ITHACA - Research Group on Theory, History, and Criticism of Architecture

ITHACA is searching to collaborate as partner of MSCA-SE and MSCA-DN proposals, and host of MSCA-PF candidates.

ITHACA’s research focuses on architectural history and theory in a wide sense, including most time periods and regions, with a particular interest in the Iberian Worlds and, especially, in Spain and Latin-America. The group is currently deploying a larger research strategy focused on architecture archives // architectural archiving, supporting the critical interrogation of archival sources through ground-breaking methodologies (including text mining and AI), as well as the analytical deconstruction of the professional processes and institutions involved in managing, ordering, preserving, interpretating, and providing access to such materials.

ITHACA is hosted by UPM’s Architectural History Department (DCA: Departamento de Composición Arquitectónica), which holds more than a century of academic experience as heir of the oldest architecture school in Spain, funded in 1844 in the San Fernando Royal Academy of Arts.

ITHACA is formed by a diverse team of 16 researchers (7 of them women) from every stage in the academic career. ITHACA members participate in all leading scholarly associations of its field, including executive positions in the Society of Architectural Historians, the European Architectural History Network, with an especially strong presence at research institutions in Latin America. They have developed international research projects such as Mapping Global Architectural Histories on Modernism in collaboration with MIT, and the Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC), funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. National research projects include Re-Translates (2022-2026) and ArchiteXt Mining (2016-2019), both of them focused on the critical analysis of architecture publications through different approaches and methodologies.

DCA has its own office area at ETSAM with a dedicated space for postdoctoral researchers. ETSAM also offers a shared office for researchers and a research room at its library.

ETSAM’s is one of the most important libraries specializing in architecture in the Spanish-speaking world with 1500+ m2 and 282 reader seats, a general collection of 60.000 items, and 600+ journals. Its historical archive features 16th-18th cc. manuscripts, prints, and treatises of architecture and urbanism.

Website: https://blogs.upm.es/ithaca/about-us/