Barbara Penner
Barbara Penner is a contributing writer for Places. She is Professor of Architectural Humanities at The Bartlett School, UCL.
Penner is author of Bathroom, which was shortlisted for the RIBA President's Awards for Outstanding University-Located Research, and Newlyweds on Tour: Honeymooning in Nineteenth-Century America. She is co-editor of Extinct: A Compendium of Obsolete Objects and Gender Space Architecture. She regularly lectures in institutions across the U.K., Japan, and North America, including at Aoyama Gakuin University, Cornell University, and the Canadian Centre for Architecture. She serves as a member of the editorial board of The Journal of Architecture, and has been chair of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain.
Facts for Fair Housing
Robert C. Weaver was a central figure in the 20th-century battles for housing justice and civil rights in the United States. His life and legacy deserve to be better known.
What does the disappearance of once popular or ubiquitous objects — ranging from tools and equipment to structures and infrastructures — tell us about the world we have created?
The first installment of a narrative survey focusing on the massive move to emergency online instruction.
The (Still) Dreary Deadlock of Public Housing
Decades ago Catherine Bauer argued passionately that governments must ensure that all citizens are well housed — a call to action more vital than ever as our shelter crisis deepens.
The Flexible Heart of the Home
Issues of gender, disability, and user-centeredness have long been relegated to the margins of design history. A new look at postwar home economics complicates the prevailing narratives.
The Man Who Wrote Too Well
Reyner Banham was not only an extraordinary scholar but also a prodigiously productive journalist. Consider his remarkable analysis of a legendary crash-test dummy.
Designed-In Safety
The radical reformers who sought to redesign the American bathroom, and the inhibitions and taboos that got in the way.
"We shall deal here with humble things"
It may be the smallest room in the house, but the humble bathroom is where our daily domestic lives connect with large-scale infrastructures of water, waste, and sanitation.
Flush with Inequality
The politics of sanitation in post-apartheid South Africa, where toilets have become potent symbols of human dignity and equal rights.
The Wedding at Cana
An architectural historian reviews a digital video installation by Peter Greenaway, part of the series "Nine Classic Paintings Revisited," shown at the Venice Biennale.
Niagara: It Has It All
Honeymoon spot, casino resort, Superfund site. Niagara has always been a place of extreme contrasts, where the sublime and magnificent cozies up to the tawdry and brutal.
Reputations