The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has announced that Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi, assistant professor of architecture, will receive a grant for her research on Sri Lankan architect Minnette de Silva, modern architecture, and cultural heritage.
Her book, titled “Minnette de Silva and a Modern Architecture of the Past,” examines the politics and aesthetics of heritage by focusing on the career of Minnette de Silva, whose work was shaped by violent upheaval in Asia. Siddiqi’s book is unique because it uses a critical feminist lens to reorient modern architectural historiography, freeing it from the patriarchal and commercial concerns that typically dominate architectural writing. This summer, Siddiqi plans to continue her research on this topic by traveling to Sri Lanka to re-examine Silva’s papers, where she will visit important sites that relate to Silva’s designs and examine materials housed at archival centers and universities that can shed more light onto Silva’s heritage debates.