Peter Sealy

Biography

Peter Sealy is an architectural historian who studies the ways in which architects constructively engage with reality through indexical media such as photography. He holds architecture degrees from the McGill University School of Architecture and the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He is currently completing his PhD at Harvard on the emergence of a photographic visual regime in nineteenth-century architectural representation. A chapter exploring this subject is forthcoming in Blackwell’s Companion to the History of Nineteenth-Century Architecture. His research on Émile Zola and the immateriality of 19th century iron buildings was recently published in Function and Fantasy: Iron Architecture in the Long Nineteenth Century (Routledge), a volume he co-edited with Paul Dobraszczyk. His research has been presented at numerous scholarly conferences, including those of the RIBA, the INHA, the CAA, the AAH, the SAH and the SAHANZ. His articles have appeared in Abitare, Border Crossings, Canadian Architect, Domus, Harvard Design Magazine, The Journal of Architecture and Oris. Prior to beginning his PhD, he worked at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) on exhibitions including Actions (2008) and Journeys (2010). At Harvard, he is a Frank Knox Memorial Fellow; his dissertation research has been supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. For 2016-17, he has been named as a Mellon Researcher at the CCA, where he will study the resurgence of photomontage in contemporary architectural representation.

Research Interest

emergence of a photographic visual regime in nineteenth-century architectural representation