Graduate Program in Media + Modernity | Princeton University

Fernando Luiz Lara

"American Roots of Cartesian Concepts”
[Response Sergio Villanueva Preston]

Tuesday, March 4, 2025 @5pm ET

N107 (School of Architecture)

In the first part of Spatial Theories for the Americas: Counterweights to Five Centuries of Eurocentrism (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2024) the second chapter focuses on the changes around spatial representation that happened as a consequence of European expansionism and the occupation of the Americas in the 16^th century, leading to the Cartesian synthesis of Cogito Ergo Sum of 1637. The third chapter, the focus of this talk, continues the discussion of the Cartesian revolution with an analysis of its American roots, from Montaigne’s conversation with the Tupinambáin 1562 to Antonio Rubio‘s “Logica Mexicana” of 1603.

Fernando Luiz Lara is a Professor of Architectural History and Theory at the Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania. Lara works on theorizing spaces of the Americas with an emphasis on the dissemination of architecture and planning ideas beyond the traditional disciplinary boundaries. His latest books include Spatial Theories for the Americas (2024); and Spatial Concepts for Decolonizing the Americas (edited with Felipe Hernandez, 2022).

Sergio Villanueva Preston is a Presidential Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Architecture at Princeton. His primary research looks at queer families’ instrumentalization of their modernist homes during the interwar period in Europe and America for staging resistance to compulsory heteronormativity. He has also published on post-colonial architectural historiography.
 

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