Twentieth-century U.S. architecture and urbanism, nineteenth and twentieth-century U.S. and European suburban development and design, the history of consumerism and spaces of consumption, material culture, vernacular architecture, and cultural landscape studies

I am a Ph.D. Candidate in the history of architecture and urbanism at the University of California, Berkeley with a concentration in the History of Architecture and Urbanism. My areas of specialty include twentieth-century suburban development, historic preservation theory and practice, and vernacular architecture and cultural landscape studies. I returned to graduate school in 2011 after a decade of working in historic preservation as an architectural historian, preservation planner, and nonprofit advocate. My professional work has included planning and survey projects for federal, state, and local clients spanning from the rural reaches of northern Maine to the streets of San Francisco. Most recently, I worked for the National Trust for Historic Preservation as a program officer, covering the Pacific Northwest territory of Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. During my time at the National Trust, I worked on issues ranging from protecting the Minidoka Internment National Monument from the adverse effects of factory farming to staffing TrustModern, a national advocacy campaign to increase awareness and protection for historic resources associated with the Modern movement.

Building on vernacular architecture and material culture studies, my scholarly research focuses on the interaction between professional design and spaces of everyday consumerism. My dissertation, Designing the Tract House: Suburban Builders and the Making of a New American Vernacular 1934-1960, reappraises the design and development of post-World War II suburban housing, examining how national and regional merchant builders approached the problem of market-driven housing design. This little-understood approach reconciled professional design discourses, government policy, and local markets to rehouse of a major portion of the American population over a thirty-year period. By tracing the social and cultural significance of commodified design, this research pursues a more holistic understanding of how art, tradition, and markets coincide to shape the everyday built environment.

“A New Architecture for Man: The Modular, Prefabricated Buildings of Ernest J. Kump, Jr. Selections from the Ernest Kump Collection, Environmental Design Archives, University of California, Berkeley.” Room 1000 (Winter 2013):167-183.

French, Christine Madrid and Elaine Stiles, eds.  Aspen Modern: America’s International Resort. Washington DC: National Trust for Historic Preservation, 2011. (24 pp.)

“50 Years Reconsidered.” Forum Journal 24 (Summer 2010):15-22.