The Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) has named its 2016 SAH/Mellon Awards Recipients. This year’s winners are Peter Christensen, Itohan I. Osayimese, and Robin Schuldenfrei. The award is specifically designed to provide financial support for scholars in the process of publishing their first monographs related to the history of the built environment. Often scholars are responsible for paying for the rights and permissions for images, as well as commissioning new maps, charts, and line drawings.
Peter Christensen’s forthcoming book, Germany and the Ottoman Railways: Art, Empire, and Infrastructure (Yale University Press) covers his research on the politics surrounding the construction of train stations, settlements, and other infrastructure in the context of the Ottoman railway network. Christensen is assistant professor of art history at the University of Rochester
Itohan I. Osayimese’s Colonialism and the Archive of Modern Architecture in Germany (University of Pittsburgh Press) explores the relationship between colonialism and German modernist architecture from the 1850s to the 1930s. Osayimese’s ties the forms of German modernism to the country’s colonial endeavors in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. Osayimese is an assistant professor of the history of art and architecture at Brown University.
Luxury and Modernism: Architecture and the Object in Germany 1900–1933 (Princeton University Press) by Robin Schuldenfrei examines the divide between modernism’s democratic and utopian ideals and existing design and production structures. Schuldenfrei is the Katja and Nicolai Tangen Lecturer in 20th-century Modernism at The Courtauld Institute of Art.
Founded in 1940 at Harvard University, the Society of Architectural Historians works with scholars and professionals. The SAH provides historical services and guidance to its 3,000 members and 800 institutional members in 56 countries. Architecture, urbanism, and landscape history are all covered by the SAH. The SAH also maintains the Archipedia online encyclopedia of American architecture.
