Robin Schuldenfreis research and teaching focuses on the history and theory of modern architecture, concentrating on the subjectivity, materiality, political agency, and social impact of objects and spaces. She is interested in broad questionstheoretical and practicalof how discourses and practices of design are shaped by a given periods own cultural and theoretical critique of its media and objects. Her research brings together three over-arching concerns of modernism: issues of materiality, architectures reproducibility, and investigations of transference and displacement. Schuldenfrei’s work interrogates the ways in which architecture and its objects relate to other products of societys designto works of art, to the production of images, to media, and to technologyand as deeply embedded in their period, culture, and intellectual/theoretical climate. To that end, she utilizes both objects and architecture as cultural indices of society at large in order to illustrate the conscious and unconscious perspectives and values of the society that generated them. More recent research lies in the area of exile and global movement. Examining paths of migration, exile and dislocation globally, she closely considers issues of detemporalization and destabilization in architectural modernism.
Schuldenfrei is committed to advancing broad, interdisciplinary conversations that are crucial for the liberal arts grappling with the protracted problems of our age. She is Head of The Courtauld’s Research Cluster Migrations: People, Politics, Objects 泭which brings together interdisciplinary research and creative work related to the global movement of peoples in order to explicate the cultural value, conditions and economics of migration through the study of objects and architecture, as well as its political and legal frameworks. Schuldenfrei is a Principal Investigator and organizational member of the interest group of the European Architectural History Network (EAHN). She is an active member in the UK-based collective which seeks to impact architectural history and architecture as a practice in actively decolonizing teaching, research, and the built environment, through the investigation of a broad set of issues and questions concerning identity, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, and power. She is also active in a myriad of efforts in support of Ukrainian architects, historians and preservationists.
She is also a founding member of the Architecture Cultures Research Cluster at The Courtauld. She regularly organises academic events through The Courtaulds Research Forum.
Professor Schuldenfrei received her PhD from Harvard Universitys Graduate School of Design and previously held tenure-track positions at the Humboldt-Universit瓣t zu Berlin and the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Schuldenfrei has lectured widely, including: Columbia University, ETH Z羹rich, German Center for Art History (DFK Paris), Harvard University, Kunsthistorisches Institut Florenz (Max-Planck-Institut), MIT, Princeton, Royal College of Art, Terra Foundation for American Art (Chicago and Paris), Universit瓣t f羹r angewandte Kunst Wien, University of Edinburgh, University of Hong Kong, and Yale. Her research has been supported by awards from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the Gerda Henkel Foundation, SAH / Mellon, and the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD).
Schuldenfrei is a regular interviewee on documentary films, tv and radio programs including film, for ARTE, for BBC 4 tv, with Melvyn Bragg on BBC Radio 4, and design podcasts including , and .
Teaching
- MA History of Art (year-long MA programme): Experiencing Modernism: Utopia, Politics, and Times of Turmoil
- BA3 Lessons in Critical Interpretation
- BA2 Frameworks for Interpretation: Space, Power, and Experience; Objects and Things: A Material Turn
- BA2 Lecture: The Modern Interior
- BA1 Topic Course: The Global Political City: Urban Issues in Contemporary Art
- BA 1 Topic Course: Making Modernism: Technology and London Architecture
- BA1 Foundations: 19th- & 20th-Century Architecture & Design
PhD supervision
Research interests
- European & American Modernism:泭 architecture, design, art, media, and the history of technology
- 19th & 20th c. Architectural History
- History and Theory of the Object
- Interior Architecture and Design
- German Modernism
- Architectural Theory
- Materiality of the Global South
- Migration and Architecture
Publications
Books
泭 (Princeton University Press, 2024), 346 pages, 170 illustrations.
In the fraught years leading up to World War II, many modern artists and architects emigrated from continental Europe to the United States and Britain. The experience of exile infused their modernist ideas with new urgency, and forced them to use certain materials in place of others, modify existing works, and reconsider their approach to design itself. Objects in Exile reveals how the process of migration was crucial to the development of modernism, charting how modern art and architecture was shaped by the need to constantly faceand transcendthe materiality of things.
From the prewar era to the 1960s, Objects in Exile explores the objects these 矇migr矇s brought with them, what they left behind, and the new works they completed in exile. It argues that modernism could only coalesce with the abandonment of national borders in a process of emigration and resettlement, and brings to life the vibrant postwar period when avant-garde ideas came together and emerged as mainstream modernism. Examining works by Walter Gropius, L獺szl籀 Moholy-Nagy, Lucia Moholy, Herbert Bayer, Anni and Josef Albers, and others, Objects in Exile demonstrates the social impact of art objects produced in exile.
Shedding critical light on how the pressures of dislocation irrevocably altered the course of modernism, Objects in Exile shows how artists and designers, forced into exile by circumstances beyond their control, changed in unexpected ways to meet the needs and contexts of an uncertain world.
