Jonathan Mekinda is an architecture and design historian and Associate Professor at the UIC School of Design, where he is also Associate Director for Faculty Affairs and served as the founding director of the design studies program. His research focuses on the history of modern architecture and design during the middle decades of the twentieth century, particularly in Italy and the United States. He has received grants and awards from numerous organizations, among them the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, and the Terra Foundation for American Art. His writing can be found in various journals and edited volumes, including Revival: Memories, Identities, Utopias (2015), Studi e ricerche di storia dell’architettura (2019), and the forthcoming volume Curating Fascism: Exhibitions and Memory from the Fall of Mussolini until Today. Chicagoisms: The City as Catalyst for Architectural Speculation, which he co-edited with Alexander Eisenschmidt, was published by Park Books in 2013, and in 2014, with Eisenschmidt and Matthew Wizinsky, he organized “Chicagoisms” at the Art Institute of Chicago. Professor Mekinda is currently at work on several publication and digital projects on the history of architecture and design in Milan and Chicago. He received his AB (Honors) in architectural studies from Brown University and his MA and PhD in the history of art from the University of Pennsylvania.
Recent Publications
_”Feeling at Home: Exhibiting Design, Blurring Fascism,” with Elena Dellapiana, in Curating Fascism: Exhibitions and Memory from the Fall of Mussolini until Today, edited by Raffaele Bedarida and Sharon Hecker, London: Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2022.
_ “Chicago e il New Bauhaus tra innovazione e sperimentazione,” in Atti Assemblea SID 2019: 100 anni dal Bauhaus. Le prospettive della ricerca di design, edited by Lucia Pietroni, Raimondo Riccini, et al., Società Italian di Design, 2020, pp. 36-45.
_ “On What Grounds? Subject and Method in the History of Modern Architecture and Design,” Studi e ricerche di storia dell’architettura 3, no. 5 (2019): 12-25.
_ “Chicago Designs for America,” in Art Deco Chicago: Designing Modern America, edited by Robert Bruegmann, Chicago: Chicago Art Deco Society, distributed by Yale University Press, 2018, pp. 15-31.
Recent Presentations
_”Defining Chicago Design: Tracing a Metropolitan Design Ecosystem,” “Doing Design History Digitally: Research Methods in a Hybrid World” panel, annual conference of the Design History Society, Izmir, Turkey, 8-10 September 2022
_”Keyword: Home,” Workshop of the Housing Interest Group, Bi-Annual Conference of the European Architectural History Network, Edinburgh, Scotland, 2–5 June 2021
_ “Design e sperimentazione,” Società Italiana di Design, Assemblea 2019, Scuola di Ateneo Architettura e Design “Eduardo Vittoria,” Università di Camerino, Ascoli Piceno, Italy, 13–14 June 2019
_ “Modernism, Mass Culture, and the Modern Home: Milan 1933-1957,” Building–Object/Design–Architecture: Exploring Interconnections, Birkbeck, University of London, London, England, 6–8 June 2019
_ “Networks and Circuits, Maps and Flows: Contemporary Visions of Interaction and Exchange,” Design Migrations: Circuits of Graphic Exchange between Switzerland, the US, and Beyond, Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst Basel and UIC School of Design, Chicago, USA, 4–5 April 2019
Recent Classes
_ AH/DES 235 History of Design I, 1750–1925 (survey offered annually)
_ AH/DES 236 History of Design II, 1925–Present (survey offered annually)
_ DES 355 Design and the Body (undergraduate seminar offered annually)
_ DES 502 Research Seminar II (graduate seminar, spring 2020)
