Shantel Blakely

Shantel Blakely is an architect and architectural historian with strong interests in architecture and philosophy. Her scholarship focuses on forms of monumentality and configuration that have motivated architects since antiquity, bringing to light aesthetic values that might be traces of transient cultural moments or architects’ responses to imperatives from outside the discipline. A recipient of the Getty Institute and Graham Foundation grants, she is currently working on a book—Appartamento Aperto: At Home with Marco Zanuso (forthcoming from MIT Press, 2024)—examining the architect’s modular buildings and mass-produced furniture in Europe and Latin America as they engaged both local conditions and global economic, artistic and design trends. She is also working on a monograph on the African American architect Charles E. Fleming, who started his career in the 1960s in St. Louis, cannily navigating the political turmoil of the era—including racial segregation, violence and economic disparities—to build a wide array of works and partnerships.

Blakely comes to Houston from Washington University in St. Louis where she had been teaching courses in architectural history, theory, and design. Previously, she taught at Columbia University, Barnard College, and Parsons School of Design, and worked at Roger Hirsch Architects and Maryann Thompson Architects. She also served as the public programs manager at Harvard Graduate School of Design, where she organized lectures and conferences and cocurated the exhibition Happening Now: Historiography in the Making (2016). Her essays and translations have been published in AA Files, Avery Review, PLOT, Log, and other journals.