The Deborah J. Norden Fund 1996

“Architecture of spectacle: The Partita a Scacchi in Marostica”

In 1996, the Architectural League awarded one grant to Medina Lasansky, who traveled to Marostica, Italy, to study the pseudo-medieval festival of Partita a Scacchi, a chess game played with living figures. The festival was introduced in 1954 as part of a broad postwar reconstruction program. In this small Venetian town, Lasansky explored the festival’s impact on the built environment, focusing on questions of collective memory and how the town’s medieval past, crucial to its present identity, is kept alive through its physical space.

Medina Lasanksky has continued her research on politics, popular culture, and the built environment, and published the book The Renaissance Perfected: Architecture, Spectacle and Tourism in Fascist Italy (Penn State University Press, 2004). Now, she teaches urban development and history of architecture at Cornell University, where she is an associate professor of architecture.