(Princeton University Press, 2018), 336 pages, 200 illustrations. .
In a period of social unrest and extreme wealth disparity between the average worker and those at the helm of capitalist enterprises generating immense profits, architects envisioned modern designs providing solutions for a more equitable future.泭Luxury and Modernism泭exposes the disconnect between modernisms utopian discourse and its luxury objects and elite architectural commissions. While modernism was publicized as a fusion of technology, new materials, and rational aesthetics to improve the lives of ordinary people, it was often out of reach to the very masses it purportedly served.泭Luxury and Modernism泭shows how luxury was present in bold, literal forms in modern designsfrom rarified materials and costly technologies to lavish buildings and household objectsand in subtler ways as well, such as social milieus and modes of living. Despite the movements egalitarian rhetoric, many modern designs addressed the desires of the privileged individual. Yet as the book demonstrates, luxury was integral not only to how modern buildings and objects were designed, manufactured, and sold, but has contributed to modernisms allure to this day.泭Luxury and Modernism泭provides a new interpretation of modern architecture and design in Germany, tracing modernisms many manifestations of luxury and revealing the complexities and contradictions inherent to modernisms promotion and consumption.
. Edited by Robin Schuldenfrei (London: Routledge / Taylor and Francis, 2020).泭泭and essay泭泭therein.
This edited volume considers the ways in which multiple stages, phases, or periods in an artistic or design process have served to arrive at the final artifact, with a focus on the meaning and use of the iteration. To contextualize iteration within artistic and architectural production, this collection of essays presents a range of close studies in art, architectural and design history, using archival and historiographical research, media theory, photography, material studies, and critical theory. It examines objects as unique yet mutable works by examining their antecedents, successive exemplars, and their afterlivesand thus their role as organizers or repositories of meaning. Key are the roles of writing, the use of media, and relationships between object, image, and reproduction. This volume asks how a closer look at iteration reveals new perspectives into the production of objects and the production of thought alike.
. Edited by Jan Tichy and Robin Schuldenfrei (Chicago: IIT Institute of Design, 2019), 118 pages.泭泭Robin Schuldenfrei with Jan Tichy, therein.
Ascendants: Bauhaus Handprints Collected by L獺szl籀 Moholy-Nagy泭offers a unique insight into one of the less familiar sides of the Bauhaus at large and Moholy-Nagy in particular. In May 1926, thirteen Bauhaus professors and students created handprints that were preserved by L獺szl籀 Moholy-Nagy. This publication brings together for the first time all of the so-called Bauhaus handprints in their historical and contemporary contexts with scholars and artists touching upon and responding to the Bauhaus legacy.
.泭Edited by Robin Schuldenfrei (London: Routledge / Taylor and Francis, 2012). 泭and essay 泭therein.
In the years of reconstruction and economic boom that followed the Second World War, the domestic sphere encountered new expectations regarding social behaviour, modes of living, and forms of dwelling. This book brings together an international group of scholars from architecture, design, urban planning, and interior design to reappraise mid-twentieth century modern life, offering a timely reassessment of culture and the economic and political effects on civilian life.
This collection includes essays that examine art, objects, and spaces in the context of practices of dwelling over the long span of the postwar period. The authors consider various postwar spaces and the ways in which the anxiety of the cold war era infiltrated the domestic sphere or, the ways in which various versions of home were conjured to ease broader outside political or cultural tensions. Atomic Dwelling: Anxiety, Domesticity, and Postwar Architecture asks what role material objects, interior spaces, and architecture played in quelling or fanning the anxieties of modernisms ordinary denizens, and how this role informs their legacy today.
.泭Edited by Jeffrey Saletnik and Robin Schuldenfrei (London: Routledge / Taylor & Francis, 2009). 泭and essay
In the years of reconstruction and economic boom that followed the Second World War, the domestic sphere encountered new expectations regarding social behaviour, modes of living, and forms of dwelling. This book brings together an international group of scholars from architecture, design, urban planning, and interior design to reappraise mid-twentieth century modern life, offering a timely reassessment of culture and the economic and political effects on civilian life.
This collection includes essays that examine art, objects, and spaces in the context of practices of dwelling over the long span of the postwar period. The authors consider various postwar spaces and the ways in which the anxiety of the cold war era infiltrated the domestic sphere or, the ways in which various versions of home were conjured to ease broader outside political or cultural tensions. Atomic Dwelling: Anxiety, Domesticity, and Postwar Architecture asks what role material objects, interior spaces, and architecture played in quelling or fanning the anxieties of modernisms ordinary denizens, and how this role informs their legacy today.
