Karen Burns

Position:

Lecturer and PhD Coordinator, Department of Architecture

Qualifications:

• PhD, Art History The University of Melbourne
  
• Master in Eighteenth Century Studies Monash University
• Bachelor of Arts, Visual Arts (Hons) Monash University

Personal Statement:

Dr Karen Burns is an architectural historian, architectural theorist and writer of architectural criticism. She has extensive teaching experience in these areas, having taught history, theory and design in the Architecture programs at RMIT University and Melbourne University, as well as teaching critical theory and art history in the Art History and Cultural Studies programs at the University of Melbourne and at the Centre of Ideas at the Victorian College of Arts. Her research and publication interests are both local and international. She has published essays in the MIT press journal Assemblage, in AD magazine and other international essay collections. She was the editor of Transition: Discourse on Architecture from 1986 to 1991 and more recently an editor of the refereed Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art from 2004- 2006. She is currently a serving editorial board member of Interstices, a refereed architecture journal. She regularly referees conference papers and essays for scholarly, journals such as Fabrications, the journal of the Society of Architectural Historians of Australia and New Zealand, and for Interstices. Her current research interests include the writing of a manuscript on the Cole Circle examining the discourse of industrialization and the reformation of architectural aesthetics in London in the 1850s, and an investigation into fortified housing on the nineteenth-century Australian European frontier. She is also a specialist in feminist architectural theory and post-structuralist architectural theory. She has served on the 20th Century Committee for the Victorian National Trust as well as acting as a visiting jury member and examiner for national and international architectural schools. She has been the recipient of a number grants from the Australia Council, the Victorian Ministry of Arts and the Graham Foundation. In 2009 she won the “Best Paper Prize” at the 26th International Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians of Australia and New Zealand.

Selected  Publications:

   Book Chapters:

• “Digital Organic: Imagining an Evolutionary Future for Architecture”, Designing Design, IAPL (International Association for Philosophy and Literature) Textures Series, Maryland: Lexington Press, 2009/2010
  
  
• Entries, Encyclopaedia of Australian Architecture, ed. Philip Goad and Julie Willis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010
  
  
• “A House for Josephine Baker,” in Intimus: Interior Design theory Reader, ed. Mark Taylor and Julienna Preston (Chicester England: Wiley Academy: 2006)
  
  
• "Surface Architecture", in Surface Consciousness AD, (ed) Mark Taylor (London: John Wiley, 2003)
  
  
• "A House For Josephine Baker", in Postcolonial Space(s),  (ed.) Gülsüm Nalbantoglu and Bobby Wong Chong Thai (New York : Princeton University Press, 1997)
  
  
• "Architecture/Discipline/Bondage" in Desiring Practices : Architecture, Gender and the Interdisciplinary, (ed.) Duncan McCorquodale, Katerina  Rüedi and Sarah Wigglesworth (London :  Black Dog Publishing, 1996)
  
  
• "Of genre, panoramas and J.N.L. Durand", in Knowledge and Experience: Theories of Space in Art and Architecture (ed.) John Macarthur, University of Queensland / I.M.A., 1994
  
  

   Journal Articles:

• "The Afterlife of an Architectural Event", Assemblage, 41, Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, March 2001
  
  
• "Topographies of Tourism : 'Documentary' photography and The Stones of Venice", Assemblage 32, Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, July 1997
  
  
• "The Duration of the Exposure': Architecture and Photography", Photofile, 63 August 2001
  
  
• "Envy and Amusement: video games and amusement parks", Globe E, February 1997
  
  
• "Get a Life: a Place in the Suburbs", Aedon: The Melbourne University Literary Arts Review, 1, 1, 1993
  
  
• "Deflecting the Flak: Australian Architecture and Criticism", Island Magazine, 40, Spring 1989
  
  
• "Prophets and the Wilderness: Marion Mahony and Walter Burley Griffin", Transition, 24, 1988
  
  
• "Seeing the Sites: Sydney's Darling Harbour", Transition, 26, 1988 (reprint) From Agenda, 1, 2, 1988
  
  
• "Mastering the Post-Modern?" Transition, 21, 1988

   Refereed Conference Publications:

• “The Grammar of Ornament: A Pacific Tale”, Cultural Crossroads, Society of Architectural historians of Australia and New Zealand, Auckland University, July 2-5, 2009
  
  
• Co-authored with Selby Coxon and Arthur de Bono, “Shaping the Maze”, 32nd Australasian Transport Research Forum, Auckland, New Zealand, 29 September – 1 October,  2009
  
  
• Co-authored with Selby Coxon and Arthur de Bono, “Can the design of effective public space inform the passenger experience of public transport?”, 31st Australasian Transport Research Forum, Gold Coast, Queensland, September 30-October 2, 2008
  
  
• “The Other Crystal Place”, Society of Architectural Historians of Australia and New Zealand, Deakin University, July 3-6, 2008
  
  
• Co-authored with Peter Raisbeck and Susan Wilkes, “How much scaffolding do they need to build?”, Connected 2007 – International Conference on Design Education, University of New South Wales, July 9-12, 2007
  
  
• “Greg Lynn’s Embryological House Project and the Technology of Architecture”, Association of Architectural Schools of Australasia, University of Technology, Sydney, September 27 – 29, 2007
  
  
• “The Politics and Aesthetic of Reproducibility: The 1850’s Design ‘Reform’ Debate”, Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand, University of South Australia, September 21-24, 2007
  
  
• “Uncertain Sights: Owen Jones’ Improvements for the Crystal Palace Interior”, Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand, Fremantle, Western Australia, September 29-October 2, 2006
  
  
• “The Optical Surface of Architecture”, Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand, RMIT University, September 26-30, 2004.
  
  
• “Architecture: that Dangerous, Useless Supplement”, Accessory Architecture, University of Auckland, July 7-9, 1995.

Selected Papers and Guest Lectures:

• “Atmospheric  Vision: Weather, Photography and The Stones of Venice”, Ruskin, Venice and 19th Century Cultural Travel, Venice International University 25-27 September 2008, The Ruskin Center at Lancaster University, Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies, Department of European and Postcolonial Studies at the University of Ca’ Foscari
  
  
• Invited Symposium convened by Professor Mark Burry, “The Place of Narrative in the Contemporary Built Environment”, Local Knowledge/Global Arts, The International Association for Philosophy and literature, RMIT University/University of Melbourne and La Trobe University, June 30 – July 4, 2008
  
  
• “Questions of Representation”, Digital Design Symposium, School of Architecture, University of Sydney, September 2003   
  
  
• “Face-Up Forum”, Hamburger Banhof, Berlin, October 2003
  
  
• “The Optical Surface of Architecture", Invited Guest Lecture, Visiting Lecture Program, Department of Architecture, Iowa State University, January 26 1998
  
  
• "Spectral Details, Historical Ghosts : Gothic Tourism", American Conference on Romanticism, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, January 22-25, 1998
  
  
• "(Sight) seeing the past : History and Identity", Constructing Identity : Between Architecture and Culture", Cornell University, October 24-24 1997
  
  
• "Architecture/Discipline/Bondage", Desiring Practices, Royal Institute of British Architects.  London, October 18- 19, 1995
  
  
• "Architecture: that Dangerous, Useless Supplement", Accessory Architecture, University of Auckland, July 6, 1995
  
  
• “Rough Trade: Desire and The Stones of Venice", Hypotheses, School of Architecture, Princeton University, April 23, 1994
  
  
• "Ornament, Adolf Loos and The Non-Western Body", Architecture (Post)Modernity and Difference, University of Singapore, Singapore, April 17 1993