About

Annabel J. Wharton is a professor whose site houses a selection of her published articles, drawings, paintings, and architectural plans. Her work encompasses a broad range of interests including architecture, art, and cultural studies. She has authored several books such as 'Architectural Agents: The Delusional, Abusive, Addictive Lives of Buildings,' 'Selling Jerusalem: Relics, Replicas, Theme Parks,' and 'Building the Cold War: Hilton International Hotels and Modern Architecture.' Her research and creative pursuits also include drawings from anatomy labs, travel sketches, and various artistic projects. The site indicates her engagement with both scholarly and artistic practices, reflecting a diverse and interdisciplinary approach to her work.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Engineering
• Computer Science
• Art history
• Forensic engineering
• Environmental ethics
• Art
• Philosophy
• Engineering ethics

Selected publications

• Postmortem Architect

  Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians · 2024

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Art
  • Engineering
  • Forensic engineering

  Abstract This article assesses the role of the female cadaver in the design of 16 Great Windmill Street in London, the house/museum/anatomy theater complex built in 1767 by Robert Mylne, student of Piranesi, and William Hunter, man-midwife, physician to the queen of England, and first professor of anatomy at the Royal Academy. The focus on the female cadaver exposes the rigid gendering of emergent spaces of modern Western science. More important, this investigation suggests that the subaltern subject of a building might act less as a passive object and more as an active agent in the generation of the building’s program. Considering the cadaver as a participant in the planning of structures that exhibited her might prompt a broader, more critical consideration of the design role of animate objects in other building types, including abattoirs and prisons, and of the societies that produce them.

  PublisherDOI

• Are You an Ethical Agent? On Thomas Demand’s Demonstration

  De Gruyter eBooks · 2024

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Environmental ethics
  • Engineering ethics
  PublisherDOI

• Models and World Making

  2021 · 4 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  PublisherDOI

• Acquiring Jerusalem

  2018-10-26

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  The Roman Empire recognized the importance of Palestine to its control of the eastern Mediterranean; with the emergence of Christian hegemony in the fourth century, religion gave the West’s ambition to possess Jerusalem a new dimension. Jerusalem was known in the Early Christian West through texts – the Bible, histories by authors, such as Pliny and Josephus, and contemporary treatises and epistles like those of St. Jerome. John, bishop of Jerusalem, gave Melania the Elder, a pious aristocrat and generous donor to the church, a piece of the True Cross. The text illuminates the remarkable capacities of a particle of the True Cross to render Jerusalem present in the West through the contemplation of contemporary ritual in the Holy City. Nevertheless, Catholic Christian engagement with Jerusalem persisted and Protestant interest in the Holy Land emerged.

  PublisherDOI

• The Istanbul Hilton, 1951–2014: Modernity and its demise 1

  2018-02-05 · 2 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  By considering the economics and politics of the form of the Istanbul Hilton and how that form disciplined the gaze of observers inside and outside, the remarkable authority of its patrons is established. But an investigation of the effects of history on the structure evidences its long-term resistance to its planned function as a profitable status symbol of capital. The initial power of the Istanbul Hilton's modernity was corrupted by the city's embrace. Modernity lost its aesthetic and ideological authority; the hotel lost its market share. This chapter describes the introduction to Istanbul of the Modern—its figuration, gaze, and politics—and its subsequent erasure. In April, 1951, Hilton International and the Turkish government announced their agreement to construct a new hotel in Istanbul. The choice of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill as the American designers of the new Hilton was appropriate for the hotel's broader project. Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill (SOM) were a major player in development of American modernity.

  PublisherDOI

• Doll's House/Dollhouse: Models and Agency

  Journal of American Studies · 2017-06-05 · 4 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Models – economic, mathematical, toys, manikins – are ubiquitous. This article probes one model, the Stettheimer doll's house, in order to understand all models better. The Stettheimers, three wealthy unmarried sisters living in New York in the early the twentieth century, attracted a remarkable melange of Camp artists and writers, identified by Arthur Danto as “the American Bloomsbury.” The Stettheimers were involved in many of New York's happenings, including the Harlem Renaissance and the innovative stage productions of Gertrude Stein. Androgyny, excess, racial mixing and theatricality flourished in the Stettheimer milieu. Carrie Stettheimer's doll's house, now housed in the Museum of the City of New York, captured this life. I consider this model for two related purposes. First, and more narrowly, I document the various effects this eccentric doll's house had on the artistic production of those in its vicinity, most notably on the novels of her sister Ettie and on the paintings both of her sister Florine and Marcel Duchamp. Second, I use the evidence of the doll's house's affect to discuss the agency of models in general.

  PublisherDOI

• Volume 32 Index

  2017-01-01

  article
  Publisher

• Exhibition and Erasure/Art and Politics: Further Reading

  Aggregate · 2016-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Exhibition and Erasure/Art and Politics

  Aggregate · 2016-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Architectural Agents

  University of Minnesota Press eBooks · 2015-02-15 · 24 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Buildings are not benign; rather, they commonly manipulate and abuse their human users. Architectural Agents makes the case that buildings act in the world independently of their makers, patrons, owners, or occupants. And often they act badly. Treating buildings as bodies, Annabel Jane Wharton writes biographies of symptomatic structures in order to diagnose their pathologies. The violence of some sites is rooted in historical trauma; the unhealthy spatial behaviors of other spaces stem from political and economic ruthlessness. The places examined range from the Cloisters Museum in New York City and the Palestine Archaeological Museum (renamed the Rockefeller Museum) in Jerusalem to the grand Hostal de los Reyes Católicos in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, and Las Vegas casino resorts. Recognizing that a study of pathological spaces would not be complete without an investigation of digital structures, Wharton integrates into her argument an original consideration of the powerful architectures of video games and immersive worlds. Her work mounts a persuasive critique of popular phenomenological treatments of architecture. Architectural Agents advances an alternative theorization of buildings’ agency—one rooted in buildings’ essential materiality and historical formation—as the basis for this significant intervention in current debates over the boundaries separating humans, animals, and machines.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Averil Cameron

  33 shared

• Sarah Beckwith

  33 shared

• Patricia Cox Miller

  32 shared

• Jan Drijvers

  Duke University

  32 shared

• Keith Simmons

  Syracuse University

  32 shared

• Linda Orr

  Syracuse University

  32 shared

• Kalman Bland

  National Humanities Center

  32 shared

• J. Watson

  University of Florida

  32 shared

Awards & honors

• First female Vincent Scully Visiting Professor at Yale Schoo…
• Harry Porter Visiting Professor of Architectural History, Un…