Lecture by Denise Costanzo, part of University by Design event series

Denise Costanzo, Associate Professor of Architecture at Penn State University, will lecture on Tuesday 18 March at 5:30 pm. Her lecture is part of the Spring 2025 University by Design event series, co-produced by the Architecture Programs of the Daniel and Gayle D’Aniello Syracuse University in Florence, California State University International Programs Italy and Kent State University Florence. It will be held at MAD. Murate Art District (Piazza delle Murate, Firenze).

Denise Costanzo’s lecture, titled The Problem of Rome: Architecture, Modernism, and Academies, will explore the evolving relevance of Rome as a site for architectural research, particularly in the context of the Rome Prize fellowships. While for centuries these residencies made sense within the framework of classicism as a dominant design paradigm, the city’s role became more ambiguous after World War II, when modernism took precedence and both its classical and modernist heritage were burdened by fascist associations. Despite this, postwar architects continued to engage with Rome, transforming the discipline’s oldest system of postgraduate research and demonstrating how the city remained a source of modern architectural insight.

Denise Costanzo is an associate professor of theory and criticism. An architectural historian with a background in architecture and art history, she explores architecture’s conceptual and cultural dimensions in ways that integrate the distinct languages of design, art history, and critical inquiry. Her research centers on the exchange of American and European architectural ideas, with a focus on how references to Italy reveal the mechanics of architectural power during the 20th century. Her scholarly methods include visual, textual, and systems analysis, social and institutional critique, and historiography. Her most recent book project, for which she was awarded a Rome Prize fellowship from the American Academy in Rome for 2014-15, is titled Modern Architects and the Problem of the Postwar Rome Prize: France, Spain, Britain, and America, 1946-1960. This multi-national, cross-institutional study investigates the intersection and mutual transformation of modernism and academic tradition after the World War II.