Quotable Speaker Series: Christopher Wilson

Dr. Christopher S. Wilson is an Architecture and Design Historian at Ringling College of Art + Design in Sarasota, Florida, USA. He is also the “Scholar-in Residence” of the non-profit Architecture Sarasota, a recent merger of the Sarasota Architectural Foundation and the Center for Architecture Sarasota.

In Reframing Berlin: Architecture, Memory-Making and Film Locations, Dr. Wilson is concerned with the connection between the built environment and the passage of time, Reframing Berlin uses film locations in the city to reveal the influence that urban transformation has on memory-making. Covering the city’s history since the beginning of cinema, the book proposes the term urban strategies to understand the range of consequential actions taken by politicians, developers, and other powerful figures to shape the nature and future of buildings, streets, and districts. Organizing these strategies from demolition to memorialization, the authors study the ways these actions forget or recall aspects of place. Using cinematic representations of Berlin as an audiovisual archive, the study details how the city has adjusted to it traumatic twentieth-century history through architectural transformations.

Following his talk, Dr. Wilson will sign copies of his latest book, Reframing Berlin: Architecture, Memory-Making and Film Locations.