Dr Simone Brott

Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Engineering

Ph.D. Architecture (The University of Melbourne), M.A. History Theory & Criticism of Architecture & Urbanism (Yale University), B.Arch Hons (The University of Melbourne)

I am a Yale-educated architecture theorist passionate about the digital imagery driving the iconic architecture industry in global cities (video bio). In my 2020 book Digital Monuments I coined the term ‘Digital Monument’ to describe the way iconic buildings are not only generated by digital techniques but have come to be experienced by the urban spectator as digital holograms materialised on the ground—in a double reality that is transforming capitalism. I was recently interviewed on Digital Monuments by ARCH+ Journal, Berlin here: The Unrealization of Reality. Following my recent talk Cryptoarchitecture: A Primer in Architecture NFTs at the AMPS conference Urban Assemblage London, I am working on the idea of a new blockchain platform for monetising architectural images and the potential of Non Fungible Tokens for architecture. I recently published this article on NFTs in the Korean magazine C3 and am working on a longer piece Architecture Capital Unchained with Log journal (New York), where I survey architecture’s strange presence on NFT platforms and discuss how NFTs will ultimately change the discipline and status of images in architecture.

I have a Master of Architecture from Yale University and PhD in Architecture from The University of Melbourne. My books on the architectural image include Digital Monuments: The Dreams and Abuses of Iconic Architecture (London, New York: Routledge, 2020), an acerbic critique of iconic architecture and the hijacking of the public imagination by the digital image in the contemporary city; Architecture for a Free Subjectivity: Deleuze and Guattari at the Horizon of the Real (Routledge, New Edition 2016), and Architecture Post Mortem: The Diastolic Architecture of Decline, Dystopia, and Death (Routledge, New Edition 2016). I have published numerous essays in prestigious journals including Log: Observations on Architecture and the Contemporary City (New York), AD Architectural Design (London); Thresholds: Journal of the MIT Department of Architecture; Architectural Theory Review: Journal of the Department of Architecture, The University of Sydney; and the Journal of Architecture and Urbanism. I have lectured internationally at Yale University, Harvard University, Boston University, University of Michigan, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Strathclyde University, Glasgow, and The University of Melbourne.

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