17th- and 18th-Century European Architecture and Urbanism; Architectural Theory; Antiquarianism
Eleonora Pistis was trained as both an architect and architectural historian at the University IUAV of Venice, Italy, where she earned her Ph.D. in the History of Architecture and Urban Planning. Before coming to Columbia she was, from 2011 to 2014, the Scott Opler Research Fellow in Architectural History at Worchester College, Oxford, and thereafter, in Spring 2015, Research Fellow at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University. From 2015 to 2016, she was visiting Assistant Professor in Art History at Grinnell College, IA, where she taught courses in early modern European architecture and architectural theory.
Her work spans the European architecture and urbanism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with a focus on Italy, Britain, and France. Eleonora has worked extensively on the relationship between architecture and antiquarian studies within the European Republic of Letters, the spaces of learning institutions, the libraries of architects and their patrons, the production and circulation of architectural drawings, prints, and treatises, and the migration of architectural knowledge across Europe's fluid boundaries. As an architect, she is also interested in a number of features of early modern architectural practice, in particular building technology, design and construction processes, and urban planning.