Dr Maria Elisa Navarro Morales

Assistant Professor in the History of Architecture

Research interests

I am an architect and architecture historian interested in architecture and architectural theory in Early Modern Europe. I am particularly interested in the relationship between books and buildings and in non-canonical architectural manifestations. My research focuses on the theoretical and built work of Spanish polymath Juan Caramuel de Lobkowitz (1606 – 1682). Through the study of lesser known architects such as Caramuel, we expand our existing knowledge Early Modern architecture and enrich our idea of what Western architecture is. Caramuel´s theoretical work historicizes our own modernity, particularly the role of history as a way of orienting the practice of architecture, the social and political dimensions of the practice, its power to effect societal reform and the ethical responsibility of the architect.

Selected Research Outputs

Co-authored, “Inverted classroom teaching in the first-year design studio, a case study”, British Journal of Educational Technology, in press. DOI: 10.1111/bjet.12711
“Juan Caramuel y la primera historia de la arquitectura”, In: DEARQU 22 La Historia en la Formación del Arquitecto, Revista de Arquitectura de La Universidad de Los Andes, Quintana, I., O´Byrne, M. C. (eds.), Bogotá, Colombia, 2018, ISSN 2011-3188
“Reconciling Multiplicity through Stories, Caramuel and the First Historical Account of Architecture”, In: Entangled Histories, Multiple Geographies International Scientific Thematic Conference, EAHN 2015 BELGRADE. University of Belgrade – Faculty of Architecture, Serbia, 2017, ISBN 978-86-7924-174-0
“La Arquitectura Oblicua de Juan Caramuel, un Enfoque Casuístico”, In: Barroco Iberoamericano: Identidades Culturales de un Imperio, López Calderon, C., Fernández Valle M. A., Rodriguez Moya, M. I. (eds.) Vols. I, Andavira Editora, Santiago de Compostela 2013, ISBN: 978-84-8408-743-4
“History as Storytelling in the Account of the Eleven Orders of Architecture According to Juan Caramuel De Lobkowitz”, In: Chora VI: Intervals in the Philosophy of Architecture, Pérez-Gómez, A., and Parcell, S. (eds.), McGill-Queens University Press, Montreal, 2011, ISBN 978-0-7735-3859-7
“The Astronomer’s Palace”, In: Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, Vol. 3 Number 1, 2011. http://rupkatha.com/V3/n1/02Astronomer's-Palace.pdf
“The Narrative of The Architectural Orders in The Treatise Architectura Civil Recta Y Obliqua” by Juan Caramuel, In: Juan Caramuel: The Last Scholastic Polymath Dvorak, P., Schmutz, J. (eds.), Filosofia, Praha 2008, ISBN 978-80-7007-283-7

Teaching

I teach history of architecture of the early modern period in Europe. In the Junior Freshmen Introduction to Western Art and Architecture course, I teach Classical, Early Modern and Modern architecture. From 2020, I will be teaching an option on Early Modern European architecture and a special subject on the history of architectural theory.