Kimberly Elman Zarecor
Associate Professor, Architecture

Education
B.A., Art History, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1996
M.Arch, Columbia University, 1999
Ph.D., Architecture, Columbia University, 2008  

Research Interests
Professor Zarecor researches historical and contemporary architecture in the former Czechoslovakia. Her 2011 book with University of Pittsburgh Press, Manufacturing a Socialist Modernity: Housing in Czechoslovakia, 1945-1960, focuses on the intersection of architects, housing design, and the state apparatus in the early years of Communist Party rule. It follows the development and deployment of standardized mass-housing types such as the prefabricated structural panel building and examines the relationship between communism and architecture.

Her new project considers the future of communist-era neighborhoods in today's Czech Republic. She spent five months in Ostrava, Czech Republic on research leave in the fall of 2011. This work was funded by Iowa State University and a Fulbright Faculty Research Grant.

In addition to her book, her publications include:

"Infrastructural Thinking: Urban Housing in Former Czechoslovakia from the Stalin Era to EU Accession." In Infrastructures of Home and City: The Problem of Housing in Modern Urban Society, Edward Murphy and Najib Hourani, eds. Lansing: Michigan State University Press, forthcoming.

"Zlín and the Invention of the Panel Building." In The Company Towns of the Baťa Concern: Conference Proceedings. Ondřej Ševeček and Martin Jemelka, eds. Prague, forthcoming.

"Socialist Neighborhoods after Socialism: The Past, Present, and Future of Postwar Housing in the Czech Republic," East European Politics and Society, 2011.

"The Local History of an International Type: The Structural Panel Building in Czechoslovakia," Home Cultures, vol. 7, 2010: 217-236.

“Designing for the Socialist Family: The Evolution of Housing Types in Early Postwar Czechoslovakia” in Jill Massino and Shana Penn, eds. Gender Politics and Everyday Life in State Socialist Eastern and Central Europe. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. pp. 151-168.

"Stavoprojekt and the Atelier of National Artist Jiří Kroha in the 1950s/ Stavoprojekt a atelier národního umělce Jiřího Krohy v 50.letech” in Marcela Macharáčková, ed. Jiří Kroha (1893-1974) – Architect, Painter, Designer, Theorist. Muzeum města Brna, 2007, pp. 103-140.

She has received numerous fellowships and research grants including a Fulbright Faculty Research Grant (2011-2012, Czech Republic), Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship (2002-2003, Czech Republic), an ACLS Dissertation Write-Up Fellowship (2003-2004) and research grants from the Iowa State Center for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities (2006, 2009).

Current Projects

"Czechoslovakia's Model Housing Developments: Modern Architecture for the Socialist Future," in V. Kulic, T. Parker, and M. Penick, eds. Sanctioning Modernism: Architecture and the Making of Postwar Identities. Univ. of Texas Press, expected 2012.

"Architecture in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union" in A Critical History of Contemporary Architecture, 1960-2010, Elie Haddad and David Rifkind, eds., expected 2012.

Contact Information
Phone: (515) 294-5026
Email: zarecor@iastate.edu
WWW: http://www.public.iastate.edu/~zarecor/
Office: 587 Design

Mailing Address
Architecture Department
146 College of Design
Ames, IA, 50011