Caitlin Blanchfield

Caitlin Blanchfield is a historian of architecture and landscape whose work examines the infrastructures of settler colonialism and material practices of resistance. Her research addresses the role of modernist land management and design practices in projects of dispossession and colonization in North America and across the reaches of U.S. empire, as well as the anticolonial architectures that unsettle them. Blanchfield is a Ph.D. candidate in architectural history and theory at Columbia University, where she is completing her dissertation, "Contesting Landscapes: Settler Colonialism, Indigenous Resistance, and the Architecture of Big Science." Other work includes collaborative investigations into the impacts of border infrastructures on Indigenous lands and multimedia projects on the management of architectural value.

Blanchfield is a founding editor of the Avery Review, a digital journal of critical essays on architecture, her coauthored book Modern Management Methods: Architecture, Historical Value, and the Electromagnetic Image was published by Columbia University Press in 2019. Her work has been supported by the New York State Council for the Arts, Dumbarton Oaks, and the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture. She holds an M.S. in Critical Curatorial and Conceptual Practices in Architecture from Columbia University and a B.A. in history from Oberlin College.

Classes (Selected)

• ARCH 5301 Theories and Analysis of Architecture I
• ARCH 1801/5801 History of Architecture I

Awards, Grants, and Fellowships (Selected)

• New York State Council for the Arts, Independent Project Grant (2022)
• Buell Center Fellowship, Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture (2022)
• Dumbarton Oaks Junior Fellowship (2021–2022)
• Graham Foundation Research Grant, Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in Fine Arts (2018)
• Inaugural Open Call Artist, The Shed (2018)

 

Exhibitions and Presentations (Selected)

• Modern Management Methods: United Nations Headquarters. In Open Call, curated by Emma Enderby. The Shed, New York. Cocurator and codesigner with Caitlin Blanchfield (2019)
• Cher. In Oslo Architecture Triennale, Norway. With Glen Cummings, Farzin Lotfi-Jam, Jaffer Kolb, and Leah Meisterlin (2016)

Publications (Selected)

• "Envirotechnical Lands: Science Reserves and Settler Astronomy on Maunakea," in Technical Lands: A Critical Primer, ed. Jeffrey Nesbit and Charles Waldheim, (Berlin:Jorvis Verlag, 2023).
• "Significant Impact," E-Flux Architecture, April 21, 2020. With Nina Kolowratnik.
• Modern Management Methods: Architecture, Historical Value, and the Electromagnetic Image (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019). With Farzin Lotfi-Jam