“How can a table be fascist? Beyond a designer’s overt aspirations, what other ideological concerns can we identify in a project? An analysis of the political content of a designed object is essential to understanding its social role, and opens key ethical questions for both the fields of history and design.”

David Rifkind teaches courses in architectural history, theory and design at the College of Architecture + the Arts at Florida International University. David’s current research deals with urbanism and architecture in Ethiopia since the 1880s, and is the first component in a long-term study of modern architecture and urban planning throughout Africa.

David’s first book, The Battle for Modernism: Quadrante and the Politicization of Architectural Discourse in Fascist Italy, won the 2011 James Ackerman Prize for Architectural History from the Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio in Vicenza. David also won best article awards for essays published in the two flagship journals in architectural education and history, the Journal of Architectural Education (“Misprision of Precedent: Design as Creative Misreading”) and the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (“Gondar. Architecture and Urbanism for Italy’s Fascist Empire”). He curated the 2012 exhibition,Metropole/Colony: Africa and Italy, in the Wolfsonian-FIU Teaching Gallery at the Frost Art Museum.