Sylvia Lavin

A leading figure in current debates, Lavin is known both for her scholarship and for her criticism in contemporary architecture and design. Lavin has been a fellow and a scholar in residence at the Getty Research Institute, and is the recipient of a 2011 Arts and Letters Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Lavin curated the exhibition "Architecture Itself and Other Postmodernist Myths" in 2018, which explores the impact of postmodern procedures and information-driven logic in architecture, and the exhibition "Take Note" in 2010, exploring pivotal moments in the relationship between writing and architecture, both presented at the Canadian Centre for Architecture. Her publications include The Flash in the Pan, published by the Architectural Association in 2015 and Kissing Architecture, published by Princeton University Press in 2011. She is an editor of Crib Sheets, a compilation of polemical writings and sound bites on current buzzwords issued by Monacelli Press and her Form Follows Libido: Architecture and Richard Neutra in a Psychoanalytic Culture was published by MIT Press in 2005.

She received her M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University (GSAPP) and her B.A. from Barnard College. Lavin's dissertation was published as Quatremère de Quincy and the Invention of a Modern Language of Architecture by MIT Press in 1992.

Publications The Flash in the Pan and Other Forms of Architectural Contemporaneity, Architectural Association Publications, 2015 Kissing Architecture, Princeton University Press, 2011 Crib Sheets: Notes on the Contemporary Architectural Conversation (Editor), Monacelli Press, 2005 Form Follows Libido: Architecture and Richard Neutra in a Psychoanalytic Culture, MIT Press, 2005 Quatremere de Quincy and the Invention of a Modern Language of Architecture, MIT Press, 1992