Christine Smith

Christine Smith is the Robert C. and Marian K. Weinberg Professor of Architectural History at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design (GSD), Department of Architecture. She specializes in Early Christian, Medieval, and Italian Renaissance/Baroque architecture. Her research explores architectural descriptions, liturgical spaces, and the intersection of architecture with ethics, aesthetics, and literary culture.

Education: BA (Vassar College, 1966), MA (NYU Institute of Fine Arts, 1968), PhD (NYU, 1975) with a dissertation on the Baptistery of Pisa. Her teaching spans Early Christian architecture, Tuscan Romanesque, Leon Battista Alberti, and courses on Michelangelo, Saint Peter’s Basilica, and Boston’s Gilded Age architecture.

Research highlights include a 2019 book translating Maffeo Vegio’s text on Old St. Peter’s Basilica, accompanied by digital reconstructions. Her current project investigates the experience of wonder in architecture across 23 centuries, using primary sources to trace societal perceptions of awe-inspiring buildings. She collaborates with scholars like Joseph O’Connor on architectural historiography and translation projects.

Notable publications include Architecture in the Culture of Early Humanism (1992), Retrospection: Baccio Bandinelli and the Choir of Florence Cathedral (1997), and articles on Alberti’s theories, Byzantine poetics, and Pisan cathedral design. She has curated interdisciplinary events, such as Sounds of Medieval Cluny, blending musicology, architecture, and art history.

Her work bridges historical analysis with contemporary relevance, emphasizing architecture’s role in cultural narratives and ethical discourse.