Alexandra Lange
This year, the Athena Lecture Series will be opened by the New York-based architecture and design critic Alexandra Lange. As a guest of the series, she will critically examine the setting of role models in architecture in her lecture “Looking for Role Models in All the Wrong Places”.
“The idea that architecture is created by a single individual has long been a fiction, perpetuated by the media as well as design history. For many years I sought female role models that fit that same heroic pattern, beginning with Ada Louise Huxtable, the only woman architecture critic I could see. More recently, however, I realized that this quest perpetuated the same fiction of the individual going it alone. For criticism to reflect architecture as it really is, and for architecture to reflect society as it really is, the quest should not be for a role model but for a chorus.” – Alexandra Lange
Alexandra Lange is an architecture and design critic. Her essays, reviews, and profiles have appeared in numerous design publications including: “Architect, “Harvard Design Magazine, “Metropolis, and T Magazine, as well as in “The Atlantic”, “New York Magazine”, “The New Yorker”, and “The New York Times”. She is also the author of “Writing About Architecture: Mastering the Language of Buildings and Cities” (2012), a primer on how to read and write architecture criticism. Her latest book, “The Design of Childhood: How the Material World Shapes Independent Kids” was published in June 2018. Alexandra Lange is currently at work on a new book about the history and future of the American shopping mall.
ATHENA Lecture Series
Alexandra Lange: “Looking for Role Models in All the Wrong Places”.
10 March 2021, 6–7pm
The event took place as part of Parity Talks VI “What's Good?”. The entire program is published here.