V. Grossman, PhD

Vanessa Grossman is Assistant Professor with the Chair of Architecture & Dwelling at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment. She is an architect, a historian of modern and contemporary architecture, and a curator whose research focuses on architecture’s intersections with ideology, power, housing, and governance, with a special focus on global practices in Cold War era Europe and Latin America. Her forthcoming book with Yale University Press, entitled A Concrete Alliance: Communism and Modern Architecture in Postwar France, examines the remarkable burst of architectural activity that resulted when the French Communist Party (PCF) became a patron for the designs, discourses, and organizational efforts of a distinguished circle of modern architects, which found their most fertile terrain in the formerly industrial peripheries of France’s major cities, the banlieue. The book was awarded a 2021 Grant to Individuals (Publications) from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and the Barr Ferree Foundation Fund for Publications from Princeton University’s Department of Art and Archaeology.

Grossman was appointed co-curator of a major retrospective exhibition in May 2023 on the work of Paulo Mendes da Rocha at Casa da Arquitectura in Portugal, where the recently-deceased Brazilian 2006 Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate donated his archives. The exhibition considers the work of Mendes da Rocha within his geographic approach to the Americas and the planet at large, and concerns with the social and anthropogenic impact of the continent’s development, which deeply embedded in its colonial and postcolonial past.

Grossman has published a number of books, such as the coauthored Oscar Niemeyer, un exil créatif (Éditions du patrimoine, Collection Carnets d'architectes, 2021), and the coedited Everyday Matters: Contemporary Approaches to Architecture (Ruby Press, 2021), AUA, une architecture de l’engagement, 1960–1985 (Éditions Dominique Carré/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine, 2015), and Modernity: Promise or Menace ? France, 101 Buildings, 1914-2014 (Éditions Dominique Carré/Institut français, 2014). She is the author of Le PCF a changé! Niemeyer et le siège du Parti communiste (1966–1981) (Éditions B2, 2013), and A arquitetura e o urbanismo revisitados pela Internacional situacionista (Annablume/FAPESP, 2006), which was awarded the 8th Young Architects Critical Essays Prize (2007) from the São Paulo Department of the Institute of Architects of Brazil. Her work has also appeared in edited volumes, as well as in encyclopedias and journals worldwide.

Grossman was the cocurator of the 12th International Architecture Biennale of São Paulo, entitled Todo dia/Everyday (2019), and of Une architecture de l’engagement: L’AUA (1960–85) at the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine in Paris (2015–16). She was the assistant curator of La modernité, promesse ou menace ?, the French Pavilion at the 14th Venice International Architecture Biennale (2014), which received a special mention from the jury.

She has received a number of grants and fellowships for her scholarly work across the globe, including the Barr Ferree Foundation Fund for Publications from Princeton University Department of Art and Archaeology, two Grants to Individuals from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the Chateaubriand Fellowship in Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) from the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States, the Graham Foundation Carter Manny Award for doctoral dissertation writing, a Doctoral Exchange Fellowship from Sciences Po Paris, a Lassen Fellowship from Princeton University Program in Latin American Studies (PLAS), a Collection Research Grant from the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), a Master Scholarship from the Île-de-France Region, an Award for Scientific Publication and a Scientific Initiation Scholarship from the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP).

Prior to TU Delft, Grossman was a postdoctoral research fellow with the Center for Advanced Studies in Architecture at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich (ETH Zürich). Grossman has taught at the University of Miami, Princeton University, and the National School of Architecture of Versailles (ENSA-V). Grossman holds a professional diploma in Architecture and Urbanism from the University of São Paulo, a master’s degree in History of Architecture from Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University, and a PhD in History and Theory of Architecture from Princeton University.

• Architecture
• French Contextualism
• Housing
• Urbanism
• Cold War
• Governance
• Political theory
• Post-war History
• Developing Countries
• Latin America
• Europe