Susan Klaiber
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susanklaiber.bsky.social
Susan Klaiber
@susanklaiber.bsky.social
2.7K followers 2.1K following 980 posts
Architectural historian | Baroque, early modern & beyond

American formerly in 🇩🇪 & 🇮🇹, now 🇨🇭 | Detroit diaspora

https://susanklaiber.wordpress.com/
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susanklaiber.bsky.social
Don't mention this to Swiss children at this time of year!

On St. Nicholas Day on 6 December they get little bags filled with clementines (mandarins), peanuts, gingerbread, and candy. 🥜 🍊 🍬 🍫 🎅 🇨🇭

z-nuni.com/the-swiss-sa...
Burlap bag edged in red at upper left spilling out contents of goodies. These include a clementine and peanuts together with red foil-wrapped chocolate hearts, a foil-wrapped chocolate Santa, gummy candies in red star and green Christmas tree shapes, and a star-shaped gingerbread cookie reading "Frohe Weihnacht".
November 18, 2025 at 6:33 PM
susanklaiber.bsky.social
"Did you mean: caramel bar wissenschaft"?

[In fact, I meant the book by David Gilly.]
Screenshot of a Google search stating at the top, "Did you mean: caramel bar wissenschaft" The actual thing I was looking for is immediately below, a search hit for David Gilly, Abriss der Cameral-Bauwissenschaft, held at the Munich Digitization Center.
November 14, 2025 at 9:17 PM
susanklaiber.bsky.social
I voted in the city council election back in my hometown in Michigan. Don't forget to #vote in your local elections today!

#MIvote 🇺🇸 🗳️ ☑️
Screenshot from the Michigan Voter Information Center website showing the main sidebar menu, including items such as "Register online", "Apply for an absentee ballot online" or "Voter information". A logo with the outline of the state of Michigan in white against a blue square background is at the upper left. Details of my absentee ballot for the November 4, 2025 consolidated election in Michigan. The information includes the election date 11/4/2025; date my application for the ballot was received 8/26/2025; the date the ballot was mailed to me on 9/19/2025; the date the ballot was received on 10/20/2025. Finally, it notes that I am on the Permanent Ballot List for my city.
November 4, 2025 at 2:45 PM
susanklaiber.bsky.social
Several people have worked on him over the years. There was even an exhibition of his architectural work in Hannover back in 1994.

This seems to be the most recent study, but certainly should be room for more:

www.scheidegger-spiess.ch/en/product/g...
Book cover of book Gebaute Beziehungen: Max Frisch und Franz Bruno Frisch – Zwei Architekten im Kontext ihrer Zeit by Petra Hagen Hodgson. The cover design features black text in a serif font arranged on a light blue background with an asymmetric pattern of thin white horizontal and vertical lines forming a kind of loose, irregular grid.
November 3, 2025 at 11:20 AM
susanklaiber.bsky.social
I guess the oculi are Borromini's idea - see this drawing at the Albertina - but questions remain about if he intended the lantern superstructure as Juvarra shows it.

sammlungenonline.albertina.at/objects/1175...
Drawing shows a section of a church crossing in graphite on paper. The upper portion of the drawing featuring a section of the dome is heavily worked over. A faint indication of an oculus window cutting into the vault of the dome is visible at the upper left.
October 25, 2025 at 2:13 PM
susanklaiber.bsky.social
Juvarra did a wonderful drawing of the Sant'Andrea delle Fratte cupola, as he envisioned it completed (fantasy? or based on a lost Borromini idea?).

