DAY 2: Contested Spaces: Aesthetics, History and Politics Between Cinema and Architecture
DAY 2: Contested Spaces: Aesthetics, History and Politics Between Cinema and Architecture
School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation
Friday, October 24, 2025 9:00 am - 5:00 pm St. Mary’s Hall Multipurpose RoomHow have spatial narratives, built environments and their cinematic representations shaped our understanding of the world? How has the intersection between cinema and architecture articulated itself historically from the 1960s to the present? The conference on “Contested Spaces” serves to initiate a dialogue between intellectual historians, scholars of film and scholars and practitioners of design and the built environment.
Friday, Oct. 24
9:30–10 a.m. Breakfast
10 a.m.–12:30 p.m. Panel 3: Keynote & Moderated Discussion
Vladimir Paperny | 2025 Maya Brin Resident; author, designer, architectural historian; adjunct professor of Slavic, East European and Eurasian languages and cultures, University of California, Los Angeles | Is There Any Difference Between Architecture and Film?
Moderated discussion with Vladimir Paperny
Peter T. Lang, Ph.D. | Independent curator; lecturer in visual arts and design, NABA Rome; former professor of theory and history, Royal Art Institute, Stockholm, Department of Architecture
Peter Noonan, FAIA LEED AP | Professor of the practice, School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, University of Maryland
12:30–1:30 p.m. Lunch
Participants are invited to explore a poster exhibition of student work from courses taught by Marjan Moosavi, Roshan assistant clinical professor in Persian studies and performing arts, Roshan Institute for Persian Studies, University of Maryland, and Peter Noonan, as well as a media exhibition of visual materials related to the conference.
1:30–4:30 p.m. Panel 4: Spaces of Connection
This session examines the spatial and infrastructural dimensions of cinematic and mediated connections, exploring how institutions, networks and built environments — ranging from film schools and archives to exhibitions, activist hubs and “soft power” initiatives — not only facilitate media circulation but also shape the aesthetic and political genealogies of media forms.
Panelists
Hester Baer | Professor of cinema and media studies and German studies, University of Maryland | Spatial Orientations: Film Education at the Ulm School for Design (1962–68) and the Formation of Feminist Countercinema
Mariano Mestman | Head researcher, National Research Council (CONICET), Gino Germani Research Institute, Department of Social Sciences, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina | Film, Art Exhibitions, Design and Visual Culture Surrounding the Havana Cultural Congress (January 1968)
Felicity D. Scott | Professor of architecture; director, Ph.D. program in architecture (history and theory), Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University | Environments of Governance: Elements of Habitat’s Audiovisual Program, c. 1976
Masha Salazkina | Professor of film and moving image studies, Concordia University, Montreal | Global Disco: Space(s), Places and Geographies of Boney M.
Discussant: Paula Halperin, associate professor of cinema studies and history, director of the School of Film and Media, Purchase College, SUNY
Moderator: Jayson Maurice Porter, assistant professor of environmental history, Department of History, University of Maryland
Sponsored by
Maya Brin Residency Program | Department of History | Cinema and Media Studies Program
With support from the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation; School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures; Roshan Institute for Persian Studies; Language House Living-Learning Program
Image credit:
Joseph McKenley, Zain Shah
ARCH4/678C Architecture & Cinema: Place + Film, Prof. Noonan
About Vladimir Paperny
Vladimir Paperny is the 2025 Maya Brin Resident at the University of Maryland. He is an author, designer and architectural historian, and faculty member of the University of California, Los Angeles. He received his master’s in design from Stroganov Art School in Moscow and his Ph.D. in cultural studies from the Russian State University for the Humanities.
His doctoral thesis, Culture Two: Architecture in the Age of Stalin, was published in Russian by Ardis (Ann Arbor, 1985) and later by NLO (Moscow, 1996), in English (Cambridge University Press, 2003), in Czech (Arbor Vitae) and in Italian (Artemide). Since moving to the United States in 1981, Paperny has been a visiting professor at USC, UCLA, the Woodrow Wilson Center and Bristol University in the United Kingdom.
He co-edited Architecture of Great Expositions 1937–1958: Messages of Peace and Images of War (Ashgate, 2015). His articles and essays, in both English and Russian, have appeared in Architectural Digest, Project Russia, Speech, Vogue, Snob and other publications. His collections of essays (in Russian) include Mos Angeles, Mos Angeles-2 (NLO) and Fuck Context? (Tatlin).
