Michelangelo Sabatino PhD is a publicly engaged historian, curator, and preservationist. He is Professor of Architectural History and Hertiage in the College of Architecture, Illinois Institute of Technology where he currently directs the PhD program in architecture and is the inaugural John Vinci Distinguished Research Fellow. Between 2017–19 Professor Sabatino served as interim dean for the College of Architecture of IIT and held the Rowe Family Endowed Dean Chair. He lectures widely about modern and contemporary architecture and design, participates in juries, and has served on a number of editorial and not-for-profit organization boards in Europe and the Americas ranging from the Society of Architectural Historians to Docomomo International / US.
Sabatino studied at universities in Canada, Italy, and the United States of America. He earned professional degree in architecture (Laurea in Architecture) at the Università IUAV di Venezia) and a doctorate in the Department of Fine Art, University of Toronto, and held a post-doctoral fellowship in the Department of History of Art + Architecture, Harvard University. Sabatino taught history and theory of architecture at Yale University and the University of Houston before his appointment to IIT. He has been a visiting scholar and professor at I Tatti, Harvard University’s Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montréal, The MacDowell Colony, the Georgia O’Keefe Museum Research Center, and The Newberry Library. Sabatino received grants ranging from the Graham Foundation to the Mellon Foundation.
Throughout his career Sabatino has focused new light on larger patterns of design discourse and production during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Canada, US, and Europe. His first book Pride in Modesty: Modernist Architecture and the Vernacular Tradition in Italy (2011) was translated into Italian and won critical acclaim and multiple awards, including the Society of Architectural Historians’ Alice Davis Hitchcock Award. Other books include Modern Architecture and the Mediterranean: Vernacular Dialogues and Contested Identities (with Jean-Francois Lejeune, 2011; CICA, Commendation, Bruno Zevi Book Award), Canada: Modern Architectures in History (with Rhodri Windsor Liscombe, 2016; CICA, Shortlist, Bruno Zevi Book Award), Avant-Garde in the Cornfields: Architecture, Landscape, and Preservation in New Harmony (with Ben Nicholson, 2019), Making Houston Modern: The Life and Architecture of Howard Barnstone (with Barrie Scardino Bradley and Stephen Fox, 2020), Carlo Mollino: Architect and Storyteller (with Napoleone Ferrari, 2021), Modern in the Middle: Chicago Houses 1929–1975 (with Susan Benjamin, 2020), The Edith Farnsworth House: Architecture, Preservation, Culture (2024), and Mies in His Own Words (with Vittorio Pizzigoni, 2024).
In the academy as well as in the community of Chicago, Sabatino is leader who values multidisciplinary collaboration. During Sabatino’s interim deanship at IIT he raised enrollment, rankings, and inaugurated a number of special initiatives, including a student-run Art X Architecture Gallery, an annual Shapeshift–Bauhaus 100 design festival in collaboration with the Institute of Design, an award-winning journal Prometheus: Journal of the PhD Program in Architecture, and an annual gospel holiday concert aimed at building community and support for the National Museum of Gospel Music to be realized in Bronzeville in proximity to S. R. Crown Hall and the IIT campus.
Sabatino and his partner live in Chicago and are in the midst of completing the preservation-restoration of their 1930s modern home, an endeavor that requires Sabatino to combine his skillsets as architect, historian, and preservationist.
email: msabatin(at)iit.edu
Photograph by Peter Rigali, S. R. Crown Hall, IIT Architecture Chicago