Patricio del Real
Specialization: Modern Architecture
Patricio del Real is known for his expertise in the field of architecture and architecture history, with a focus in the Americas. His work examines the intersections of buildings, politics and cultural identity. As an architectural historian, he contributes to a deeper understanding of the global dimensions of modernism, shedding light on its unique transformations and adaptations.
One of his notable contributions is his focus on institutions and the transnational flows of ideas and practices and how these migrations have impacted both the development of architectural forms and the practices of architects in the second postwar period. Professor del Real also investigates exhibitions as sites of negotiations and dissemination of architectural knowledge. He explores how global narratives of modernism have been constructed and contested. His book, Constructing Latin America: Architecture, Politics and Race at the Museum of Modern Art (Yale University Press, 2022), is a groundbreaking study of architecture exhibitions that made MoMA a cultural weapon in the 20th Century. He co-edited the anthology, Latin American Modern Architectures: Ambiguous Territories(Routledge, 2012), a pioneering anthology that challenged established narratives on the region's built environment.
His forthcoming book, Tropical Whiteness: Notes on the Racialization of Modern Architecture, proposes a new analytical category to unravel the invisibility of whiteness and supposed racelessness of modern architecture. Focusing on Brazil’s national pavilion for the 1939 New York World’s Fair, it analyzes the discursive history of whitening in Latin America and contextualizes it with the hegemonic culture of “International Whiteness.” He has developed and presented this work in seminars and lectures, including at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome, Italy.
His new research interrogates the “myth of the secular” in 20th-century architecture. It emerges from his ongoing research and relationship with the Valparaíso School in Chile. His essay, “The Lay Apostles of Valparaíso and Their Architecture Manifesto” in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (March, 2026) reveals the Catholic religious values that sustain this Chilean case study and demonstrate how the members of the school sought a sacralized modernity based on a masculine Christian piety. It anchors his broader exploration of “radical architectures” and utopian impulses in the late 20th century.
His courses—including Architecture and Utopia in the 20th Century and Architecture and Authoritarianism—explore modernism as a global phenomenon by focusing on singular case studies and design practices as they were shaped by political and cultural power.
Del Real served as Exhibitions Review Editor for the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (2020-23) and continues to investigate curatorial practices in architecture through seminars, workshops and courses, such as Architecture in the Archive, in which students gain first-hand curatorial experience by working directly with archives at Harvard and abroad. He was co-editor of a special issue on architecture exhibitions of the journal Bitácora Arquitectura and contributed to the MAXXI exhibition catalogue, Technoscape: The Architecture of Engineers.
Seeking new ways to collaborate, del Real developed Curating Architecture Across the Americas, an ongoing program that brings together historians, scholars and curators to define and test the limits of curatorial practices. He is co-chair of the Society of Architectural Historians Latin American Architectural Histories Affiliate Group.
Del Real holds a PhD in Architecture History and Theory from Columbia University and a Masters of Architecture from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Before his appointment at Harvard, he was Visiting Associate Research Scholar and Lecturer in the Program of Latin American Studies at Princeton University. Prior, he worked at MoMA’s Architecture and Design Department on several temporary and collection exhibitions, and co-curated Latin America in Construction: Architecture 1955-1980, which received the 2017 Philip Johnson Exhibition Catalogue Award, which recognizes excellence of architectural history scholarship in exhibition catalogues. He was the recipient of the 2015 Ann and Lee Tannenbaum Award for Excellence in Curatorial Practices, given by the Museum of Modern Art Board of Trustees. He has continued his curatorial practice with the exhibition Displaying Latin America at Harvard Art Museums.