Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen

Assistant Dean & Professor of Architecture,
Yale University 



I have taught both architectural design and history-theory at the Yale School of Architecture for the past twenty-five years. While such “double-duty” has become somewhat rare in the increasingly specialized academic environment, I am convinced that the range helps me facilitate the interplay between verbal and visual knowledge, between thinking and doing that I believe lies at the heart of architectural education. Overcoming the artificial fault line between history-theory and design teaching is my main pedagogical goal. My scholarly interests cover 20th Century European and American art and architecture, art and aesthetic theory, and history of ideas. 

 


Email : eeva-liisa.pelkonen@yale.edu
Books


Published work I : Solo-Authored Books


Untimely Moderns: How 20th Century Architecture Reimagined the Past 
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023)

(Latest Book Review in Architectural Record)


Alvar Aalto: Architecture, Modernity and Geopolitics 
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009)

Winner of the Alice Davis Hitchcock Award, 2011


Achtung Architektur! Image and Phantasm in Contemporary Austrian Architecture
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996)



Published work II : Co-Authored and Edited Volumes


Pelli-Clarke-Pelli, Special issue of A+U magazine, Japan, 2023 
(Editor and Contributor)

Exhibit A: Exhibitions that Transformed Architecture
(London: Phaidon Press, 2018)

Exhibiting Architecture: A Paradox? 
Co-edited with Carson Chan and David Tasman
(New Haven: Yale School of Architecture, 2015)

Kevin Roche: Architecture as Environment, 
Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen with contributions by Kathleen John-Alder, Olga Pantelidou, and David Sadighian
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011)

Architecture + Art. New Visions, New Strategies. 
Co-edited with Esa Laaksonen
(Helsinki: Alvar Aalto Academy, 2007)

Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future.
Co-edited with Donald Albrecht
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006)

Winner of the Philip Johnson Award, 2008 




Publications 


  • Published work III : 
Essays and Chapters in Books and Exhibition Catalogues


  1. “Kevin Roche,” American National Bibliography (2022)

  2. “Beyond Forest Dreaming,” Formafantasma: Gambio (London: Serpentine Galleries, 2021) 

  3. “Alvar Aalto and the Nordic Avantgarde,” Cultural History of the Avant-Garde in the Nordic Countries 1925-1950 (forthcoming, early 2019)

  4. “Alvar Aalto around 1930: Between Modernism and the Avant-Garde,” Cultural History of the Avant-Garde in the Nordic Countries 1925-1950 (Leiden: Brill, 2019)

  5. “Aalto’s Entangled Geographies,” Aalto beyond Finland, Silvia Micheli and Esa Laaksonen, eds. (Helsinki: Alvar Aalto Foundation, 2018)

  6. “Putting King Tut to Work,” in Mari Lending, Erik Arff Gulseth Bøhn, and Tim Anstey, eds. Images of Egypt (Oslo: Pax, 2018)

  7. “Discovering Potentiality with Josef Albers“ in Heinz Liesbrock, ed. Josef Albers (Bottrop: Josef Albers Museum, 2018)

  8. “Families of Mind/Families of Forms: Art and Aalto” in Maike Stenkampf, ed. The Art of Jean Arp after 1945 (Berlin: Stiftung Arp, 2018)

  9. “Between Language and Form: Exhibitions by Reima Pietilä, 1961-1974,” in The Message is the Medium? Exhibitions, Periodicals, and the Shaping of Postmodern Architecture (Burlington, VT: Ashgate,2018)

  10. “Reading Aalto through the Baroque,” in Andrew Leach and Maarten Delbeke, eds. Baroque in Architecture Culture, 1890-1990 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015)

  11. “Symbolic Imageries: Alvar Aalto’s Encounters with Modern Art,” in Alvar Aalto: Second Nature (Weil-am-Rhein: Vitra Design Museum, 2014)

  12. “Helsinki-Warsaw, c. 1960,” in Team Ten East: Revisionist Architecture in Real Existing Modernism, Lukasz Stanek, ed. (Warsaw: Museum of Modern Architecture Warsaw, 2014)

  13. “Towards Cognitive Architecture,” in Louis Kahn: The Power of Architecture, Stanislaus von Moos, ed. (Weill-Am-Rhein: Vitra Design Museum, 2012)

