B.S. Architecture, University of Virginia; M.Arch, Yale University; Ph.D., Princeton University
Mark Linder’s research explores design theory and history considered in a transdisciplinary framework with a focus on modern architecture since 1950. His forthcoming book, That’s Brutal, What’s Modern?: The Smithsons, Banham and the Mies Image, argues that the intellectual formation and design practices of The New Brutalism are early, exemplary instances of modern architecture coming to terms with the question, “What would architectural practice become if imaging were its acknowledged means and ends?”
As Chancellor’s Fellow in the Humanities (2011-14) his annual seminar and ongoing event series focused on imaging theories and the ways that the precise analysis, application, and understanding of images invite innovative research methods and collaborations. A website, imagesproject.org, documents the results of that work and subsequent courses. Most recently, his in multi-media installation, NeuroArchitectureImaging (2019), explored intersections of imaging practices in architecture and neuroscience. A prior long term transdisciplinary project (2000-2015) investigated the potential of Geographic Information Systems as an urban design media with the capacity to transform census and other data, with its discrete categories and boundaries, into more pliable, or fluid, relational images that can suggest new spatial densities, intensities, gaps, affiliations, networks, communities, and territories. His most recent GIS project was exhibited at McGill University in 2012 and the Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative in 2015.
He has lectured throughout the United States and Europe and participated in numerous symposia and conferences, including “Inside/Outside” at Ghent University (2017), “Chicagoisms“ at the Graham Foundation (2014), What I Did Next” at Princeton (2012), “Comic Projections: Guilty Pleasures,” at UIC (2011) “Just Add Urbanism” at UCLA (2010), “Expertise” at Tel Aviv University (2009), “Architecture as Craft” at TU-Delft (2009), “The Work of Glen Seator” at The Getty Institute (2002), and “Things in the Making” at MoMA (2000). He has contributed chapters to Farewell to Visual Studies (2014), Architecture in Formation (2013), Chicagoisms (2013), Beyond Surface Appeal (2012), Architecture School (2012), Autonomy and Ideology (1997), and Strategies of Architectural Thinking (1992). His articles have appeared in Assemblage, AA Files, ANY, A+U, Design Book Review, Documents, Flat Out, Harvard Design Review, Hunch, Journal of Architectural Education, and Log. He has taught as a visiting professor at the University of Michigan, Harvard, University of Illinois-Chicago, Rice University, IIT, RISD, and UCLA.
Publications
Books
- Nothing Less Than Literal: Architecture after Minimalism, MIT Press, 2004
- Editor, Scogin, Elam and Bray: Critical Architecture/Architectural Criticism, Rizzoli International, 1992
Papers and articles
- “Episodes in the Emergence of Images Practices,” in Instabilities and Potentialities: Notes on the Nature of Knowledge in Digital Architecture, eds. C. Ahrens and A. Sprecher, Routledge, 2019.
- “Failed and Fantastic: Kiesler’s Imaging Practices,” in Within and Beyond, ed. Wouter Davidts, Valiz, 2019.
- “The Cameo: Get It, While You Can,” Flat Out 2, Spring, 2017.
