Elisa Dainese
Assistant Professor
Contact
Elisa Dainese
Assistant Professor
Education
Doctor of Philosophy in Architecture, IUAV University of Venice (Italy), 2012
Master of Architecture in Architecture and Sustainability, IUAV University of Venice (Italy), 2008
Bachelor of Architecture, IUAV University of Venice (Italy), 2005
Keywords
Critical Reflections on Architectural History and Theory, Colonial and Postcolonial Architecture, Indigenous Paradigms and Decolonized Worlds
Biography
Elisa Dainese is a historian and theorist of architecture and urbanism. She specializes in architectural knowledge, its production and transnational circulation. Her work combines investigations of cross-cultural exchange and the recovery of historically underrepresented voices, including ones in the Arctic and sub-Sahara.
Dr. Dainese’s research has received grants, fellowships, and awards from Columbia University, Bruno Zevi Foundation, CCA, SSHRC, GAHTC, the Graham Foundation, the University of Pisa, and Georgia Tech. In 2013-16, she was the recipient of a three-year Marie Curie International fellowship funded by the EU and developed in connection with Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Venice (IUAV). She has participated in numerous international conferences and served as an organizing team member of both the Venice Biennale of Architecture (2010) and of the Milan Triennale of Architecture (2013). She has served in research and professional boards and she is a member of the Board of Directors of the Society of Architectural Historians.
Statement of Teaching Interest
Dr. Dainese's teaching is focused on architectural and urban history and theory at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Dr. Dainese also teaches on colonial and postcolonial architecture including knowledge production, exchange, and migration with a focus on the off-centered geography of architectural and urban design.
Statement of Research Interest
Dr. Dainese's research focuses on the history and theory of architecture and urbanism. Her work examines intersections between modern ideas of habitation, constructions of indigeneity, and knowledge production. Her research examines twentieth and twenty-first century architecture; non-Western modernisms and Indigenous practices; questions of authorship and transnational circulation in the design disciplines.
2022
SESAH Publication Award, Best Essay in an Edited Volume for the book chapter "Postwar Connections and Transatlantic Encounters: the Mozambique-Brazil-Portugal Triangle,"
Mellon Foundation Grant Award for Teacher-to-Teacher Workshop, MIT School of Architecture + Planning and GAHTC, Cambridge, MA (USA).
2021
University of Pisa Visiting Fellowship for 2021, University of Pisa, Pisa (Italy).
2019
Graham Foundation Grant to Individuals. Title of the project: “War Diaries: Design after the Destruction of Art and Architecture.”
2018
Bruno Zevi Prize for a Historical/Critical Essay in Architecture, Bruno Zevi Foundation, Rome (Italy).
SSHRC Explore Grant, Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Halifax, NS (Canada).
2017
Mellon Foundation Grant Award, MIT School of Architecture + Planning and Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC), Cambridge (USA).
Centre Canadien d’Architecture Visiting Program 2018, CCA, Montreal (Quebec, Canada).
2016
Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America Fellowship, Columbia University, New York (USA).
2015
Opler Grant for Emerging Scholars, Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) (USA).
2013
Marie Curie International Outgoing Fellowship, European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013), REA grant agreement no. PIOF-GA-2012-317261.
Elisa Dainese, “An Alternative Pedagogical Project for the O-Pipon-Na-Piwin Cree Nation,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Roundtable on Spaces of Indigenous Education 84, no.3 (Sept. 2025): 313-315.
Elisa Dainese, “The Human Settlement: Erwin Anton Gutkind’s Fascination with Africa and Critique of Modern Design,” Planning Perspectives 39, no.5 (2024): 983-1006.
Elisa Dainese, “The Designer-Advocate: Blanche Lemco and the Problem of Indigenous Sovereignty in the Canadian North”, OASE 116 (Dec. 2023): 118-132.
Elisa Dainese, Aleksandar Staničić, eds., War Diaries: Design after the Destruction of Art and Architecture (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2022).
Elisa Dainese, “Postwar Connections and Transatlantic Encounters: The Mozambique-Brazil-Portugal Triangle” in Fernando Luiz Lara (ed.), Decolonizing the Spatial History of the Americas (Austin: The University of Texas Press & CAAD, 2021), 90-101.
Elisa Dainese, “The Relocation of the Indigenous Community of South Indian Lake (1966-68): For an Alternative and Shared Inhabitation of Modern Architectural History”, Thresholds 48, Special Issue on Kin (Spring 2020): 90-105.
Elisa Dainese, “From the Functional City to the African Village”, Bauhaus 12, Special Issue on Habitat (Foundation Bauhaus Dessau: Dec. 2020): 24-27.
Elisa Dainese, “From the Charter of Athens to the ‘Habitat’: CIAM 9 and the African Grids”, Journal of Architecture 24, no.3 (June 2019): 301-324.
Elisa Dainese, The Construction of the Charter of ‘Habitat’: From the Functional City to the African Village / La Costruzione della Carta dell’Habitat: Dalla Città Funzionale al Villaggio Africano (Rome: Bruno Zevi Foundation, 2018).
Elisa Dainese, “Histories of Exchange: Indigenous South Africa in the South African Architectural Record and the Architectural Review”, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Special Issue on Global Postwar Architecture 74, no.4 (Dec. 2015): 443-463.