He recently published Cinema, Culture, and the Zeitgeist (Kino, kul’tura, i dukh vremeni, NLO, 2023), and has a new book of memoirs coming out later this year: How I was a Designer (Kak ia byl dizainerom, NLO, 2025).
How have spatial narratives, built environments and their cinematic representations shaped our understanding of the world? How has the intersection between cinema and architecture articulated itself historically from the 1960s to the present? The conference on “Contested Spaces” serves to initiate a dialogue between intellectual historians, scholars of film and scholars and practitioners of design and the built environment.
Friday, Oct. 24
9:30–10 a.m. Breakfast
10 a.m.–12:30 p.m. Panel 3: Keynote & Moderated Discussion
Vladimir Paperny | 2025 Maya Brin Resident; author, designer, architectural historian; adjunct professor of Slavic, East European and Eurasian languages and cultures, University of California, Los Angeles | Is There Any Difference Between Architecture and Film?
Moderated discussion with Vladimir Paperny
Peter T. Lang, Ph.D. | Independent curator; lecturer in visual arts and design, NABA Rome; former professor of theory and history, Royal Art Institute, Stockholm, Department of Architecture
Peter Noonan, FAIA LEED AP | Professor of the practice, School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, University of Maryland
12:30–1:30 p.m. Lunch
Participants are invited to explore a poster exhibition of student work from courses taught by Marjan Moosavi, Roshan assistant clinical professor in Persian studies and performing arts, Roshan Institute for Persian Studies, University of Maryland, and Peter Noonan, as well as a media exhibition of visual materials related to the conference.
1:30–4:30 p.m. Panel 4: Spaces of Connection
This session examines the spatial and infrastructural dimensions of cinematic and mediated connections, exploring how institutions, networks and built environments — ranging from film schools and archives to exhibitions, activist hubs and “soft power” initiatives — not only facilitate media circulation but also shape the aesthetic and political genealogies of media forms.
Panelists
Hester Baer | Professor of cinema and media studies and German studies, University of Maryland | Spatial Orientations: Film Education at the Ulm School for Design (1962–68) and the Formation of Feminist Countercinema
Mariano Mestman | Head researcher, National Research Council (CONICET), Gino Germani Research Institute, Department of Social Sciences, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina | Film, Art Exhibitions, Design and Visual Culture Surrounding the Havana Cultural Congress (January 1968)
Felicity D. Scott | Professor of architecture; director, Ph.D. program in architecture (history and theory), Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University | Environments of Governance: Elements of Habitat’s Audiovisual Program, c. 1976
Masha Salazkina | Professor of film and moving image studies, Concordia University, Montreal | Global Disco: Space(s), Places and Geographies of Boney M.
Discussant: Paula Halperin, associate professor of cinema studies and history, director of the School of Film and Media, Purchase College, SUNY
Moderator: Jayson Maurice Porter, assistant professor of environmental history, Department of History, University of Maryland
Sponsored by
Maya Brin Residency Program | Department of History | Cinema and Media Studies Program
With support from the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation; School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures; Roshan Institute for Persian Studies; Language House Living-Learning Program
Image credit:
Joseph McKenley, Zain Shah
ARCH4/678C Architecture & Cinema: Place + Film, Prof. Noonan
About Vladimir Paperny
Vladimir Paperny is the 2025 Maya Brin Resident at the University of Maryland. He is an author, designer and architectural historian, and faculty member of the University of California, Los Angeles. He received his master’s in design from Stroganov Art School in Moscow and his Ph.D. in cultural studies from the Russian State University for the Humanities.
His doctoral thesis, Culture Two: Architecture in the Age of Stalin, was published in Russian by Ardis (Ann Arbor, 1985) and later by NLO (Moscow, 1996), in English (Cambridge University Press, 2003), in Czech (Arbor Vitae) and in Italian (Artemide). Since moving to the United States in 1981, Paperny has been a visiting professor at USC, UCLA, the Woodrow Wilson Center and Bristol University in the United Kingdom.
He co-edited Architecture of Great Expositions 1937–1958: Messages of Peace and Images of War (Ashgate, 2015). His articles and essays, in both English and Russian, have appeared in Architectural Digest, Project Russia, Speech, Vogue, Snob and other publications. His collections of essays (in Russian) include Mos Angeles, Mos Angeles-2 (NLO) and Fuck Context? (Tatlin).
He recently published Cinema, Culture, and the Zeitgeist (Kino, kul’tura, i dukh vremeni, NLO, 2023), and has a new book of memoirs coming out later this year: How I was a Designer (Kak ia byl dizainerom, NLO, 2025).
St. Mary’s Hall Multipurpose Room false
Cost
FREE
