Annette Fierro

In her teaching and research, Annette Fierro addresses myriad issues of technology within contemporary international architecture and urban culture.

Annette Fierro's current research examines recent trends in encouraging natural systems in urban architecture, as a literal (botanical) component of built and unbuilt works and as urban policy, traced especially as it emerged from movements in the 1960s and 70s. Addressed in advanced studios, in collaboration with Weitzman’s Department of Landscape Architecture, she has produced, with Matthias Armengaud and his student cohort at the École Supérieure Nationale d’Architecture Versailles, a live theater performance as a final studio event, “Urban Opera.” Her recent article for Weitzman's LA+ synopsizes the beginning of this research academically: "Conceits and Constructs: Vegetal Architecture" (Spring 2024). She has recently lectured on this topic at Rice University and at the University of Cincinnati.

Fierro's recent book, The Architectures of the Technopolis: Archigram and the British High Tech, (LundHumphries, 2023) established and traced legacies of the radical technological speculation of the 1960's in London. Emerging from seminars at Weitzman, this work encompassed technological utopias as they were embraced in different eras to the present. It speculated on, among other topics, the influence of experimental theatre in forms of architecture, the confluence of narrative (literary) description with infrastructural systems of movement, the effect of WWII on the technological iconography of the various architects, and, finally, the emergence of a new form of immersive green urban architecture as utopian practice. Based in the post-industrial city of London, this research situates these questions within larger contexts of neo-liberal urban practices.

Fierro previously authored The Glass State: The Technology of the Spectacle/Paris 1981-1998 (MIT Press, 2003), which focused on issues of transparency in François Mitterrand's "Grands Projects" in Paris. This work looked at the material and technological symbolism of glass architecture imposed on the civic infrastructure of Paris in the socialist moment of Mitterrand's presidency. On this topic, she lectured at Cornell University, Columbia University, and at Penn, for the Institute of French Culture and Technology.

At Weitzman, for over a decade Fierro has led the core design curriculum in the second semester of study. This semester, devoted to positioning architecture within multiple definitions of urban morphology, also introduces students to representational and descriptive modalities in describing the city. Challenging conventional elements of architecture defined by traditional pedagogy as inadequate to issues facing contemporary cities, Fierro and her students worked to interrogate and speculate within scopes of timely issues--for example, effects of climate change and environmental injustice on architecture of the city, or contemporary practices of community engagement as methodological intervention, or the effects of public arts programs on public space. Recently students researched historical protestival spatial practices in parts of the city which had seen racial unrest and situated architectural responses to them.  

Fierro also supervises the Master's Thesis program at Penn (MArch+), a multi-disciplinary program which supports advanced students in framing independent, research-driven investigations. In this is evidence to her belief that architecture can and must be timely, as well as simultaneously conversant in practices which are textual, spatial and tectonic.

Administratively, Fierro is the Director of Advising for the Department of Architecture, after serving as Associate Chair between 2017-2022, Director of Admissions (2017-24), and supervising study abroad programs to Paris (2008-23). She serves on many school and university committees. She is a registered architect in the state of NY. Her early design work as project architect has appeared in various architectural journals, including Assemblage, Architectural Record, Progressive Architecture, Lotus, and Texas Architect.