Architectural author to visit Stuckeman School

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Mark Linder, author and professor of architecture in the Syracuse University School of Architecture, will visit the Stuckeman Family Building Jury Space at 4 p.m. on Jan. 28 to deliver a lecture titled “Brutal Intelligence and Vulgar Sophistication: The Smithsons’ Mies-Image.” The talk, hosted by the Department of Architecture, will also be live streamed via Zoom.  

Linder will examine the early 1950s "New Brutalism" movement as initiated by architects Peter and Allison Smithson who reconsidered it over the remainder of their careers. 

“The entirety of the Smithsons’ work was above all a fitful and evolving 50-year fascination with the imaging potential they found in the architecture of Mies van der Rohe and a recursive return to the enduring influence of their participation in the proto-Pop experiments of the Independent Group,” he said.  

“In that way, the Smithsons’ varied work exemplifies and anticipates the kinds of cognition and intelligence that dominate our architectural imaginations today,” he concluded.  

Linder’s research explores design theory and history considered in a transdisciplinary framework with a focus on modern architecture since 1950. He is the author of “That’s Brutal, What’s Modern? The Smithsons, Banham, and the Mies-Image" (Park Books, 2025), “Nothing Less Than Literal: Architecture after Minimalism” (MIT Press, 2004) and numerous papers and essays in journals. 

At Syracuse, Linder was Chancellor’s Fellow in the Humanities from 2011 to 2014. He has lectured extensively throughout the United States and Europe and has taught as a visiting professor at the University of Michigan, Harvard University, University of Illinois-Chicago, Rice University Rhode Island School of Design and UCLA.