Lecture by MAXXI’s Ciorra, Breuer exhibition reception slated for March 22 at School of Architecture

On Tuesday, March 22, the Syracuse University School of Architecture will host two events of significance to the architecture and design communities. Pippo Ciorra, senior curator of the MAXXI Architecturra, will speak at 5 p.m. in Slocum Hall Auditorium.  Ciorra is a highly respected Italian architect, critic, curator and designer, and professor of design and theory. In 2010, he was named the senior curator of the MAXXI, Rome’s National Museum of the XXI Century Arts, designed by Zaha Hadid.

Following the Ciorra lecture, a closing reception for the “Marcel Breuer and Postwar America” exhibition will take place at 6:30 p.m. in Slocum Gallery. Both events are free and open to the public. 

Ciorra is a full professor of design at the School of Architecture of Ascoli Piceno, University of Camerino. Since 1982 he has taught at several architecture schools in Italy and North America, including “La Sapienza” in Rome, IUAV in Venice, Ohio State University and Cornell University. He is the coordinator of the Villard d’Honnecourt international Ph.D program, and is adviser for the MVDR prize. 

Ciorra is a member of the CICA (Committee of International Critics of Architecture) and, since 1981, has been the architecture critic for “Il Manifesto” and other Italian newspapers and radio stations. He has authored several books on architects, museums and urban issues including “Ludovivco Quaroni, Peter Eisenman;” “Young Italian Architects;” “Publi-city: Technics for the survival of public space;” and “New York: Unstable Sameness.” He has curated and designed many important exhibitions and installations in Italy and elsewhere, including the Biennale in Venice, the MAXXI museum and “Palazzo delle Esposizioni” in Rome.  Building projects include the molecular biology laboratories at the University of Camerino, the addition to the Archeologic Museum of Ascoli Piceno, and a number of residential and office buildings in Italy. 

The “Marcel Breuer and Postwar America” exhibition, running from Feb. 15 through March 29, was curated by Syracuse Architecture students as part of a seminar on the Bauhaus architect, taught by visiting professor Barry Bergdoll, the Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art, with Jonathan Massey, Syracuse Architecture associate professor and undergraduate department chair. The exhibition is the outcome of their work in the extensive Breuer archive at the Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center.  It features images of 120 drawings, as well as photographs documenting 13 of Breuer’s major postwar buildings and projects. Full-scale reproductions highlight themes that characterized some of Breuer’s lesser-known major work and document his responses to the needs and opportunities of postwar American society.