The Deborah J. Norden Fund 1996

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

Participants in a nighttime version of the chess game. Credit: Medina Lasansky

The Deborah J. Norden Fund, a program of The Architectural League of New York, was established in 1995 in memory of architect and arts administrator Deborah Norden. The competition awards up to $5,000 annually in travel grants to students and recent graduates in the fields of architecture, architectural history, and urban studies.

“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.

Report

About the Deborah J. Norden Fund

The Deborah J. Norden Fund

An annual competition that awards travel grants to students and recent graduates in the fields of architecture, architectural history, and urban studies

Publications

Explore

Craig Ellwood

October 22, 1987 | Part of the lecture series Three Modern Architects | Reissued as part of Mid-Century Masters, a digital archive series.

Cities of the dead

Margaret Morton reveals the architecturally and culturally distinctive ancestral cemeteries of Kyrgyzstan.