Hadas Steiner

Associate Professor Hadas A. Steiner received a Ph.D. in the History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a Masters degree in Art History from University of California, Berkeley, and a Bachelor of Art in Architecture from Columbia University.

Her research concentrates on the cross-pollinations of technological, scientific and cultural aspects of architectural fabrication in the postwar period. She is at work on a manuscript that will provide an historical analysis of the evolving use of the terms “habitat,” and by extension “ecology,” in architectural discourse, from the abortive “Charter of Habitat” proposed by Le Corbusier at the seventh meeting of CIAM in 1949, through the work of John McHale in the 1970s.  It will show how these concepts entered the architectural discourse through the biological sciences, and how the understanding of these terms changed throughout the 1950s, 60s and 70s as they were variously reinterpreted and employed by Peter and Alison Smithson, Cedric Price and John McHale respectively.

Steiner is the author of Beyond Archigram: The Technology of Circulation (Routledge) and her scholarship and reviews have been published in OCTOBER, Grey Room, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Journal of Architectural Education, Journal of Architecture and arq.  Work in progress includes manuscripts on the photographic documentation conducted by Reyner Banham while in Buffalo, the techno-zoological architecture of Cedric Price, as well as the architecture of extreme conditions, including the work of John McHale.  Her work has been supported by grants and fellowships from, among others, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Graham Foundation, Getty Research Institute, and the Zoological Society of London, as well as numerous institutional awards from SUNY and MIT.