This project was started by Silvina Lopez Barrera, Assistant Professor at the School of Architecture, Mississippi State University and Kateryna Malaia, Assistant Professor at the School of Architecture, University of Utah in collaboration with community members, local and state organizations in Starkville, Columbus, and Jackson, Mississippi.
The initial stage of this project took the form of a class Lopez Barrera and Malaia taught at Mississippi State in Fall 2021. Interviews and photographs were collected, and transcripts and drawings were produced by students at the School of Architecture.
Silvina Lopez Barrera, Intl' Assoc.
AIA is an Assistant Professor in the
School of Architecture at
Mississippi State University. She is
a licensed Architect in Uruguay,
LEED-AP accredited, and holds a
Master of Architecture degree from
Iowa State University. Her research
focuses on how socio-spatial inequalities influence informal housing, housing insecurity, and community resilience in the US and in Latin America. Lopez Barrera’s field work methods incorporate oral histories and participatory processes to engage with disadvantaged communities. Her research has been published in several academic journals including Local Development and Society and Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability. She has published book chapters in Informality and the City: Theories, Actions, and Interventions (ed.by G. Marinic and P. Meninato) and in Public Space/Contested Space: Imagination and Occupation (ed.by K.D. Murphy and S. O’Driscoll). Prior to joining the faculty at Mississippi State University, Lopez Barrera was faculty member at Iowa State University and Middlebury College. She is member of the Uruguayan Society of Architects and International Associate member of the American Institute of Architects. Lopez Barrera currently serves in the AIA National Associates Committee as the AIA Mississippi State Associate Representative.
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Contact: slopezbarrera@caad.msstate.edu
Kateryna Malaia, PhD is an
Assistant Professor of Architecture
at the University of Utah.
She studies the evolution of
quotidian architecture in times of
socio-political change through
the lenses of cultural practices and
material culture, particularly in relation to the collapse of the USSR, and the rising housing precarity in the American cities. Malaia’s writing has been published in the East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies, PLATFORM, Architectural Histories, and the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. Her first book Taking the Soviet Union Apart Room by Room: Domestic Architecture Before and After 1991 was published with NIUP/Cornell University Press in 2023. Together with Philipp Meuser, she is currently working on a catalogue of mass-built housing series in Ukraine.
Contact: kate.malaia@utah.edu
2021: Camille Bohannon, Elisa Castaneda, Reagan Douglass, Lucas Elder, Michael Herndon, Jessica Kiger, Sam Marcus, Sarah Mixon, Caroline Prather, Alysia Williams, Savannah Wilson.
2022: Olivia Cabassa, Jamie Ferreras, Caeli Finch, Becca Garrick, Jenny Hutton, J.D. Jaggers, Edson Martinez, Matt Wong
Robert Luckett (Jackson State University), Alissa Rae Funderburk (Jackson State University), Duane McLemore (Mississippi State University), Mark Geil (Jackson State University)