Photo: Nora Wendl

Nora Wendl

  • Associate Professor
  • /


    Education

    • M. Arch. Iowa State University
    • B. Arch. Iowa State University

    Research

    • Interdisciplinarity in the production of space

    Nora Wendl is an essayist, artist, editor, and associate professor of architecture at the University of New Mexico, where she teaches architecture studio and theory.

    Wendl’s work, across scales and media, subverts the received narratives that underpin architectural historiography, engaging feminist archival practices to create essays, books, installations, photographs, and films that offer new forms and frameworks for historicizing the built and unbuilt environments. These works have been supported by the Graham Foundation, Santa Fe Art Institute, and National Trust for Historic Preservation, among other institutions. She has exhibited and published widely, and her most recent book, Almost Nothing: Reclaiming Edith Farnsworth (University of Illinois Press, 2025), was shortlisted for the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize. Her recent public scholarship, such as “Trinity Fallout: Nuclear Downwinders in New Mexico” in Places journal, has taken up the question of nuclear coloniality: a subject she also frames in her upper-level architecture studios. From 2021–24, she was the Executive Editor of the Journal of Architectural Education.


    ARCH 324/624 - Contemporary Architectural Theory (Fall 2016)

    ARCH 402 - Architectural Studio, Co-taught with Dr. Brian Goldstein (Spring 2016)

    ARCH 462/662 - The Architectural Fragment, Seminar (Fall 2016)

    ARCH 501 - Architectural Studio, Co-taught with Kristen Shaw (Fall 2016)


    Books

    Nora Wendl, Glass (in progress; workshopped at Tin House Summer 2017)

    Rylan Steele and Nora Wendl, Ave Maria (Savannah, GA: A-B Editions, 2016).

    Isabelle Loring Wallace and Nora Wendl, eds., Contemporary Art About Architecture: A Strange Utility (Farnham, Surrey, England, and Burlington, VT, USA: Ashgate, 2013; Reprint: Routledge, 2016).

    Book Chapters

    Nora Wendl, “Fox/River/House: A Translation,” in Writingplace: Investigations in Architecture and Literature, Klaske Havik, Susana Oliveira, Mark Proosten, Jorge Mejía Hernández, Mike Schäfer, ed. (Rotterdam: Nai010 Publishers, 2016).

    Nora Wendl, “Vitruvian Figure(s),” in Contemporary Art About Architecture: A Strange Utility, Isabelle Loring Wallace and Nora Wendl, eds. (Farnham, Surrey, England, and Burlington, VT, USA: Ashgate, 2013), 249 – 267.

    Isabelle Loring Wallace and Nora Wendl, “Introduction,” in Contemporary Art About Architecture: A Strange Utility, Isabelle Loring Wallace and Nora Wendl, eds. (Farnham, Surrey, England, and Burlington, VT, USA: Ashgate, 2013), 1 – 33.

    Nora Wendl, “The Necessary Art of Architectural Speculation,” in (Non-)Essential Knowledge for (New) Architecture, (306090 Book 15), David L. Hays, ed. (New York: 306090, Inc., 2013), 216 – 227.

    Peer Reviewed Journal Articles (Selected)

    “Pruitt Igoe, Tomorrow,” On Site: Review, Issue 33: Land, Intentional Landscapes, Inadvertent Results (Fall 2015): 4 – 9, 2015

    “A Story of Sex and Real Estate, Reconsidered,” Thresholds (Journal of the Department of Architecture, MIT), Vol. 43 (Spring 2015), Issue: Scandals, edited by Nathan Friedman and Ann Liu: 20 – 32, 347 – 361, 2015

    “Sentences on a Glass House and Other Sentences,” Forty-Five (Fall 2015), edited by David L. Hays and Jonathan D. Solomon, 2015

    “Life in a Glass House: An Architectural Projection,” Architecture and Culture (International Journal of the Architectural Humanities Research Association), Vol. 2, Issue 3 (October/November 2014), Issue: Transgression: Body and Space, edited by Rachel Sara and David Littlefield: 317 – 335, 2014

    “Attempts at Breaking into a Glass House,” On Site: Review, Issue 31: Photography | Cartography (Spring 2014): 4 – 7, 2014

    “After Pruitt Igoe: An urban forest as an evolving temporal landscape,” Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes: An International Quarterly, Vol. 34, Issue 1 (January – March 2014), by Nora Wendl and Michael Allen, edited by Sonja Duempelmann and Susan Herrington: 101 – 112, 2014

    “Pruitt Igoe, Now,” Journal of Architectural Education, JAE Issue 66:2 Architecture and Utopia, c. 2016 (March 2013): 106 – 117, 2013

    Invited Journal Articles (Selected)

