Timothy M. Rohan

Department Chair and Associate Professor | American and European Architecture

Faculty
Tim Rohan with students outside on architecture tour
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Location
South College W301B

Research Areas

  • Modern Architecture, Urbanism, Interiors, and Design
  • Historic Preservation

Timothy M. Rohan is an architectural historian whose research focuses on late twentieth-century modernism, especially upon interiors and brutalist architecture. In his publications and teaching, Professor Rohan also considers the architecture, urbanism, landscape, and design of Europe, North America and beyond from 1750 to the present. Professor Rohan has a BA from Yale University and a PhD from Harvard University (2001). 

He is active in many organizations, including Docomomo New England, Historic New England and the Historic Interiors Group of the Society of Architectural Historians. He is a co-founder of UMassBrut, the advocacy group for the UMass system’s modernist buildings. He regularly gives tours of the modern buildings of the UMass Amherst campus.

The Western Massachusetts American Institute of Architects awarded him its biannual honorary membership award in 2024 in recognition of his teaching and advocacy for modern architecture in the region.

Selected Publications

Professor Rohan has published extensively about Paul Rudolph, brutalism, interiors and other diverse subjects in books, edited volumes, exhibition catalogs, and leading journals, such as The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians and The Art Bulletin. His research had been funded by grants from the Getty Foundation, the Graham Foundation, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Architectural History Foundation, the Library of Congress, UMass Amherst and other entities. 

  • Podcast: "Bringing the Disco Home," Decorated, season 1 episode 4, December 11, 2024. Invited interview discussion with Cotter Christian, Dean Parsons School of Design, NYC and William Fryer about 1970s Manhattan residential interior and discos. This podcast discussion is based on the catalog essay:

    Timothy M. Rohan, “Bringing the Disco Home: Manhattan’s Disco-Influenced Residences of the 1970s,” essay for Night Fever exhibition, curators Catharine Rossi and Jochen Eisenbrand, Vitra Design Museum, Weil-am-Rhein, Germany (2018) p. 104-115.

  • Article: “Queering the Minimalist Interior,” The Art Bulletin, Vol 106, No. 1, March 2024, p. 20-27, peer-reviewed and invited for a special themed issue about queerness and the interior
  • Book chapter: “The Meaning of an Anecdote: Wright, Johnson and Rudolph at the Glass House,” Rethinking Frank Lloyd Wright: New Perspectives on an Enduring Legacy, editors Richard Longstreth and Neil Levine (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2023) p. 119-144.
  • Book chapter: “From Sex to Narcissism: Understanding Minimalist Interiors in New York Films of the 1970s,” Screen Interiors, Edited by Pat Kirkham and Sarah Lichtman (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021) p. 125-141
  • Catalog Entry: “Michael Graves, Reinhold Apartment, Central Park West, New York, 1979-1981,” Home Delivery: 100 Years / 20 Visionary Interiors, edited by Jochen Eisenbrand, exhibition catalog for the Vitra Design Museum (Weil-Am-Rhein, Germany: Vitra Design Museum, 2020) p. 176-179
  • Book chapter: “Instrumentalizing Ugliness: Parallels between High Victorian and Brutalist Architecture,” Architecture and Ugliness: Anti-Aesthetics and the Ugly in Postmodern Architecture, edited by Wouter van Acker and Thomas Mical (London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020) p. 59-75
  • Book chapter: “Breuer's Ancillary Strategy: Signs and Structures along the Highway to Postmodernism,” Breuer's Architecture for Postwar Institutions, edited by Barry Bergdoll and Jonathan Massey (Zurich: Lars Müller, 2018) p. 292-31
  • Catalog case study essay: "New Haven: Brutalism as Urbanism, a Case Study," (p. 71-75) and "Rudolph's UMass Dartmouth Campus," (catalog entry), p. 132-135. SOS Brutalism: A Global Survey, catalog for exhibition of this name at Deutsches Architekturmuseum, Frankfurt, Germany, Nov. 9, 2017 to April 2, 2018 (Zurich: Park Books, 2017) edited by Oliver Elser, Philip Kurz, Peter Cachola Schmal. Translated into German

Professor Rohan has completed a series of projects about the American architect Paul Rudolph (1918-1997). His book, The Architecture of Paul Rudolph (Yale University Press, 2014), is the first monograph about Rudolph, one of the most important modernist architects of the mid and late twentieth-century. Professor Rohan was the first scholar to examine the Paul Rudolph papers, which he helped organize and catalog at the Library of Congress. Professor Rohan curated the exhibition “Model City: Buildings and Projects by Paul Rudolph for Yale and New Haven” for the rededication of Rudolph’s Yale Art & Architecture Building in 2008, an event accompanied by a scholarly symposium that he also organized. He has edited the symposium papers, which have been published in the volume, Reassessing Rudolph (Yale University Press, 2017). He has collaborated on the development of a conservation plan for Rudolph's Jewett Arts Center at Wellesley College (2017), funded by the Getty Foundation’s “Keeping It Modern” grant program. 

Research and Publications about Paul Rudolph

  • Editor and Contributor, Reassessing Rudolph, Yale School of Architecture and Yale University Press (2017)
  • The Architecture of Paul Rudolph, Yale University Press (2014, reprinted 2016 and 2021)
  • Model City: Buildings and Projects for Yale and New Haven by Paul Rudolph, Yale School of Architecture, Nov.  3, 2008 – