Daniela Ortiz dos Santos is an architect and an architectural historian, whose work is at the crossroads of the cultural studies of art, literature and architecture. Her research, teaching, and curatorial activities focus on transatlantic architectural history and historiography. She studied Architecture and Urbanism in Buenos Aires (UBA) and in Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and received her PhD in History and Theory of Architecture from the ETH Zurich. She is currently an assistant professor at the Art History Institute of the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main.

Daniela is  a fellow at the Johanna Quandt Young Academy at Goethe (JQYA), being awarded a sabbatical fellowship for the Winter Semester 2022. The intersection of international organizations and intellectual migration has been useful to an ongoing project that explores Latin America as a category and the architectural historiography of the region during the Cold War era. It explores the different forms of instrumentalization of culture and the arts, as well as the role of UNESCO in exercising a regional integration movement.

In 2022, she conceived the symposium Architectural History and International Organizations at the Goethe University (June), authored the chapter “Italian Roots in Latin American Architectural History” for the anthology Italian Imprints on Twentieth-Century Architecture published by Bloomsbury, and co-edited the publication Zeitgenössische feministische Raumpraxis (ARCH+. February 2022), as well as a special edition on archives and architecture at the Scientific Journal of Architecture of the University of Brasilia Paranoá (January 2022).

Daniela is the author of Invisible Files in Visible Institutions: Notes on Max Cetto’s Papers (CRITIQUE D’ART, 2020), Blaise Cendrars et Le Corbusier: villes et voyages utiles (KOMODO21, 2018), co-author of the book chapter Fazer por cronologias: Por uma historia escrita nos corpos (EDUFBA, 2019). She conceived with Carsten Ruhl, Oliver Elser and Christiane Salge the CCSA Bauhaus Lectures at the DAM in Frankfurt am Main, co-curated with Samia Henni, Jacqueline Maurer and Andreas Kalpakci the exhibitions “gta Films“ at the gta Exhibitions of the ETH Zurich (2017) [exhibition catalogue here] and “Moving Constructions” [audio recording here] at the Garagem Sul in Centro Cultural de Belem in Lisbon (2019).  The results of the gta Films project appeared in the 3rd volume of the journal gta Papers by the gta Verlag (2019). She was principal investigator of the sub-project “Rio de Janeiro’s streets” for the research Calles del Sur supported by the City on the Move Institute, which resulted in the contribution for the publication Ganar la Calle! Compartir sin dividir (2009).

Her work has also appeared in international conference proceedings organized by the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), the European Architectural History Network (EAHN), the Documentation and Conservation of the buildings, sites and neighborhoods of the Modern Movement (DOCOMOMO), the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH, forthcoming) and the Iberian-American Network of Urban History.

Her forthcoming publications include:

“Rewriting Landscapes of the Honorable Cannibal: Le Corbusier and Modern Visions of the World to Come”, in Kirsten Kramer, Marius Littschwager and Julian Gaertner (eds.), Traveling, Narrating, Comparing. Travel Narratives of the Americas from the 18th to the 20th Century. Goettingen: at Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, forthcoming

Bauhaus Clouds. Challenges to the Nebula of Architectural Histories and Archives. CCSA Topics, co-edited with Carsten Ruhl and Oliver Elser, Weimar: MBOOKS, forthcoming.

Selection of Teaching Activities

Unesco Marking Architecture Culture – Seminar/Summer Semester 2022

Which Histories? – Survey Course on Architectural History/Summer Semester 2022

Architecture, Archives and Activism – Seminar/Winter Semester 2021/2022, with Sarah Borree and Frederike Lausch

What Kind of Cities do We Want to Live In? – Webinar/Winter Winter Semester 2020-2021

The Meaning of Architecture Today – Propaedeutic Course/Winter Semester 2020-2021, with Carsten Ruhl

History and Theory in Architectural Periodicals – Master’s Seminar/Summer Semester 2020

Critical Agendas for Architecture: Feminism and Modern Architecture– Bachelor’s Seminar/Summer Semester 2020

Displacement and the Making of Modern Architecture – Seminar & Colloquium/Winter Semester 2019-2020

Architectural History in Exile. Transatlantic Displacements (1914-1975) – Master’s Seminar/Summer Semester 2018