Marta Caldeira
Title: Assistant Professor
Department: Architecture
Campus: Long Island
Area(s) of Expertise: History and Theory of Modern Architecture and Urbanism
Education Credentials: Ph.D.
Joined New York Tech: 2023
Marta Caldeira, Ph.D., is an architect, architectural historian, and assistant professor at New York Institute of Technology, where she teaches courses on architectural history and theory. Her research investigates transnational discourses of modern architecture and urbanism, with a particular focus on their intersection with politics and society. Her current book project, The Historical Imperative: Architecture, Democracy, and the Critique of the Modern City, is an architectural and intellectual history of urban democracy set in 1970's Southern Europe. The book contends the ways that a critical approach to urban history was used to reclaim political action through housing, planning, preservation, and urban pedagogy. A second project weaves the histories of architecture, urban governance, and politics of solidarity in the Latin-Iberian Atlantic.
Her writings have appeared in several journals, including Perspecta, Log, EAHN Newsletter, Festival dell'Architettura, Jornal Arquitectos, Il Progetto, and Metamorfosi, as well as recent anthologies on modern and contemporary architecture. Her academic research has been supported by the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Fulbright Commission, Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Fundação Luso-Americana para o Desenvolvimento, the Gulbenkian Foundation, and awards by the Society of Architectural Historians and the Buell Center at Columbia University. Trained as an architect at Faculdade de Arquitectura of Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, she received a Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Design (M.S.AAD) and a Ph.D. in Architectural History and Theory from Columbia University.
Recent Projects and Research
- Inter-American Housing Center (CINVA) and Planning and Urban Studies Research Center (CEPEU): Laboratories of Architecture and Solidarity in Latin America – ISRC Grant
- Álvaro Siza: Housing in the Contested City – Journal issue editorial project
Selected Publications and Presentations
- "La Imaginación Crítica y la Cuestión de la Descripción Urbana," in Aldo Rossi, Hoy: Conversaciones Ibéricas, ed. Francisco González de Canales (Madrid: Asimetricas, 2024).
- "Notes on Architecture and Atopia," in Perspecta 54: Atopia (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2022).
- "EU08: Contraplan," in Radical Pedagogies (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2022).
- "The Subaltern City: Revisiting the Materialist Critique of Urban Form," The New Urban Condition: Criticism and Theory from Architecture and Urbanism, eds. L. Medrano, L. Recamán, and T. Avermaete (London-NY: Routledge, 2021).
- "The Education of an 'Architect-Urbanist': Manuel Solà-Morales and Urban Pedagogy at the ETSAB," in FAmagazine, n.38 (October–December 2016).
Professional Honors and Awards
- SAH Annual Conference Fellowship, Society of Architectural Historians, 2017
- Carter Manny Award, Graham Foundation, Citation of Special Recognition, 2012
- CCA Collection Research Grant, Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal, 2009
- Oral History Prize, Buell Center, Columbia University, New York, 2007
Courses Taught at New York Tech
- AAID 160 Introduction to Architectural History, Theory, and Criticism
- ARCH 161 Global History of Architecture I
- ARCH 162 Global History of Architecture II
- ARCH 361 Architecture and Solidarity in Latin America