Sean Keller, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Office: 3410 S. State Street, Room 210
Office Hours:
Phone: 312.527.3828
Fax:
Email:
skeller1@iit.edu
Web:
Expertise
- Architectural History and Theory
Education
- Ph.D., Harvard University, 2005
- M.Arch, Princeton University, 1994
- B.A., Princeton University, 1992
Curriculum Vitae
Courses Taught
Research & Major Accomplishments
Current Projects
Awards/Honors
- Winterhouse Award for Design Writing and Criticism, Winterhouse Institute and AIGA, 2009.
Patents
Books
Selected Publications
ArticlesForthcoming: catalogue essay on the work of artist Heather Rowe, University of Michigan Museum of Art (Fall 2009).
Forthcoming: "Formal Logic and the Logic of Form: Early Eisenman and the Cambridge Context" in Computational Architectures, Philippe Morel, ed. (Orléans: HYX Editions, 2009).
“Well-tempered Piano” [on the museums of Renzo Piano], Artforum (Summer 2009): 304-311.
“Navigating Systems” [on R. Buckminster Fuller], Artforum (November 2008): 282-294.
“Bidden City” [on the Beijing Olympics], Artforum (Summer 2008): 137-142.
"Systems Aesthetics, or How Cambridge Solved Architecture" in Architecture and Authorship: Studies in Disciplinary Remediation, Rolf Hughes, Katja Grillner, and Tim Anstey, eds. (London: Black Dog Publications, 2007): 156-163.
"Behind the Curtain: On Renovating Crown Hall and the Yale University Art Gallery," Artforum (February 2007): 101-2.
"Fenland Tech: Architectural Science in Postwar Cambridge," Grey Room 23 (Spring 2006): 40-65.
“10283EFE0F02 or the Seagram Building” in The Art of Architecture/The Science of Architecture, Renata Hejduk, and Harry Van Oudenallen, eds., (2005): 298-309.
Reviews, Short Essays, and Transcripts
“Five Points for Post-Industrial Re-Use,” transcript of panel discussion, Envisioning the Bloomingdale: Chicago Architecture Club Journal 8 (2009).
Preview of “Radical Nature—Art & Architecture for a Changing Planet, 1969-2009,” an exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery, London, Artforum (Summer 2009).
“Expertise,” transcript of panel discussion, ptah [Journal of the Alvar Aalto Academy], December 2008.
“What Would Kant Think?” [on the architecture of Gramazio+Kohler] in Digital Materiality in Architecture (Baden: Lars Müller, 2008).
Preview of "Between Earth and Heaven: The Architecture of John Lautner," an exhibition at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Artforum (May 2008).
Preview of "Le Corbusier: Art and Architecture—A Life of Creativity," an exhibition at the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Artforum (Summer 2007).
"The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture," Constructs 9, no. 2 (Yale School of Architecture: Spring 2007): 17. Review of The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture, Peter Eisenman.
“Classes Worth Attending,” Yale Daily News, 18 April, 2006. My class Architecture Since 1945 recommended as one of six classes for admitted prospective students.
“Spatial Psychology,” Art Journal 60 (Winter 2001): 109-110. Review of Warped Space: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern Culture, Anthony Vidler.
Conference Papers and Organization
Chair, “What Next?” symposium, IIT College of Architecture, Chicago, October 2009.
“The Genius of Algorithms,” [architecture] in the age of [digital] reproduction, Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture West Central Fall Conference, University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana, October 2008.
"Numerical Beauty: Algorithmic Architecture and the Kantian Split," Building, Designing, Thinking: Third International Alvar Aalto Meeting on Modern Architecture, Alvar Aalto Academy, Jyväskylä, Finland, August 2008.
“Systems Aesthetics, or How Cambridge Solved Architecture,” Architecture and Authorship, symposium, KTH (Royal Institute of Technology) School of Architecture, Stockholm, Sweden, February 2008.
"Naturalized Constructions: The Rhetoric and Realization of Frei Otto's Minimal Surfaces," Society of Architectural Historians Annual Meeting, Pittsburgh, April 2007.
“10283EFE0F02 or the Seagram Building” for the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture Annual Meeting, Chicago, March 2005.
Moderator and respondent, Testing Ground symposium, Harvard University Graduate School of Design and MIT Department of Architecture, 1999.
Invited Talks, Panels, and Interviews
“Sailing Spaceship Earth: Buckminster Fuller’s Environmentalism,” Chicago Architecture Foundation and Columbia College’s Critical Encounters program, April 2009.
“Dymaxion Man: Buckminster Fuller in the Twenty-First Century,” Arts Club of Chicago, March 2009.
Interview for a segment on the renaming of the Sears Tower, NBC5 evening news, Chicago, 13 March 2009.
“Munich ’72: Olympic Architecture and Rhetoric,” College of Architecture lecture series, Illinois Institute of Technology, March 2009.
“Regarding Buckminster Fuller,” conversation with Stanley Tigerman, Museum of Contemporary Art and the Graham Foundation, Chicago, February 2009.
“Party Games: Beijing’s Olympic Architecture,” Arts Club of Chicago, October 2008.
“The Ethics of Building for the Olympics,” interview on Worldview, WBEZ Chicago Public Radio (also broadcast on XM Satellite Radio), 19 August 2008.
“Munich ‘72,” Canadian Center for Architecture, Montreal, August 2008.
Interview for article on the Beijing Olympics, De Ingenieur, Journal of the Association of Engineers, Netherlands, June 2008.
Panelist, Envisioning the Bloomingdale, Chicago Architecture Club, I-Space Gallery, Chicago, March 2008.
Respondent, “Deborah Gans, Organism: Bridging the Gap between Architecture and Engineering,” Proseminar Series, IIT College of Architecture, February 2008.
"Patterns and Networks," guest lecture for Contemporary Architectural Theory, Prof. Peter Eisenman, Yale School of Architecture, April 2007.
"Munich '72: The Surfaces of Olympiapark," Work in Progress Series, Yale University, Department of the History of Art, February 2007.
"Reopening Kahn," talk and gallery tour of the renovated Yale University Art Gallery as a benefit for the Edith B. Jackson Childcare Center, New Haven, January 2007.
“Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century,” guest lecture for Building Modern Society, Prof. Sandy Isenstadt, Yale University Department of the History of Art, October 2002.
“The Role of Theory in Contemporary Art and Architecture,” Institut für Theorie und Kunst, Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst, Zürich, June 2002.
Professional Society Memberships
Editorial Board Service
Professional Society Service
Grants and Fellowships
- Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, 2008
- Eliot Fellowship, Harvard University, 2003 - 2004
- Frank Knox Memorial Fellowship, Harvard University, 2001 - 2002
- Francois Valery Scholarship, Princeton University School of Architecture, 1993