Dr Maria Elisa Navarro Morales

Assistant Professor in the History of Architecture

Research interests

My research focuses on architecture, architectural theory, and architecture books in the early modern period in Europe and its colonies. Between 2017 and 2023 I was part of the research group “Spanish Italy and the Iberian Americas”, under the direction of Columbia University professors Alessandra Russo and Michael Cole, funded by the Getty Foundation Connecting Art Histories program. In 2023 I co-edited with Dr Juan Luis Burke a thematic number in H-Art, Revista de Teoría, Historia y Crítica de Arte on Architect 's Books. I am currently completing a monograph on Juan Caramuel de Lobkowitz (1606 - 82) and his treatise Architectura Civil Recta y Obliqua (1678 - 79) where both the published treatise and the unpublished manuscript fourth volume Arquitectura Natural (1680 c) are examined. My most recent research project, A portal to the Fagel Collection uses a surviving eighteenth-century Dutch library kept at TCD, to investigate the visual and spatial aspects of early modern collecting and displaying practices in domestic environments.

Selected Research Outputs

“Defending the Land, Protecting the City: A Comparison Between the Representation of Cities in Spanish Italy and Iberian America ''. In Spanish Italy and the Iberian Americas, editor(s) Alessandra Russo and Michael Cole. Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies University of Toronto. In print.
Co-authored with Juan Luis Burke. “Los Libros del Arquitecto”. H-Art, Revista de Teoría, Historia y Crítica de Arte, Vol. 12, September 2023. https://doi.org/10.25025/hart15.2023.02
“El Lenguaje de la Arquitectura y la Arquitectura como Lenguaje en la Teoría de Caramuel''. In Atardece el Barroco, Ficción Experimental en la España de Carlos II (1665 - 1700), editor(s)Jorge García López and Enrique Garcia Santo-Tomás. Vervuert Iberoamericana, 2022. https://doi.org/10.31819/9783968692487
“German Samper, A Life Among his Drawings”. In The Routledge Companion to Architectural Drawings and Models: From Translating to Archiving, Collecting and Displaying, Goffi, F., and Vaughan Johnson, M. (eds.). Routledge, 2022.
“Architectura Natural, the Unpublished Fourth Volume of Juan Caramuel’s Seventeenth-Century Architectural Treatise “. Journal of the Society of Architecture Historians, Vol. 81 No. 4, (December 2022), 412–417. https://doi.org/10.25025/hart15.2023.02
"Cathedral of Saint Agatha in Gallipoli, 1629– 1650." In Spanish Italy & the Iberian Americas, Cole M. and Russo A. (eds.). New York, NY: Columbia University, 2022. https://doi.org/10.7916/9v0a-ca65
Co-authored with Roberto Londoño. “Inverted classroom teaching in the first-year design studio, a case study”. British Journal of Educational Technology, Vol. 50 Issue 5, September 2019. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12711

Teaching

I teach on the history of architecture of the early modern period in Europe, both at undergraduate and graduate level. In my Junior Sophister module Building Modernity in Paper and Stone, we examine buildings and architectural publications (1500-1700). Architecture Beyond the Canon is a Senior Sophister module that looks at underrepresented geographies, lesser-known architects and other actors involved in the production of architecture, and architectural products beyond buildings such as ephemeral structures.

I welcome applications for PhD students on topics related to early modern architecture, architectural theory, architecture prints and books, issues of architecture representation in text and print, the architecture of the Spanish empire, architectural exchanges between Europe and its colonies, and architectural representation in drawings and models.