“An Argument for The Unoriginal: Architectural Replicas and the Repositioning of History”

Amanda Reeser Lawrence, Professor and Associate Director at the School of Architecture at Northeastern University

March 31, 2026  6:00 pm, White Family Salon in Andrews House

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

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Architecture, like all creative fields, draws explicitly, unapologetically, and necessarily from its history. But a relentless focus on the new, combined with the ongoing perception of the past as a “burden,” has hindered our ability to consider the active repositioning of precedent as an integral part of architecture’s creative capacity. In this talk I examine a series of twentieth-century architectural replicas to argue the value of the unoriginal.  My intent is to offer a counter-proposal to the longstanding narrative of architectural “genius,” and provide theorizations of influence as possible frameworks for design futures.

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About Amanda Reeser Lawrence

Amanda Reeser Lawrence is Professor at the School of Architecture at Northeastern University where she serves as Associate Director. Lawrence is founding coeditor of the architectural journal Praxis: A Journal of Writing + Building, an award-winning journal of contemporary architecture of the Americas. Her published books include: The Architecture of Influence: The Myth of Originality in the Twentieth Century (UVA Press, 2023); Terms of Appropriation: Modern Architecture and Global Exchange (Routledge 2017), with Ana Miljacki; James Stirling: Revisionary Modernist (Yale University Press, 2013); and Agenda: The Official Catalogue of the 2014 Architecture Biennale in Venice, (Lars Muller, 2014) with Ana Miljacki, Eva Franch I Gilabert, and Ashley Schafer. The Architecture of Influence was selected as the Booklaunch Architectural Book of the Year 2024. Her essays and reviews have appeared in Praxis, Log, Perspecta, Future Anterior, Journal of Architectural Education, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, OASE, Architectural Research Quarterly, and Architectural Theory Review. Her work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, and the New York State Council on the Arts. She received her PhD in architectural history and theory from Harvard University, her Master of Architecture from Columbia University and her BA (summa cum laude) from Princeton University.

Image Captions:

Inset: Parthenon, Russell E. Hart with William B. Dinsmoor, 1919–31, Nashville, Tennessee, interior (Image courtesy of the Tennessee State Library & Archives)

Banner Left: Parthenon, William Crawford Smith, 1897, Nashville, Tennessee, view from the southeast, photo 1909. (Detroit Publishing Co., Publisher. The Parthenon, Nashville, Tenn. Tennessee United States Nashville, ca. 1900. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress)

This lecture series is made possible through the generous support of:

The Marshall Woods Lectureship Foundation of Fine Arts and The Anita Glass Fund