Spyros Papapetros is an art and architectural historian and theorist at Princeton University’s School of Architecture, where he co-directs the Program in Media and Modernity. Papapetros is the author of On the Animation of the Inorganic: Art, Architecture, and the Extension of Life (2012), co-editor of Retracing the Expanded Field: Encounters between Art and Architecture (2014), and editor of Space as Membrane, by Siegfried Ebeling (2010). Papapetros’ work has appeared in October, Grey Room, Perspecta, AA Files, Oxford Art Journal, and RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics. In 2012 Papapetros participated in the exhibition “Animismus,” which travelled from Vienna’s Generali Foundation to Berlin’s Haus der Kulturen der Welt and New York’s e-flux. In 2014 he participated in the Berlin Berlinnale, in a discussion with artist Olaf Nicolai. Papapetros has received grants from the Fulbright program, Getty Research Institute, Clark Art Institute, Graham Foundation, Townsend Center for the Humanities, and Canadian Centre for Architecture. He was also an associate fellow at the Warburg Institute in London.
Papapetros’ Academy project, “World Ornament,” examined bodily and architectural adornment in the work of the German architect Gottfried Semper (1803-1879), who understood ornament as a means of attuning humans with the cosmos. From the 1850s until the early twentieth century, Semper’s ideas, Papapetros argues, gained increased currency; ornament came to be seen as having the ability to reunite a world ruptured by cultural, political, and ethnic divisions. Semper’s view of ornament was forgotten or repressed in postwar scholarship and modern art. Papapetros’ project recovers this rich tradition and explores how issues of ornament and “surface” have informed the work of contemporary architects and theorists.
Meet Spyros Papapetros
A short portrait filmed at the Hans Arnhold Center, introducing the work and ideas behind this semester in Berlin.
Upcoming events
Discover what’s coming up in the Academy’s public program this semester.
Past events
Lectures, readings, and conversations from the Academy’s public program.
Berlin Journal Articles
Essays, interviews, and creative work published in the Academy’s annual magazine.
Books
Books written by fellows of the Academy, many begun during a semester in Berlin.
Videos
Lectures, readings, and conversations filmed at the Hans Arnhold Center.
World Ornament: Adornment on a Global Scale
Architectural historian Spyros Papapetros’s lecture focuses on the theorization of bodily adornment by Emil Selenka, renowned evolutionist and anthropologist, and his wife, Lenore Selenka, a prominent feminist, pacifist, zoologist, and amateur anthropologist.
Fellow Spotlight: Spyros Papapetros
Spyros Papapetros’ project “World Ornament” examines bodily and architectural adornment in the work of the German architect Gottfried Semper (1803-1879), who understood ornament as a means of attuning humans with the cosmos.
Explore Past Fellows
Hakim Abderrezak
Marco Abel
David Abraham
