I am completing the manuscript for my first book. Scholars have argued that modernist architects drew inspiration from vernacular buildings in various Mediterranean locales, including Greek island villages and North African medinas. However, the other side of this exchange has remained unexamined. My book narrates this missing half by investigating how protagonists invested in vernacular discourses in various Mediterranean locations looked back at the modernist gaze on their heritage. Protagonists of my inquiry include modernist architects like Marcel Breuer and Adolf Loos as well as figures whose outlooks I interpret as vernacular-centric, such as Palestinian ethnographer Tawfiq Canaan and French-Algerian artist Kader Attia. I define the book’s structure as reciprocal in that it deliberately examines multidirectional perspectives from both sides of the vernacular-modernist pair. This book offers a rebalanced history of the intersections between modernism and Mediterranean vernacular and posits reciprocity as a methodological template for accountability in architectural history.

Independently of my book project, I am working on multiple article-length inquiries. Among other publications in progress, my chapter titled “Architectural Elusion and Colonialism in Albert Camus’ ‘La maison mauresque’” is forthcoming in Shifting the Paradigm: New Studies in Islamic Art and Architecture in Honor of Gülru Necipoğlu (Brill, 2025). I argue that Camus’ treatment of Algerian residential architecture in “La maison mauresque” is highly paradoxical. While the title of this 1933 essay suggests a focus on a generic “Moorish” house, the text barely examines local dwellings. Indeed, Camus consistently supplants expected descriptions of residential architecture with vignettes depicting public spaces and landscapes in and around Algiers, thus relating Algerian houses as ever-eluding spaces. I define Camus’ avoidant narration of Algerian residences as an anti-ekphrasis and argue that this gesture of elusion is aligned with French colonial perceptions of Algerian dwellings. I use colonial scholarship, Orientalist postcards, and French architectural journals populating Camus’ historical realm to locate his vision within a broader colonial gaze on Algerian vernacular spaces.

For a list of my publications, see my faculty profile.

Image: Alger, general view from the casbah, by L. & Y., circa 1900. Mâcon, Archives départmentale de Saône-et-Loire, Fonds Augoyard. 21 Fi 69.