Daniela Sandler
Associate Professor
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Her articles and chapters include topics such as grassroots urbanism; the connections between public space, culture, and urbanism in SãoPaulo; squatting and gentrification in Berlin; contemporary affordable housing in Brazil; and the historiography of modernism and modernity in Brazilian architecture. Her articles have appeared in Third Text, Social Identities, and Urban Design International, among others.She is currently in the middle of writing a book manuscript tentatively titled "Cultural Urbanism: Grassroots Activism in São Paulo, 2000-2020." The book is the first city-wide study of grassroots urbanism in São Paulo, Brazil, and explores the ways in which communities work towards a more inclusive city from the bottom-up, tackling challenges such as income inequality, gender discrimination, racism, and environmental problems.
She is also in the early stages of a new project on airborne epidemics in São Paulo, using an urban history of diseases to illuminate the ethical dimensions of air as shared public space.
Her book, Counterpreservation: Architectural Decay in Berlin since 1989 (Cornell University Press, 2016), investigates how Berlin residents appropriated architectural decay intentionally in order to engage a difficult past, resist gentrification, and carve out affordable spaces for housing and culture in the German capital. Her research explores decrepitude as a complex, dynamic way of representing traumatic memories and multiple histories, while also making room for present and future uses. Her book received the 2019 Antoinette Forrester Downing Book Award of the Society of Architectural Historians.
Her articles and chapters include topics such as grassroots urbanism; the connections between public space, culture, and urbanism in São Paulo; squatting and gentrification in Berlin; contemporary affordable housing in Brazil; and the historiography of modernism and modernity in Brazilian architecture. Her articles have appeared in Third Text, Social Identities, and Urban Design International, among others.
She is currently in the middle of writing a book manuscript tentatively titled "Cultural Urbanism: Grassroots Activism in São Paulo, 2000-2020." The book is the first city-wide study of grassroots urbanism in São Paulo, Brazil, and explores the ways in which communities work towards a more inclusive city from the bottom-up, tackling challenges such as income inequality, gender discrimination, racism, and environmental problems.
She is also in the early stages of a new project on airborne epidemics in São Paulo, using an urban history of diseases to illuminate the ethical dimensions of air as shared public space.
Selected Scholarship
Current Research
- Architectural decay, memory, and gentrification in Berlin
- Grassroots urbanism and social justice in São Paulo
- Representations of the city in early Brazilian modernism
Selected Publications
- “Meningitis, Shared Environments, and Inequality in São Paulo, 1971-1975,” in Epidemic Urbanism, ed. Caitlin DeClercq and Mohammad Gharipour (forthcoming)
- “Social Interest Architecture in Brazil: The Seed of Something New,” in The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Architectural History, ed. Duanfang Lu (Routledge, forthcoming)
- “Grassroots Urbanism in Contemporary São Paulo,” Urban Design International vol. 25 (2020): 137-151
- “Modernism and Classicism in Brazil: Foundational Myths and Other Stories,” in The Routledge Handbook on the Reception of Classical Architecture, ed. Nicholas Temple, Andrzej Piotrowski, Juan Manual Heredia (Routledge, 2019)
- “Culture as Urbanism, or the Territorial Dimension of Culture,” ArqUrb no. 23 (2018): 90-106
- “Counterpreservation: Architectural Decay in Berlin since 1989” (Cornell University Press, 2016)
- “Counterpreservation: Decrepitude and Memory in the Architecture of Berlin since 1989,” Third Text, issue 113 (2011)
- “The Other Way Around: The Modernist Movement in Brazil,” in Third World Modernism: Architecture, Development, and Identity, ed. Duanfang Lu (Routledge, 2010)
- “A Memorial Laissez-Passer? Church Exhibitions and National Victimhood in Germany,” in Memorialisation in Germany since 1945, eds. Bill Niven and Chloe Paver (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010)
- “Counterpreservation: Between Grimy Buildings and Renovation Rage,” in IntAR: Interventions / Adaptive Reuse, vol. 1 (Autumn 2009)
- “Place and Process: Culture, Urban Planning, and Social Exclusion in São Paulo,” Social Identities, vol. 13, no. 4 (2007)
- “Incarnate Politics: The Rhetorics of Reunification in Urban Projects in Berlin,” Invisible Culture: An Electronic Journal for Visual Culture, no. 5 (Winter 2003)
- “Daniel Libeskind: Presence and Participation,” Caramelo 9 (School of Architecture, University of São Paulo, 1997)
Teaching
- Architecture: A Global and Cultural History
- Latin American Modern Architecture
- Architecture, Cities, and Food Culture
- Berlin: History and the Built Environment
- Contemporary Architecture
- Architecture, Urbanism, and Health
- Urban Development: New Regimes of Segregation, Berlin and the Twin Cities (co-taught with Matthias Rothe, German, Nordic, Slavic, and Dutch Department; and Stephan Lanz, Viadrina University))
