Book Launch: Sophia Psarra - The Venice Variations

For the launch of her new book Sophia will discuss the lessons learnt from the construction of Venice and the key figures and events that motivated her to write this publication. In her book, Sophia explores cities and buildings as multi-authored processes of formation, alongside the ways in which they interact with individual authorship and intention.

Following an introduction from Professor Alan Penn, Dean of The Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, Sophia will be in conversation with invited guests including Margarita Greene, Professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile.

Light refreshments will be provided.

Published by UCL Press, The Venice Variations will be made available in a variety of formats, including as a free Open Access PDF. Printed copies will be available to purchase on the evening (cash only).

Book your place

This event has been organised in collaboration with UCL Press.

Biography

Sophia Psarra is a Reader at The Bartlett School of Architecture. Aside from her most recent book The Venice Variations: Tracing the Architectural Imagination, Sophia is also the author of Architecture and Narrative: The Formation of Space and Cultural Meaning (Routledge, 2009) which explores the relationship between design conceptualisation, narrative and human cognition.

Sophia's research is interdisciplinary, combining architecture and urbanism, history and theory with digital spatial modelling and users’ activity, describing cities and buildings through their historic, spatial, cultural and cognitive dimensions.

She has taught postgraduate architectural design studios and theory seminars at The Bartlett and undergraduate/graduate design studios and doctoral courses at the University of Michigan. Sophia was Associate Professor at the University of Michigan (2005-2011), Cardiff University (1997-2004) and the University of Greenwich (1992-1997).

She has collaborated with cultural institutions on layout design, exhibition concept and visitor experience, including at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York and the Natural History Museum, London. Her design work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, the George Pompidou Centre, Paris, and the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI), Rotterdam, as well as in London, Berlin, Milan and Athens.