Mario Carpo

Mario Carpo (b. 1958) is an Italian architectural historian.

Mario Carpo graduated from the University of Florence in 1983 with a degree in architectural history. In 1984, he joined the Institut universitaire européen as a doctoral researcher. After studying architecture and history in Italy, Carpo began teaching Renaissance architectural theory and history as an assistant professor at the University of Geneva, then received tenure in France. He was first assigned to the École d'Architecture de Saint-Etienne, and he is currently (2007) a tenured associate professor at the école d’architecture de Paris-La Villette. For the last ten years he has also been teaching as a visiting professor in several universities in Europe and in the United States, including the University of Geneva, the University of Florence, the University of Copenhagen, Cornell University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Williams College, and Yale University. He was a resident at the American Academy in Rome in 2004, a scholar at the Getty Research Institute in 2000-2001, and a visiting scholar at the Clark Art Institute in 2000. He was the head of the Study Centre at the Centre canadien d’architecture in Montréal between 2002 and 2005.

Mario Carpo's research and publications focus on the relationship between architectural theory, cultural history, and the history of media and information technology. His publications include Architecture in the Age of Printing, which was published by the MIT Press in 2001 and has also been published in italian, in spanish, and in french. This book received the Spiro Kostof Award (conferred by the Society of Architectural Historians) in 2003. Other works include a commentary on Leon Battista Alberti's Descripto Urbis Romae (2000)(a revised version was recently published in English: Leon Battista Alberti's Delineation of the City of Rome, 2007, co-authored); La maschera e il modello (1993); Metodo e ordini nella teoria architettonica dei primi moderni: Alberti, Raffaello, Serlio e Camillo (1993). He co-edited a volume of essays on the technologies of architectural representations (Perspective, Projections, Projet, 2003, recently published in English as Perspective, Projections and Design, 2007). His recent essays and articles are published in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Log, Grey Room, L'Architecture d'aujourd'hui, Arquitectura Viva, and AD/Architectural Design.