In the Juvarra sketchbook at the Met in NYC:

www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti...
Architectural drawing of section of baroque church crossing with a dome. The vault of the dome is perforated with oculi to admit more light, in addition to the windows in the drum of the dome. The entire dome is capped with a lantern supported by oversized volute-like ribs.
October 25, 2025 at 11:15 AM
susanklaiber.bsky.social
[Generator link: www.suetterlinschrift.de/Englisch/Wri... ]
Image shows cursive handwriting spelling out "Gott sei Dank" in German Sütterlin script.
October 17, 2025 at 11:37 AM
susanklaiber.bsky.social
This is actually an Ingo Maurer design called Lucellino. 💡 🕊️

#design #lighting

www.ingo-maurer.com/en/products/...
Ceiling lamp with two winged light bulbs on wires.
October 13, 2025 at 12:27 PM
susanklaiber.bsky.social
Believe it or not, Bernini prepared plans for this exterior revetment in Siena in connection with renovations done under Alexander VII.

His design remained unexecuted. You can read about it in Chapter 9 of our book!

www.hirmerverlag.de/de/titel-32-...
Architectural drawing with plan of the southern exterior wall of Siena cathedral including the bell tower. The drawing is done in ink and black chalk. At the lower left, a perspective view of the wall.
October 13, 2025 at 4:39 AM
susanklaiber.bsky.social
Come and feast your eyes on the whole* series at the Coalmine Café in Winterthur.

(*Up until the Reinharts sold their Suhrkamp shares in 2006.)

www.coalmine.ch/cafe/
Photo shows a café with an enormous wall of books. Prominently featured in the shelves are the rainbow spines of Suhrkamp paperbacks, forming multiple rainbow spectra.
October 8, 2025 at 6:00 AM
susanklaiber.bsky.social
And my then-future / now-husband and I were there to celebrate! 🇩🇪
October 3, 2025 at 9:21 AM
susanklaiber.bsky.social
In fact our Swiss village must be the Rotmilan / Red Kite capital of Europe.

They stomp around on our roof and have cute babies in the spring. Always at least a couple dozen circling the valley.

This is a juvenile on our terrace two years ago.
September 26, 2025 at 5:59 PM
susanklaiber.bsky.social
Now available!

Bernini`s Architectural Drawings - An Extended Edition of Brauer and Wittkower’s Catalogue of 1931 (Römische Forschungen der Bibliotheca Hertziana, Band 38)

#earlymodern #baroque #architecture #drawings

www.hirmerverlag.de/de/titel-32-...
View of book covers for two-volume set of Bernini's Architectural Drawings, edited by Tod A. Marder and published by Hirmer on behalf of the Bibliotheca Hertziana. Volume 1 (visible) has ink and red chalk drawing for the crowning feature of the Baldacchino in St. Peter's.
September 25, 2025 at 8:46 AM
susanklaiber.bsky.social
Since @midwestmodern.bsky.social doesn't post here very often, bringing this one over from The Other Place.

This demolition will really hurt. Ford HQ was a fixed point in my mental map of Metro Detroit my whole life.

@sah1365.bsky.social Archipedia entry:

sah-archipedia.org/buildings/MI...
Screenshot of tweet from Midwest Modern / Josh Lipnik. Tweet reads: "Ford announced today they will be demolishing their 1956 Headquarters in Dearborn, the Glass House, designed by Gordon Bunshaft and Natalie de Blois of Skidmore Owings & Merrill" Photo shows long horizontal 12-story building with glass curtain wall. A smaller stone-clad penthouse story tops the ensemble and features the Ford logo.
September 16, 2025 at 6:15 AM
susanklaiber.bsky.social
Circulating this interesting conference announcement at the request of an Italian colleague:

"LOST CITIES IN A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE: Sources, Experience, Imagery in #EarlyModern Period (XV-XVIII century)"