Essays and articles
Robin Schuldenfrei, The Bauhaus Negatives and Products of Objectivity in Lucia Moholy: Exposures, ed. Jordan Troeller (Berlin: Hatje Cantz, 2024), pp. 136-169.
Robin Schuldenfrei, Embodied Modernism: Experiential Living in an Experimental House, in Space + Place: Third Tri-Annual Lovis Corinth Colloquium on German Modernism, ed. Lisa Lee, Christina Crawford, and Nathan Goldberg (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming Spring 2024).
Robin Schuldenfrei, Peter Behrens bei der AEG: Luxusschaufenster und moderne Industrie / Peter Behrens at the AEG: Display Windows of Luxury and Modern Industry, in Die groe Verf羹hrung: Karl Ernst Osthaus und die Anf瓣nge der Konsumkultur / The Grand Seduction: Karl Ernst Osthaus and the Beginnings of Consumer Culture (K繹ln: Wienand Verlag, 2023), pp. 274-279.
Robin Schuldenfrei, Grid and Cell: Inhabiting Hilberseimers City, in Architect of Letters: Reading Hilberseimer, ed. Florian Strob (Basel: Birkh瓣user Verlag, 2022), pp. 70-82.
Robin Schuldenfrei, Lucia Moholys Bauhaus-Negative und die Konstruktion eines modernistischen Erbes, in Lucia Moholy: Das Bild der Moderne, ed. Tobias Hoffmann, Thomas Derda, and Fabian Reifferscheidt (Cologne: Wienand, 2022), pp. 114-141.
Robin Schuldenfrei, Topographies of subordination and resistance in CLR James The Black Jacobins in Unsettled Subjects/Unsettling Landscapes: Confronting Questions of Architecture in C.L.R James’ The Black Jacobins, by Unsettled Subjects, Field Journal 8, no. 1 (March 2022): 145-167 (therein pp. 152-155), special issue on Embodying an Anti-Racist Architecture.’
Robin Schuldenfrei, Materiality in Perspective: Monuments, Object Relations, and Post-War Berlin, Word and Image 37, no. 3 (December 2021), pp. 275-287, special issue on Perspective, guest edited by Julie Park.
Robin Schuldenfrei, in泭, edited by Laura Muir (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021), pp. 95-114. Published in Greek translation: Producing the Bauhaus: Preliminary Objects for Modern Subjects, in Bauhaus and Greece, ed. Sokratis Georgiadis and Andreas Giacumacatos泭 (Athens: Kapon Editions, 2021), pp. 24-35.
The Resonant Object, special issue in tribute to Charles W. Haxthausen,泭, edited by Amy Hamlin and Robin Schuldenfrei, no. 21 (December 2019). therein.
Robin Schuldenfrei, 泭in泭Dust & Data: Traces of the Bauhaus across 100 Years, edited by Ines Weizman (Leipzig: Spector Books, 2019), pp. 142-166.
Robin Schuldenfrei, in泭Histories of Ornament: From Global to Local, edited by Alina Payne and G羹lru Necipolu (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), pp. 334-347.
Robin Schuldenfrei, 泭in泭Konstantin Grcic: Abbildungen /泭Figures,泭ed. Friedrich Meschede (Zurich:泭Lars M羹ller, 2016), pp. 294-344, in English and German.
Robin Schuldenfrei, (The Luxury of Objectivity: Display Windows around 1914) in泭Kunst und Architektur an der Epochenschwelle: Das Hauptgeb瓣ude der Universit瓣t Z羹rich von 1914, edited by Martino Stierli (Basel: Schwabe Verlag, 2016), pp. 153-96, in German.
Republished in:泭Made in Germany: Politik mit Dingen Der Deutsche Werkbund um 1914, edited by Renate Flagmeier (Berlin: Brandenburgische Universit瓣tsdruckerei und Verlagsgesellschaft, 2017), pp. 70-107.
Robin Schuldenfrei, Existenzminimum as Gesamtkunstwerk泭in The death and life of the total work of art: Henry Van De Velde and 喧堯梗泭legacy of a modern concept, edited by Carsten Ruhl, Rixt Hoekstra and Chris D瓣hne (Berlin: Jovis Verlag, 2014), pp. 63-78.
Robin Schuldenfrei, 泭in泭Interiors and Interiority, edited by Ewa Lajer-Burcharth and Beate Soentgen (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), pp. 279-94.
Robin Schuldenfrei, 泭to Lilly Reich, Questions of Fashion (1922) in West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History and Material Culture, volume 21, no. 1 (Spring-Summer 2014): 102-120.
Robin Schuldenfrei, , in Alicja Kwade: Grad der Gewissheit (Degree of Certainty), edited by Sylvia Martin (Berlin: Distanz, 2014), pp. 138-147; German: Das Auratische Produktive Objekt, pp. 126-137.
