Bassi Cendra

Dissertation Title: Tectonics of Development: Mineral Extraction and the Architecture of the University-City in South America, 1945–1975
 

Advisor: Fabiola Lopez-Duran


Originally trained as an architect, PhD Candidate Giovanna Bassi Cendra specializes in modern Latin American art and architecture history. Her current research focuses on architecture’s entanglement with the ideologies of “development” and extractive capitalism in South America during the postwar period. Her ongoing dissertation project, which interrogates the planning, design, and construction of university campuses vis-à-vis the intensification of mining and oil extraction in the region, has received the Carter Manny Research Award from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts in 2020, as well as support from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Wagoner Foreign Study Scholarship. Giovanna’s essay on Argentinian artist Gyula Kosice’s Hydrospatial City (1946–1972)—which received the Peter Marzio Award for Outstanding Research in Latin American and Latino Art—has revealed the importance of this pioneer critique of the modernist functional city. Giovanna is a founding member of the Racial Geography Project research collective and has collaborated with the Documents Project of the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston). She currently teaches architectural history and theory as the Scholar-in-Residence at the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design of the University of Houston.


Publications

“Academic and Architectural Modernization for Development: Financial and Technical Assistance to the University of Concepción, Chile, 1956–1968.” Rockefeller Archive Center Research Reports (March 16, 2023), https://rockarch.issuelab.org/resource/academic-and-architectural-modernization-for-development-financial-and-technical-assistance-to-the-university-of-concepcion-chile-1956-1968.html
 
La Ciudad Hidroespacial: Challenging the Functional City.” ICAA Documents Project Working Papers: The Publication Series for Documents of 20th-century Latin American and Latino Art 6 (December 2018): 4-15, https://icaa.mfah.org/s/en/page/working-papers
 
Co-authored with Fabiola López-Durán. “Breather: John Sparagana’s Third Condition.” In Sicardi | Ayers | Bacino 25+, edited by Mariela Guilarte, 266–69. Houston, TX: Sicardi | Ayers | Bacino, 2022. (Originally an introductory essay to the exhibition “John Sparagana: Breather,” Sicardi Gallery, September 14–October 19, 2017).
 
Short biographies of the artists “José Gabriel Fernández,” “Oscar Muñoz,” and “Víctor Grippo.” Contingent Beauty: Contemporary Art from Latin America, edited by Mari Carmen Ramírez and María C. Gaztambide, 233-35. Houston, Texas: Museum of Fine Arts; New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2015.

Research Areas

Modern Latin American art; Architecture and urban planning in South America during the Era of International Development; Extractive urbanism in the Americas; Histories of spatial-racial segregation in Houston's Cradle of Culture

Education

M.A. University of Houston, 2015

M. Arch., Illinois Institute of Technology, 2007

B. Arch., Universidad Ricardo Palma (Lima, Peru), 1999

Honors & Awards

2023 Emerging Scholars Fellowship, Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design, University of Houston

2022 Brown Foundation Mentored Teaching Award (Department of Art History, Rice University)

2022 Carter Manny Research Award (Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts)

2020 Rockefeller Archive Center Research Grant (Rockefeller Foundation)

2020 James T. Wagoner ’29 Foreign Study Scholarship

2019 Brown Foundation Dissertation Research Award

2019 James T. Wagoner ’29 Foreign Study Scholarship

2018 Summer Research Travel Award (Department of Art History, Rice University)

2017 Peter C. Marzio Award for Outstanding Research in 20th-Century Latin American and Latino Art (International Center for the Arts of the Americas, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston)

2014 Linda Schele Award for Art History Writing (School of Art, University of Houston)

2014 Friends of the Arts Scholarship (School of Art, University of Houston)

2014 Hohlt-Wich Scholarship (School of Art, University of Houston)

2006 Henry Adams Medal (American Institute of Architects)

2005 Epstein Architectural Scholarship (College of Architecture, Illinois Institute of Technology)

Body

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