Mark Jarzombek

Mark Jarzombek is Professor of the History and Theory of Architecture at MIT - Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Architecture and Design faculty. He earned a Diplom Architekt from ETH Zurich in 1980 and a PhD from MIT in 1986, with his doctoral dissertation titled 'Leon Battista Alberti: The Rhetoric of Cultural Criticism,' later revised and published as 'On Leon Battista Alberti: His Literary and Aesthetic Theories' in 1989. From 1987 to 1994, he taught at Cornell University before joining MIT in 1995. There, he directed the History, Theory, and Criticism of Architecture and Art program from 1996 to 2007, served as Associate Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning from 2007 to 2014, and as Interim Dean from 2014 to 2015. Jarzombek has advised over 75 dissertations and SM theses, founded the peer-reviewed journal Thresholds as a faculty editor, organized international conferences on Holocaust memorials, architecture and cultural studies, and East European architecture, and served on boards including the Society of Architectural Historians and the Buell Foundation.

His research explores global architectural history, theoretical foundations of the discipline, modernity from the tangent, digital and global imaginaries, luxury trade and economies in the first millennium CE, and post-traumatic urban histories such as Dresden. Key publications include 'The Psychologizing of Modernity: Art, Architecture, and History' (2000), 'A Global History of Architecture' co-authored with Vikramaditya Prakash and Francis D.K. Ching (2006), 'Architecture of First Societies: A Global Perspective' (2013), 'Digital Stockholm Syndrome in the Post-Ontological Age' (2016), 'The Long Millennium: Affluence, Architecture and its Dark Matter Economy' (2023), and 'Architecture Constructed: Notes on a Discipline' (2023). Jarzombek co-founded the Global Architecture History Teaching Collaborative, supported by a $3.5 million Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant, and the Office of (Un)Certainty Research. He taught the first MOOC on architectural history via edX, reaching over 100,000 learners worldwide. Fellowships include CASVA (1985), J. Paul Getty Center (1986), Institute for Advanced Study Princeton (1993), Canadian Centre for Architecture (2001), Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute (2005), and American Academy in Rome (2018). He was named a 2026 Fellow of the Society of Architectural Historians.

Professional Email: mmj4@mit.edu