NB: because entrance to campus currently requires a Columbia ID, please reach out to Zachary Torres ([email protected]) by Monday, Feb. 9 if you require guest access to this event. Due to campus restrictions we are unable to honor last-minute requests.
Furnishing Fascism: Modernist Design and Politics in Italy discusses how seemingly neutral household items and the allegedly minor arts—most notably interior design—played a critical role in shaping Italy's exclusionary sense of national identity and enacting fascist politics. As the unification of the country and its modernization disrupted regional styles and modes of life across the peninsula, modernist architects and designers responded to the increasingly eclectic nature of architectural interiors by pursuing new forms of order and cohesion that operated on the scale of the family home while contributing to shaping the nation as a homeland. Interweaving design theory, architectural history, and media scholarship, the book reveals the political entanglement of modernism in early twentieth-century Italy and explores the complexities of cultural production under authoritarian power.
Ignacio G. Galán is an architect and architectural historian at Barnard College, Columbia University. His work addresses questions of residence, citizenship, and kinship with a focus on nationalism, migration, and disability. He is the author of Furnishing Fascism (2025) and co-editor of After Belonging (2016) and Radical Pedagogies (2021). He has published in JSAH, JDH, Journal of Architecture, modernism+modernity, and JAE, and in the volumes Architectures of Care and Italian Imprints, amongst others. His work has also been included in different venues, such as the 6th Chicago Biennial, the International Selection at the 14th and 17th Venice Architecture Biennale, the Center for Architecture, and at the 2013 Lisbon Architecture Biennial, and he was the co-curator of the 2016 Oslo Architecture Triennale.
