshall Plan. He will review the US government-funded exhibition Europe Builds, which traveled Western Europe in 1950 to promote the Marshall Plan. He will analyze the exhibition for its formal characteristics, place it in its historical context, and connect it to American political strategies in the continent at the time.

Óskar Örn Arnórsson is a New York/Reykjavik based architect and architectural historian.
He is a newly appointed lecturer at the Iceland University of Arts and a PhD student at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP), where he is in the final stages of writing a dissertation titled “Architectures of the Marshall Plan in Europe, 1948-1952.” In the dissertation, Oskar looks at how the US governed “Western Europe” through the built environment in the years after WWII, through an analysis of case studies in West-Germany, France and Greece. Oskar’s topics of interest include architectures of global governance, architectures of development and architecture and environment, with an emphasis on the post-reconstruction United States as a catalyst in its various imperial forms.