Robin Schuldenfrei, 泭in泭Architecture and Capitalism: 1845 to the Present, edited by Peggy Deamer (London: Routledge, 2013), pp. 71-95.
Robin Schuldenfrei, Images in Exile: Lucia Moholys Bauhaus Negatives and the Construction of the Bauhaus Legacy泭in泭History of Photography, Volume 37, No. 2 (May 2013), pp. 182-203.
Robin Schuldenfrei, 泭(Images in Exile: Lucia Moholys Bauhaus Photographs and the Making of the Bauhaus Legacy) in泭Entfernt:泭Frauen des Bauhauses w瓣hrend der NS-Zeit Verfolgung und Exil,泭edited by Inge Hansen-Schaberg, Wolfgang Th繹ner, and Adriane Feustel (M羹nchen: Richard Boorberg Verlag, Edition Text + Kritik, 2012), pp. 251-273.
Robin Schuldenfrei, (Luxury, Production, Reproduction) in泭Mythos Bauhaus: Zwischen Selbsterfindung und Enthistorisierung.泭Edited by Anja Baumhoff and Magdalena Droste (Berlin: Reimer Verlag, 2009), pp. 70-89.
Robin Schuldenfrei, Review of Jill Pearlman,泭American Modernism: Joseph Hudnut, Walter Gropius, and the Bauhaus Legacy at Harvard泭(Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2007) for泭Design & Culture,泭Volume 1, Issue 3 (November 2009), pp. 387-389.
Robin Schuldenfrei, . Exhibition Catalogue, Harvard University Art Museums Gallery Series, Number 40, 2004.
PhD supervision
Richard Coward, ‘The rise and demise of Art Nouveau considered though a semiotic appraisal of Victor Hortas Architecture’. Supervisor (The Courtauld).
Rachel Denniston, ‘Curating the Anti-Museum: Women and the Occult Publics of Abstraction, 1910-45’. Supervisor (The Courtauld).
Claudine Seroussi, Continuity and disruption: The French jeweller 1920-1929. Supervisor, with Caroline Levitt (The Courtauld).
Bethany Claus Widick, Rooms of her Own: a Gendered Spatial Analysis of Womens Professional and Social Clubs in Victorian and Edwardian London. Supervisor (The Courtauld)
Michelle Zhu, CI, The Criminal Other?: The Politics of Citizenship in the Visual Culture of the Weimar Republic. Advisor, Supervisor: Prof. Dorothy Price (The Courtauld).
Elina Axioti, Hotel Rooms: Politics of Isolation Rules of Hospitality. Supervisor (Humboldt University Berlin)
Kathrin Engler, Patterns of Life Andrea Zittels泭A-Z Enterprise. Supervisor, with Prof. Gregor Stemmrich (Free University of Berlin)
Recently completed
Phoebe Day, ‘”Paris Is a Vast Library Hall”: Gis癡le Freunds Photographs of Walter Benjamin at the Biblioth癡que nationale Reconsidered’. Supervisor (The Courtauld, 2025)
Laura C. Jenkins, Civilising Decoration: French Interiors in the American Gilded Age, 1882-1914. Advisor, Supervisor: Prof. Katie Scott (The Courtauld, 2024)
Friederike Sch瓣fer, Claiming Space(s): Locating Suzanne Harris Dance Practice and Ephemeral Installations within New York City in the 1970s (Humboldt University Berlin, 2020)
Lena Hennewig, Humboldt-Universit瓣t zu Berlin, Uralt, ewig neu Oskar Schlemmers Bild von Mensch, Raum und Kunstfigur w瓣hrend seiner T瓣tigkeit am Bauhaus (Humboldt University Berlin, 2020)
Nico Janke, Die M繹belkunst an der sudlichen Ostseekuste Deutschlands ca. 1780-1850 (Humboldt University Berlin, 2016)
Sandra K繹nig, Albinm羹ller (1871-1941) Kunstgewerbe zwischen Jugendstil und Werkbund, supervised with Dr Annette Dorgerloh (Humboldt University Berlin, 2015)
Monica Obniski, Accumulating Things: Folk Art and Modern Design in the Postwar American Projects of Alexander H. Girard, supervised with Prof. Robert Bruegmann, Prof. Pat Kirkham, Prof. Jonathan Mekinda (University of Illinois at Chicago, 2015)
Sarah M. Dreller, The Time, Life, and Fortune of Time Inc.s Architectural Forum magazine, 1932-64, supervised with Prof. Robert Bruegmann, Prof. Esra Akcan (University of Illinois at Chicago, 2015)
Erica Morawski, Designing Destinations: Architecture, Urbanism, and American Tourism in Puerto Rico and Cuba, supervised with Prof. Robert Bruegmann, Prof. Esra Akcan, Prof. Kathryn ORourke (University of Illinois at Chicago, 2014)