UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. —  The College of Arts and Architecture’s Stuckeman School will welcome Spanish architect and historian Juan José Lahuerta to the Stuckeman Family Building Jury Space for a lecture titled “Triumphant Modernity: Some Images of Mies van der Rohe’s Architecture in the Popular Media” at 6 p.m. on March 15 as part of the school’s Lecture and Exhibit Series.

Co-hosted by the Department of Architecture, Lahuerta will utilize analogies to understand views of work by van der Rohe, who is regarded as one of the pioneers of modernist architecture. He will also evaluate how some of the most intellectually radical, sophisticated and elitist architecture is interpreted in popular media.

Lahuerta is a professor of art and architecture at the Barcelona School of Architecture where he is also director of the “Gaudi Chair archive of drawings and original designs (1874–1954).” He is also the Kirk Varnedoe visiting professor at the New York University Institute of Fine Arts.

The founder and director of Mudito & Co., an independent editing house based in Barcelona, Lahuerta is a member of the scientific committee of “Casabella,” a Milan-based review journal.

Prior to his current appointment, Lahuerta was a professor at the Iuav University of Venice in Italy, and he held the King Juan Carlos Chair of Spanish Culture and Civilization at New York University. He also served as senior curator of the Picasso Museum in Barcelona and chief curator of the National Museum of Art of Catalonia. 

Lahuerta has published several books on art and architecture, including his most recent publications “Arte en la época del infierno” in 2021, “Romanesque Picasso” in 2016 and “Photography or Life: Popular Mies” in 2015.

The lecture will also be offered via Zoom. Pre-registration for remote attendees is required.