Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen

Assistant Dean & Professor of Architecture,
Yale University 

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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. 

 

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Email : eeva-liisa.pelkonen@yale.edu

Lectures at Academic and Cultural Institutions, 2020-

“Architecture’s Ecohumanist Turn,” Castello Dialogues, Turin, June  2025

“Architecture and ‘the Crisis of Man’,” Thomas Jefferson University,  March 2025

“Geopolitics of Nature,”  Yale University/MacMillan Center, January 2025

“Architecture and ‘the Crisis of Man’,”  University of Toronto,  November 2024

“Eliel Saarinen’s Untimely Architecture,” Christ Church Lutheran, November 2024

“Families of Mind, Families of Forms: Fehn among Finns, Oclo School of Architecture, October 2024

“Eero Saarinen, the Sculptor,” Scandinavia House, April 2024

“Untimely Moderns,” Texas A&M, College Station, March 2024

“On Eero Saarinen,” Sarasota Modern Weekend, November 2023

“Stories in Stone,” AIA  New York,  October 2023

“Morphology versus Style,”  Helsinki University, October 2023

“Exhibit A: Exhibitions that Transformed Architecture,” Ecole Supérieure d’Architecture, Paris,  January 2022

“Exhibit A: Exhibitionso that Transformed Architecture,” Nieuwe Institut, Roterdam, December 2021

“Henri Focillon’s Liquid Temporalities,”  University of Lisbon,  November 2021

“Hats and  Brains and Other Primitive Domains, “ Austrian Cultural Institute,  February 2020



Symposia and Panels Convened:


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

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

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.


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.