    Nora Wendl, “Notes Toward an Essay on the States of Matter, or: we, the bubbles,” in OffRamp, Issue 11: Ground (Spring/Summer 2016), edited by Zachary Tate Porter, 2016

    Conferences (Selected)

    “Edith: An Architectural History,” in Performance, Voice, and Embodiment: Ventriloquism in Contemporary Art session of the College Art Association (CAA) Annual Conference. Los Angeles, CA. February 21 – 24, 2018

    “Pages Have a Limiting Finality,” in Writing Buildings, Kent School of Architecture, University of Kent, UK. Accepted based on abstract submission. July 14 - 16, 2016

    “The History of a River and its Glass House,” in Language, Landscape and the Sublime: A Symposium and Creative Gathering, Schumacher College, Devon, UK. Accepted based on abstract submission. Unable to attend due to travel conflict. June 29-30, 2016. 

    “Kissing the Glass House,” in Space Now session of the 2014 Universities Art Association of Canada (L’association d’art des universités du Canada) Annual Meeting. Toronto, Ontario. Accepted based on abstract submission. October 23 – 26, 2014.

    “The Glass House: The Lived Phenomenon of Architectural Transparency,” in The Poetics of Transparency/Translucency/Reflection: Glass, Capital, and Urban Narratives session of the 2014 American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) Annual Meeting, Capitals. New York, NY. Accepted based on abstract submission. March 20 – 23, 2014.

    “A Story of Sex and Real Estate, Reconsidered,” in The Uses and Disuses of History for Architecture session of the 103rd Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) Annual Meeting, The Expanding Periphery and the Migrating Center. Toronto, Ontario. Published in conference proceedings: pp. 354-361. ISBN: 978-0-935502-95-4. Accepted based on full paper submission. 42% acceptance rate. March 19 – 21, 2015. 


    Editorial Board Member, Journal of Architectural Education, 2014 – 2017 

    ArchDaily, Editor’s Choice. “Sex and Real Estate, Reconsidered: What Was the True Story Behind Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House?” July 3, 2015

    2015 Amelia Taylor-Hochberg, Archinect, “Screen/Print #33: the alternative history of Edith Farnsworth and her architect, from MIT’s Thresholds,” June 6, 2015

    Visiting Critic (Recent)

    Fall 2016 Visiting Critic, School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia

    Spring 2016 Visiting Critic, School of Architecture and Planning, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico

    Spring 2016 Visiting Critic, Architecture Department, College of Design, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa

    Spring 2016 Visiting Critic, Architecture Department, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

    Fall 2015 Visiting Critic, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Department of Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Designed Objects Chicago, Illinois

    Fall 2014 Visiting Critic, Architecture Department, College of Design, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa

    Fall 2014 Visiting Critic, Biennale Sessions, 14th International Architecture Exhibition, Iowa State University, College of Design, Venice, Italy


    2017 “Glass,” Lecture and Reading at Gateway Talks, Organized by artist Mitchell Squire, Des Moines, Iowa, June 20, 2017

    2017 Tin House Summer Workshop & Mentorship Program, Creative Nonfiction

    Portland, Oregon; Week-long intensive workshop, acceptance based on manuscript submission. Workshop with Renee Gladman and Mentorship with Paul Lisicky

    2017 University of New Mexico Research Support Funds Grant, Office of the Associate Dean of Research; Awarded to complete sound installation.

    2016 Independent Art Book Fair, New York, NY. Featuring Rylan Steele and Nora Wendl, Ave Maria (Savannah: A-B Editions, 2016) 16 – 18 September 2016

    2015 Glass Docs included in Outside Design, curated by Jonathan D. Solomon

    Sullivan Galleries, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Department of Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Designed Objects, Chicago, Illinois, September 11 – December 11, 2015

    2015 (Finalist) Duke University Center for Documentary Studies, Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize, A cycle of poems written for the book manuscript “Ave Maria,” documenting the pseudo-utopian Ave Maria Town, Florida. Prize awarded in collaboration with Co-Principal Investigator Rylan Steele, award-winning photographer.

    2015 Oregon Arts Council Career Opportunity Grant, Salem, Oregon, “Glass Document,” Principal Investigator

    14th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy.

    “Disciplining Modernity,” lecture and colloquium moderated by Deborah Hauptmann in the Biennale Sessions

    2014-15Blue Sky Gallery: Oregon Center for the Photographic Arts, Pacific Northwest Photography Viewing Drawers, Featuring “Attempts at Breaking into a Glass House," Jurors Michelle Dunn Marsh and Todd Johnson, Portland, Oregon

    2014 Attempts at Breaking into a Glass House , Featuring solo work and work in collaboration with Laurence Sarrazin, Steven Goldman Gallery, The Art Institute, Portland, Oregon, April 3 – April 28, 2014