Brazilian-American Author, Activist, Architect, Husband, Father, Professor of Architecture, University Pennsylvania.
For the latest news on Prof. Lara’s lectures and events see threads or facebook.
Watch Prof. Lara’s lecture on the history of Latin American cities (in spanish)
Prof. Lara’s work on abstraction and coloniality was mentioned at the New York Times
Read Lara’s essay: Abstraction is a Privilege.
Lara’s new book: Spatial Theories for the Americas was released in November of 2024.
Fernando Luiz Lara works on theorizing spaces of the Americas with emphasis on the dissemination of architecture and planning ideas beyond the traditional disciplinary boundaries. In his several articles Prof. Lara has discussed the modern and the contemporary architecture of our continent, its meaning, context and social-economic insertion. His latest publications include Spatial Theories for the Americas, Street Matters, Excepcionalidad del Modernismo Brasileño; Modern Architecture in Latin America (Hamilton Award runner up 2015) and Quid Novi (Anparq best book award 2016).
Professor Lara teaches at the Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania.
Recent publications
“Connecting the Dots: Reframing the History of the Built Environment of the Americas,” Platform Space, November 2024.
“A Decolonial Perspective to Overcome Insufficiencies”, interview at Revista Virus, no. 26, December 2023, pp. 4-11.
“Spatial Abstraction as Colonizing Tool”, in Routledge Companion to Decolonizing Art History, (Flores, San Martin and Villaseñor, editors) New York: Routledge, 2023, 331-341.
“Cobogó and the Coloniality of the Brise-Soleil: Islamic Roots and Marginalization in Brazilian Modern Architecture”, Journal of Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture, Vol. 4, Number 3, pp. 113–119, 2022.
“What Frameworks Should We Use to Read the Spatial History of the Americas?” Roundtable editor introduction, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 81/2, June of 2022, pp. 134-136
““El otro del otro: cómo las historias canónicas de la arquitectura borraron las Américas”. Anales del Instituto de Arte Americano, 51(1), 2021, pp. 1-14.
“American Mirror: the occupation of the “new world” and the rise of architecture as we know it”, The Plan Journal, vol 5, n.1, May 2020.
“Amateur Architects in Twentieth-Century Brazil”, Third Text, 33:5, December 2019.
“Design and Activism in the Americas”, in Design (&) Activism – Perspectives on Design as Activism and Activism as Design, T. Bieling, editor, Berlin: Mimesis International, 2019, pp. 211-222.