Marcia Feuerstein
- Associate Professor
Marcia Feuerstein received her PhD at University of Pennsylvania, is a registered architect and an associate professor at Virginia Tech's Washington Alexandria Architecture Center teaching in the Masters and PhD programs. She considers architecture through the lens of the body, embodiment, performance, and theater having focused on Oskar Schlemmer, iconic architectural projects, and drawing from her early work with disabled populations. Recent publications include Expanding Field of Architecture: Women in Practice Across the Globe (2022), Confabulations: Storytelling in Architecture (2016) , Architecture as a Performing Art (2013), and Changing Places: ReMaking Institutional Buildings ( as well as contributions to a number of edited volumes and journals (The Routledge Companion to Drawings and Models (2022), Ceilings and Dreams (2018) , Body and Building (2002) , ARQ, Montreal Research Quarterly, and others . She started her architectural career in Buffalo, NY and has continued to practice when the spirit moves her.
Architecture theory and design: Body, Embodiment, Performance and Theater; The Bauhaus, Oskar Schlemmer, Modern architecture between WW1 and WW2; Women in Architecture.
ARCH 6005: ARCH & Western Thought/ PhD Seminar
ARCH 7994: Research and Dissertation
ARCH 5134: Topics of Arch Hist Theory/Architecture and Embodiment
ARCH 5715: Architecture & Urbanism Lab
ARCH 5994: research and thesis
ARCH 4214: Topic Arch His & Theory/Reading Seminar
ARCH 4015: Architecture IV
ARCH 4515: Architecture V/UG thesis
BOOKS
2022 Expanding Field of Architecture: Women in Practice Across the Globe, Co-Author, Lund Humphries LTD, London, England. In Press, Publication: Spring 2022.
2017 Confabulations : Storytelling in Architecture, co-editor of edited volume and author, London and New York: Ashgate / Routledge, a Taylor & Francis Group, 2017
2013 Architecture as a Performing Art co-editor and author, Surrey, England and Burlington, VT: Ashgate Press, 2013.
1992 Changing Places: ReMaking Institutional Buildings, co-editor, Fredonia, N.Y.: White Pine Press, 1992.
CHAPTERS
2022 “‘After’ the Original: High Costs, Low Roads and Circumventions” in The Routledge Companion to Drawings and Models: From Translating to Archiving, Collecting and Displaying, edited by Federica Goffi, Routledge, 2022.
2018 ""Looking Down to Look Up"" in Ceilings and Dreams: the architecture of levity, edited by Paul Emmons et al, Routledge, 2019.
2015 “Camillo Sitte’s winged snail: festina lente and escargot” in Confabulations, co-edited by Paul Emmons, Marcia Feuerstein, Carolina Dayer, Ashgate Press, 2015.
2014 “Designing through our Imagined Bodies” in Mind into Matter Bodies + Space : An interdisciplinary exchange of critical scholarship and creative practice in the field of body- environment relationships, Faculty of Architecture and Planning, Dalhousie University, May 2014.
2013 “Theatrical Doubles: The Affecting Presence of Oskar Schlemmer’s Wall Designs”, in Architecture as a Performing Art, edited by Marcia Feuerstein and Gray Read. Ashgate Press, 2013.
2010 “Skewed Stagecraft: Claude Bragdon’s Isometric Theatrics,” in Claude Bragdon and the Beautiful Necessity, edited by Eugenia Ellis, Rochester, NY: RIT Cary Graphic Arts Press, 2010, 64 - 71 and 171
2005 “Body and Building inside the Bauhaus’s Darker Side: On Oskar Schlemmer,” in Body and Building Essays on the Changing Relation of Body and Architecture, Editors G. Dodds and R. Tavernor, 226 - 236, 337- 338. Cambridge, MA and London: M.I.T. Press, 2002 (HB) Feb, 2005 (PB)
PUBLICATIONS/ARTICLES
2019 "'In the sky with diamonds' of Ronchamp's East Wall: Constellations of Thought," Montreal Architecture Review, 6(2019):29-43 31 Dec 2019.
2019 "Oskar Schlemmer's Vordruck: an absent woman within a Bauhaus canon of the body," Theatre and Performance Design, 5 (1-2): 125-140, 3 Apr 2019.
2009 “Illuminating Quality in Architectural Reveals,” Architecture Research Quarterly, 3/4, Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp 231-239
2021 “Camouflage: The Disappearance of Form and Shadow,” abstract, co-authored for The Architectures of Hiding, Agora, Carlton Research / Practice or Teaching / Collaborative (CRIPTIC), Azrieli School of Architecture & Urbanism, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. Unpaginated. On-Line (09/24//2021)
CREATIVE ACTIVITY: published montage
'The Absent Woman series,' series of 3 constructed images developed to accompany journal article "Oskar Schlemmer's Vordruck: an absent woman within a Bauhaus canon of the body," Theatre and Performance Design, 5 (1-2): 125-140, 3 Apr 2019
"Looking down while looking up: unexpected serendipities,” Photographic exhibit: Ceilings and Dreams,” Symposium, April 2017.
“Unmaking Procrustes Bed after Schlemmer’s Haus Rabe and other images,” montage, exhibition, Confabulations, March 2014.
“Utopia,” montage, published with “Utopia in Uncertainty,” excerpts by Eugenio Battisti, Journal of Utopian Studies, Volume 9, No.1, 1998: 150.
"AIA (American Institute of Architecture); NYS, PA, NJ Registered and Licensed Architect
“Outstanding Mentor Award,” College of Architecture and Urban Studies, Graduate School.2020
Kajima Research Institute Research Funding for Japan research, travel and housing 2017
Phi Beta Delta Honor Society for International Scholars
Excellence in Scholarship, Virginia Tech School of Architecture + Design
Women and Minority Artists and Scholars Lecture Series
Education
Ph.D History and Theory of Architecture, University of Pennsylvania
M.S. History and Theory of Architecture, University of Pennsylvania
B.S. Tufts University; M. Arch., University at Buffalo (SUNY@Buffalo)