- “Did Someone Say Architecture? Or, Take My Discipline, Please!” in Farewell to Visual Studies (James Elkins and Sunil Mangani, eds) Penn State University Press: (2015)
- “Literal Digital,” in Architecture in Formation: On the nature of information in digital architecture, (Pablo Lorenzo-Eiroa and Aaron Sprecher, eds.) Routledge, 2013
- “Banham’s Mieses,” in Chicagoisms, (Alexander Eisenschmitt, ed.) Birkhäuser, 2013
- “Images and Other Stuff,” Journal of Architectural Education, November, 2012
- “Disciplinarity: Redefining Architecture’s Limits and Identity,” in Architecture School: Three Centuries of Architecture Education in North America, (Joan Ockman and Rebecca Williamson, eds.) MIT Press, 2012
- “Drawing, Literally,” in Architecture as Craft,” (Michiel Riedijk, ed.) TU Delft, 2010
- “TRANSdisciplinarity,” Hunch 9, 2005
- “Literal: There’s No Denying It,” Log 5, Spring/Summer 2005
- “Nonsitely Windows: Robert Smithson’s Architectural Criticism,” Assemblage 39, Winter 2000
- “Wild Kingdom: Frederick Kiesler’s Display of the Avant-Garde,” in Autonomy and Ideology: Positioning an Architectural Avant-Garde in America, (R.E. Somol, ed.) Monticelli Press, 1997
- “Entropy Colorized: The Gray Decades, 1966-1996,” ANY 16, November 1996
- “From Pictorial Impropriety to Seæming Difference,” ANY 7/8, August 1994
- “This is This,” ANY 1, July/August 1993
- “Architecture Lost for Words,” AA Files 24, London, Autumn 1992
- “Architectural Theory is No Discipline,” Strategies in Architectural Thinking, (John Whiteman and Jeffrey Kipnis, eds.) Chicago Institute for Architecture and Urbanism, 1992
- “Mumford’s Metaphors: Sticks and Stones versus Ships and the Sea,” Journal of Architectural Education, November, 1992
- “Boredom,” Documents 1/2, New York, Fall 1992
- “Contingency and Circumstance in Architecture: Venturi and Scott Brown’s Sainsbury Wing,” Architecture + Urbanism, Tokyo, March 1992
- “Dumbfounded Architecture … Enough Unsaid,” Arquitectura, Madrid, November 1991 (Republished in Architecture + Urbanism, Tokyo, June 1992)
Catalog essays
- “Twisted Image: This is the New Brutal,” in Lafayette 148, (ed. Marc Neveu) Actar, 2017.
- “Architecture, More or Less,” in Beyond Surface Appeal: Literalism, Sensibilities, and Constituencies in the Work of James Carpenter, (Sarah Whiting, ed.) Harvard Graduate School of Design, 2012
- “With a Big A: Artpark after the Architectural Turn,” in Artpark, The First Ten Years, 1974-84, Princeton Architectural Press, 2010
- “Towards ‘A New Type of Building’: Robert Smithson’s Architectural Criticism,” in Robert Smithson, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2004
- “Peculiar Autonomy: The Subject of Sculpture,” in Works by Charles Long, Sperone Gallery, Rome. April 1998
- “Intelligent Hard Bodies,” in Chris Garofalo: The Sixth Extinction, Eastwick Gallery, Chicago. Fall 1997
Reviews
- “Corrections and Collections: Architectures for Art and Crime, by Joe Day,” Constructs, Spring 2014
- “Architecture’s Desire, by K. Michael Hays,” Journal of Architectural Education, March 2011
- “Perspecta 42,” Constructs, Fall 2010
- “Perspecta 9/10,” Harvard Design Magazine, Winter 2002
- “A Few Things Architects Should/Don’t Know About Situationists and Literalists,” Design Book Review 41. Winter 2001
- “What Goes Around Comes Around,” Constructs, Fall 2000
- “Object to Be Destroyed, by Pamela Lee,” Documents 18, Summer 2000
- “Art Frictions: Scholar in the Expanded Field,” Documents 11, New York. Spring 1998
- “Unprecedented Realism and Monolithic Architecture,” Journal of Architectural Education, February 1997
- “Time for Lacan,” Assemblage 21, August 1993
Miscellania
- Pamphlet (interview), Mark Linder: Graduate Sessions 11, Syracuse Architecture, 2011.
- Editor, Graduate Sessions 1-10 [Pamphlet Series], Syracuse Architecture, 2005-10
Administration and Service
- Thesis Director, Syracuse Architecture, 2015-2021
- NYC Program Coordinator, 2012-2013
- Graduate Chair, Syracuse Architecture, 2005-2010
