Cecilia Muzika-Minteer's research is focused on the role of architectural design and practice in translating and normalizing global development policy during the Cold War in Morocco and the western Sahara. They are concerned with the entanglement of phosphate fertilizers and ecotourist architectures and landscapes in the emergence of the Cold War Green economy. Cecilia investigates the built environment's political-spatial and political-aesthetic dimensions. They scrutinize architectural programs as technoscientific mechanisms and are critical of the discipline's techno-political methods.
Prior to beginning her PhD at the University of Pittsburgh, Cecilia obtained her MA in Architectural History from The University of Texas at Austin in 2021, focusing on theories of organicism in planned communities designed by Alvar Aalto, Paulo Soleri and Frank Lloyd Wright. Cecilia earned a BA in History from Westminster College in Pennsylvania in 2013 and spent several years working at Fallingwater, for the Army Corps of Engineers and at the United States Capitol in education and research roles helping to shape their critical perspective on the built environment.
- Ph.D. History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh (in progress)
- M.A. Architectural History, The University of Texas at Austin (2019)
- B.A. History, Westminster College (Pennsylvania) (2013)
Education & Training
- Dietrich Summer Research Grant, University of Pittsburgh, 2023
- Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences Pre-Doctoral Fellowship, 2022-2023
"Designed Unequal Ecologies and Reaching Beyond Colonial Compartments in Western Sahara" (ValEUs Workshop Presentation, Critical Perspectives on European Values, Paris, France, June 20-21, 2024)
“A Monumental Line in the Sand: Sustainable Development and Conflict from Bou Craa to the Coast.” (Conference Presentation, The Third Ecology Conference, Reykjavík, Iceland, October 11-13, 2023).
“Dynamic Usonia: The Evolution of Wrightian Organic Principles for Community Sustainability.” In Re-Imagining Resilient Productive Landscapes: Perspectives from Planning History. Edited by Carla Brisotto and Fabiano Lemes de Olivrira, 181-98. Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature, 2022.
