Research Interests
I am currently completing the manuscript of a book tentatively titled History of Stone Vaulting in the Pre-Modern Mediterranean: Practices, Theories, and Patterns of Knowledge Transfer. The project, funded by a 2021-22 NEH grant, explores the history of a stone vaulting technique called stereotomy from a transnational, longue durée perspective across the Mediterranean from the third century BCE—when the oldest of known stereotomic vaults was built in the Sanctuary of Delphi—through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when pioneering theoretical works such as those of Philibert de L'Orme (1514-70) and Alonso de Vandelvira (1544-1626) transcended the boundaries of the building trade and stereotomy became the focus of a broader intellectual debate on solid geometry. The central argument of the project is that the history of stereotomy is far more complex and fascinating than historians have assumed, and that the practice offers a privileged perspective on the cultural and material exchanges that took place across spatial, linguistic, and temporal boundaries in the long history of the Mediterranean and its peoples. An introduction to the project can be found in “Stereotomy and the Mediterranean: Notes Toward an Architectural History” (Mediterranea. International Journal on the Transfer of Knowledge, no. 2, 2017).
I am also researching two other book-length projects: Practice into Theory: Philibert de L'Orme, the Premier tome de l'architecture (1567), and The Profession of Architecture in Early Modern France and Paris of Waters. Practice into Theory examines Philibert de L'Orme's treatise in the context of architectural production and discourse in late medieval and early modern France, with a particular focus on the professionalization of architects. Materials based on this project have been published in “Philibert de L’Orme’s Dome in the Chapel of the Château d’Anet: The Role of Stereotomy” (Architectural History 64, 2021). Paris of Waters focuses on the impact of water on the demographic, social, architectural, and urban development of the city of Paris in the early modern period. It looks at water in a variety of forms—as a resource, a commodity, a means of transportation, a funnel for the city’s waste, and a cause of disaster and death—and makes water visible as a powerful agent of urban transformation.