Works on Memory: Reflections & Practices — Memorial to the Abolition of Slavery in Nantes, France
Julian Bonder
Sponsored by the Alden Orput Lecture Fund
Julian Bonder is a teacher, designer and registered architect born in New York and raised in Argentina. He is a professor of architecture at Roger Williams University, a principal of Julian Bonder & Associates, and a partner at Wodiczko + Bonder, Architecture, Art & Design (both in Cambridge Massachusetts). He is an active contributor to international debates on memory, architecture art and representation, historic trauma and the design of public spaces, monuments and memorials. His work is often found outside the traditional boundaries of architecture, and has received numerous awards, has been widely published and exhibited worldwide.
Bonder’s work and proposals about Argentina’s Desaparecidos, civil rights, the Holocaust, September 11, and Slavery include the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University and with Wodiczko the Memorial to the Abolition of Slavery in Nantes, France, which has received more than 1.5 million visitors and earned a Special Mention at the European Prize for Urban Public Space and was shortlisted for the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award. Wodiczko + Bonder were selected among the 6 finalists for the Canadian National Holocaust Monument in Ottawa. With Maryann Thompson and Walter Hood they were among the 3-finalist teams for the Martin Luther King Jr & Coretta Scott King Memorial in Boston.
Bonder delivered the keynote address at the 4th Annual Human Rights Conference in Lima, a special presentation at the Memorial Democratic Conference in Barcelona and a plenary presentation at the Slavery and the University conference at Emory. He was invited speaker to the 2017 Radcliffe Conference Universities and Slavery: Bound by History. He is member of the EUROM (European Observatory of Memories), and of the Symbolic Reparations Research Project -a group of scholars working in Central and South America on issues related to reparations through art and architecture.
The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture has presented him with Two Faculty Design Awards (2001-2007) and with the 2016 Creative Achievement Award for his work with students on the series of design studios called ‘Unearthing traces of Rhode Island Slavery and Slave Trade’. Bonder received degrees from Universidad de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Arquitectura y Urbanismo and Harvard University, Graduate School of Design.