Caserta, 16-17 October 2025

www.velociproject.org/en/events/ca...
Conference poster reading "LOST CITIES IN A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE: Sources, Experience, Imagery in Early Modern Period (XV-XVIII century)". "International Conference organized by Giulia Ceriani Sebregondi, Francesca Mattei, Danila Jacazzi"; Caserta, 16-17 October 2025, Rectorate Conference Hall, Università degli Studi della Campania, Viale Ellittico, 31, 81100 Caserta, Italia. A full list of participants follows. The poster background is mostly orange, and features an image from A. Kircher's Turris Babel. Description of the conference described in the poster in the previous image. Text reads: START: Many cities, all over the world, have disappeared over the centuries, abandoned – but perhaps never forgotten – destroyed by natural disasters or buried under new urban layers, re-emerging for different reasons. Fascinating historians, explorers, archaeologists, architects, and artists, the ‘lost cities’ - both literally and metaphorically - have continued to exist in literary sources, descriptions, chronicles, and sometimes in iconographic representations. Starting from the case study of the Vesuvian cities, the international conference Lost Cities in a Global Perspective: Sources, Experience, Imagery in Early Modern Period (XV-XVIII century) is aimed to investigate in an interdisciplinary and comparative way the material and imaginary dimensions assumed by the lost cities in a global perspective, before the birth of archaeology as a science in the 18th-19th century. END The text is framed with details from the conference poster.
September 13, 2025 at 5:16 PM
susanklaiber.bsky.social
Coming later this month: our Bernini's Architectural Drawings, edited by Tod Marder.

It's really two books in one: a translation (mine) and historiographic edition of Brauer & Wittkower's 1931 study, and a modern treatment of Bernini's architectural drawings.

www.hirmerverlag.de/de/titel-32-...
View of book covers for two-volume set of Bernini's Architectural Drawings, edited by Tod A. Marder and published by Hirmer on behalf of the Bibliotheca Hertziana. Volume 1 (visible) has ink and red chalk drawing for the crowning feature of the Baldacchino in St. Peter's.
September 11, 2025 at 6:31 AM
susanklaiber.bsky.social
Just announced:

Rosalind Krauss is the 2025 Balzan Prizewinner for History of Contemporary Art.

www.balzan.org/en/storia-de...
Screenshot of tweet from X, with image of Rosalind Krauss. The text reads "Rosalind Krauss is the 2025 Balzan Prizewinner for History of Contemporary Art, for her outstanding scholarly achievements and her foundational role in the establishment of contemporary art as a field of research."
September 8, 2025 at 5:35 PM
susanklaiber.bsky.social
Ooh, extremely cool post office!

My cousin lives in Decorah, have some questions for him...
Mid-century modern post office seen at a diagonal angle with main facade to left and side facade to right. Building features distinctive Mondrian-esque stained glass windows in narrow vertical strips. Rectilinear massing of building with brick veneer, corner of building faced in stone slabs.
August 8, 2025 at 8:46 PM
susanklaiber.bsky.social
Statement of Columbia Alumni for Academic Freedom on the Settlement Agreement between the Trump Administration and Columbia University