  14. “Megacity Jerusalem,” in Aircraft Carrier: American Ideas and Israeli Architecture, Erez Ella, Milana Gitzin-Adiram, and Dan Handel, eds. (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2012). The book accompanied the Israeli Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2012

  15. “Aalto and MoMA” in Aalto and America, Stanford Anderson, Gail Fenske and David Fixler, eds. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012)

Publications


  • Published work IV : 
  • Journal Articles (2010-present)


  1. “Detonating the Past,” Joelho-Journal of Architecture Culture (Coimbra, Portugal) 2022

  2. “Frank Lloyd Wright and the Urgency of (Art) Education,” SaveWright 2017

  3. “Architectural Morphology, c. 1960,” Getty Research Journal 8, February 2017

  4. “When Modern Architecture Went Viral,” Perspecta 50 “Quote,” Fall 2016

  5. “Plastic Imaginaries,” Forty-Five, Fall 2015

  6. “Teasing Out the Magic of (Gothic) Architecture,” Pidgin 19 “Magic,” Spring 2015

  7. “Reordering Reality While Playing,” Archithese 5, 2014

  8. “Sobre la Realidad de las Formas,” Materia 06, 2014

  9. “Preserving Aalto to Death,” Arkkitehti, May 2014

  10. “Back to Nature?” Archithese, 2014

  11. “Interacting with Albers,” AA Files, 2013

  12. “What about SPACE?” in “(Non-)Essential Knowledge for (New) Architecture,” 306090, Fall 2012

  13. “Reading Aalto through Baroque,” AA Files, 2013

  14. “Collaborating with Industry, SOM Journal 8, 2012

  15. “Project-based,” Nordic Architecture Journal, 2012

  16. “Saarinen vs. Roche: Two Models of Practice,” Perspecta 44 “Agency,”2012

  17. “Architecture or Welfare,” Finnish Architectural Review, October 2010

  18. “Alvar Aalto’s Kaufmann Center,” PIN-UP, Fall 2009/Winter 2010



Lectures & Symposia


Organizing Symposia and Panels Convened 
(2008-present)


Shapes of Time,
Yale School of Architecture, 
April 2024. 
Organizer.

My Bauhaus: Transmedial Encounters,
Yale School of Architecture, November 2019.
Organizer.

Building-Object/Design-Architecture :
Exploring Interconnections  
Birnbeck University, London, June 2019.
Member of the Scientific Committee.

World of Architectural History conference,
Bartlett School of Architecture, London, November 2018.
Member of the Scientific Committee

European Architecture History Network (EAHN) conference, Tallinn 2018.
Member of the Scientific Committee.

Environment, Reconsidered. 50th Anniversary of the Masters of Environmental Design Program at Yale,
Yale School of Architecture, November 2017.
Co-organizer with Jessica Varner.

Transit Point: Mitteleuropa 
Yale School of Architecture. September 2016.
Organizer, in collaboration with Aleksandra Kedziorek 

“Time Travel I” and “Time Travel II” at the 
European Architecture History Network Annual Conference, Dublin, Ireland, June 2016.
Convener with Mari Lending.

Learning/Doing/Thinking :
Educating Architects in the 21st Century,
Yale School of Architecture, April 2016.
Symposium organizer.

Research on Display :
Architecture Exhibition as Model for Knowledge Production TU Delft, December 2015.
Member of the organizing committee.

Exhibiting Architecture : A Paradox?
Yale School of Architecture, October 2014. 
Symposium organizer with David Tasman and Carson Chang.

Thinking Big: Diagrams, Mediascapes and Megastructures,
Yale School of Architecture, New Haven, February 2011.
Symposium organizer.

Eero Saarinen: Architect of the American Century, 
Yale School of Architecture, 2008. Symposium organizer.





Curatorial Work


“Le Carré Bleu: The legendary little magazine from Helsinki, 1958-1961.” 
Museum of Finnish Architecture, 2016. 
Initiator and main curator.


“Alvar Aalto: Second Nature.”
Vitra Design Museum, Weil-am-Rhein, Germany, 2014.
Academic advisor for an exhibition that went on a major international tour.


“Kevin Roche: Architecture as Environment.”
Yale School of Architecture Gallery, 2011
Initiator and curator for an exhibition that went on a national tour.


“Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future.”
Museum of Finnish Architecture and National Building Museum, 2006.
Initiator and director of the curatorial research team for an exhibition that went on a major international tour.