Armillary Lectures: Linda Stagni—Public Validation

LINDA STAGNI
PUBLIC VALIDATION—JOSEPH GANTNER AND THE ANATOMY OF THE ARCHITECTURAL MAGAZINE

Das Werk is a magazine published by two professional associations, the Bund Schweizer Architekten and the Swiss Werkbund. The Swiss art historian Joseph Gantner was at its head in the years 1923–1927, a period that he defined as a completely successful restructuring. During Gantner’s four and half years, the magazine increased its page count, varied its content, developed heterogeneous positions, and became a well-structured and complex publication. However, this transformation occurred under the influence of conflicting authorities’ wills, entanglements, and procurements during a very unstable era, the inception of modernism.
We will look at the constitutive elements, sections, and contents that syntactically structure the narrative of Das Werk, a narrative charged by broader influences, intellectual expectations, and moral investments of the different authorities operating in the magazine. In the lecture, I will show the reciprocal connection between associations and their public presence in the medium of the architectural magazine, the institutionalized presence of art history in the architectural profession, and the scattered appearance of Swissness in the architectural discourse and narrative. Though seldom discussed openly, the topic of national identity was crucial to the negotiation and validation of content in the magazine. Thanks to this case study, we will also rethink modern media as stabilizing tools and not simply as purveyors of innovation.

LINDA STAGNI is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Department of Architecture at the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta) at the Chair of Prof. Maarten Delbeke, ETH Zurich. Her research and teaching focus on how visual culture and media govern the ways we understand architecture.
Her current book project, Public Validation: the Profession of Architecture and Art History, focuses on the art historian Joseph Gantner’s tenure as editor of the Swiss professional architectural magazine Das Werk (1923–1927). Based on her 2023 dissertation thesis, it shows a complex and iterative entanglement between the anatomy of the magazine, the disciplinary transfer of knowledge between the architectural profession and art history, and the role played by national identity.
Her new project reconsiders urban and architectural perspectives of Naples during the long 18th century, blending aspects of environmental history and natural sciences, and seeks to establish an innovative understanding of the visual culture of the Bourbons period.
Linda has presented his work at numerous international conferences, and she has published papers in magazines such as OASE and gta paper. She is co-founder of the Interest Group “On Vanished Buildings” for the European Architectural History Network. She is also a founding member of the DocTalks, a series of weekly meetings for early career researchers that provide a platform for informal discussion and debate among peers.

ABOUT THE LECTURE SERIES:
Armillary spheres are “models of the celestial globe constructed from rings and hoops representing the equator, the tropics, and other celestial circles, and able to revolve on its axis.” This lecture series wants to be a window onto the sphere of academic research, gazing at the different constellations drawn by doctoral dissertations within the horizon of architecture.
The course aims at inviting researchers that already obtained a PhD to present their dissertation to an audience of doctorands, providing a diverse array of examples and case studies on approaching dissertation work within the field of architecture.