The Rice School of Architecture invites you to join us for an evening celebrating the launch of The Art of Being a Stranger: A Family Memoir by author and illustrator Karen Bermann. Bermann will be joined in conversation by Igor Marjanović, the William Ward Watkin Dean of the Rice School of Architecture, to discuss the book’s exploration of displacement, the architecture of memory, and the visual language of the archive.
About the Book
Told through a sophisticated interplay of alternating voices, lyrical text, and mixed-media drawings, The Art of Being a Stranger traces a family history defined by the fractures of the twentieth century. The memoir moves fluidly across geography, from the streets of Vienna and the landscapes of Palestine to the verticality of New York City. Exploring the intimate, often darkly funny tensions of parenting and coming of age in the long shadow of history.
Bermann, who trained as an architect at The Cooper Union, applies an architect’s spatial sensibility to the page. She writes from the perspective of a daughter seeking to map the life of her father, Fritz, a man who spent his career maintaining the physical fabric of New York City buildings while navigating the internal weight of continental migration. The resulting work is a layered, "built" narrative that is as much a visual experiment as it is a literary one, deeply attentive to how place, memory, and the domestic interior shape our sense of belonging.
About the Speakers
Karen Bermann is an author, illustrator, and architect based in Rome, Italy. She is an Associate Professor Emerita at Iowa State University, where she taught architecture for over twenty years. Her work focuses on the intersection of the built environment and personal narrative, often utilizing drawing as a primary mode of inquiry into history and identity.
Igor Marjanović is the William Ward Watkin Dean of the Rice School of Architecture. His research focuses on the history and theory of architecture, ideology, and the visual arts. He has published extensively on the role of drawings, exhibitions, and publications in the shaping of international architectural culture, including the books Drawing Ambience, On The Very Edge, and Marina City, which was also featured on PBS Newshour.