www.columbiaalumniforacademicfreedom.org/caaf-stateme...
Statement of Columbia Alumni for Academic Freedom on the Settlement Agreement between the Trump Administration and Columbia University The Trump Administration’s abuses have placed Columbia University leadership in an agonizing position, pitting the welfare of Columbia's faculty, staff, and students – and the fate of critical research projects – against considerations of institutional independence, academic freedom, constitutional democracy and rule of law. We recognize that, in reaching a settlement, University leadership acted in what they believed to be Columbia’s best interest. To castigate a victim of extortion for making a bargain feels unsympathetic and unfair. But it seems impossible to avoid the conclusion that Columbia’s decision to enter into the settlement was a grievous mistake. It was a surrender to an unprecedented and extralegal campaign of governmental extortion. We are not confident that the settlement will provide the negotiated peace that is its ostensible justification. An Administration so ready to use blatantly unconstitutional means in pursuit of flagrantly unconstitutional ends cannot be trusted to adhere to any settlement. And one of the agreement’s federal signatories (the Secretary of Education) has described the agreement as effecting an enforceable mandate to change the University’s policies and alter the content and viewpoints of campus speech. The Administration obviously (and predictably) sees the settlement as giving them additional leverage to control Columbia’s academic and extracurricular life and to implement its own preferred terms of inquiry and debate in the name of “viewpoint diversity.” The various disclaimers in the agreement are little protection against an Administration that operates by power, not law—and indeed revels in flouting legal restraints and shattering norms of fair process and regularity. But even if the agreement is honored, it comes at an enormous cost in institutional independence and stature – and it will embolden and enable further governmental lawlessness and depredations against other schools and people. Columbia’s surrendering to official intimidation of this kind -- and allowing the Administration to claim vindication of its decision to launch this disgraceful campaign in the first place -- will make it more difficult for other universities and the myriad other institutions and people who are and will be targets of similar ruinous threats to resist such extortion. The dilemma between individual interest and duties to foundational norms and broader society has been a brutal reality in authoritarian societies throughout history and across the globe. For a leading institution of American society to meekly surrender to such blatant illegality and to betray and imperil its core mission and values is a profoundly dispiriting and potentially significant defeat in the struggle to preserve a free society. Resisting governmental abuses entails risk and hardship. Columbia’s decision to concede in the midst of Trump's nationwide campaign against every institution and voice perceived as insufficiently allegiant to the Administration failed to honor the paramount interest in standing up to patent, systematic wrongdoing. As profoundly disappointing as this week’s announcement is, it is the responsibility of those who care about Columbia, and about other universities and basic democratic norms under threat, not to sit by and lament, but to stand up. We urge Columbia alumni to become more involved in University life, to push back against further incursions on constitutional freedoms at Columbia and elsewhere, and identify and pursue changes in the University and the Nation that will ensure that this week’s events not be repeated so that Columbia’s proud standing and independence may be restored. *** Columbia Alumni for Academic Freedom
August 1, 2025 at 3:20 PM
susanklaiber.bsky.social
And also an architect! Here, Bethlehem Hospital (Bedlam), 1674.
A long building of three and four stories depicted in a formal park setting with a central tree-lined path leading to the building's entrance. The building is symmetrical with two three-story wings extending from a central four-story pavilion. Each wing terminates in a four-story pavilion. A dramatic arrangement of clouds hovers above the whole.
July 18, 2025 at 5:34 AM
susanklaiber.bsky.social
Time for a visit to the AppleCam at our local orchard - the crops coming along nicely this year! 🍎 🍏 🌳

summerhalde.ch/index.php/ap...
Image of an orchard with apple trees planted in lines. In the foreground, an apple tree with several medium-large fruits apparent.
July 11, 2025 at 2:06 PM
susanklaiber.bsky.social
Happy birthday!

Crazy twisted columns in verde antico stone having fun in your honor on the altar of San Luigi Gonzaga at Sant'Ignazio in Rome.

Altar (1698-99) by Andrea Pozzo, with relief sculpture by Pierre Legros.
A large baroque altar with an altarpiece consisting of a relief sculpture of a saint surrounded by angels and putti. The relief is in white marble and is in vertical format. The relief is framed by pairs of spiral columns at either side. The columns are carved out of green verde antico stone. An elaborate baroque pediment tops off the ensemble.
July 7, 2025 at 5:29 PM
susanklaiber.bsky.social
There are at least a couple of "Au"s in 🇨🇭 too. (Kanton Zürich + Kanton Sankt Gallen)
SBB Swiss railways sign at the train station of Au ZH. The white on red SBB logo at the left, the white on blue Helvetia lettering with the station name on the right.
June 30, 2025 at 5:22 AM
susanklaiber.bsky.social
Miss my old neighborhood!

Here's the view from the bedroom at my grad school apartment on 113th St. - the St. John the Divine facade in infinite variations of lighting and weather.

Folks at Columbia always prized apartments with a view of the river, but I was very happy with this one.
New York City streetscape taken from a 7th floor window. The view looks across the rooftops of neighboring apartment buildings to the upper portion of facade of St. John the Divine, prominently featuring a rose window. It is a frosty winter day with snow on the rooftops.
June 23, 2025 at 3:25 AM
susanklaiber.bsky.social
But I've been there!

We took the kids to Swissminiatur in Melide years ago when they were young, then walked across the causeway to Bissone and saw his (purported) birthplace.
June 11, 2025 at 2:07 PM