Jonathan Massey

Architecture professor; formerly at Syracuse University, later dean at Taubman College, University of Michigan.

Jonathan Massey is an architecture historian whose research examines the history of American architecture, with particular attention to ornament, aesthetics, and the social dimensions of design. He was an associate professor in the School of Architecture at Syracuse University at the time of the anthology's publication, and later served as dean of the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan. He holds bachelor and doctoral degrees from Princeton University and a Master of Architecture degree from UCLA. Prior to his academic career, Massey worked at the architecture firms of Dagmar Richter and Frank O. Gehry & Associates. His research includes work on Claude Bragdon's progressive architecture.

Relationship to Fuller

Relationship: chronicler. Massey contributed the essay "Necessary Beauty: Fuller's Sumptuary Aesthetic" to New Views on R. Buckminster Fuller. The essay discusses R. Buckminster Fuller's unique aesthetic, born of his concerns with geometry, time, space, and economy, relating it especially to Claude Bragdon's earlier ideas of projective ornament. Rather than treating Fuller's designs as purely functional or engineering-driven, Massey reveals the aesthetic dimensions of Fuller's work and traces its intellectual genealogy in earlier architectural theory.

See Also

• New Views on R. Buckminster Fuller — the collection he contributed to

Sources

• New Views on R. Buckminster Fuller (source reference) — Zotero record for the anthology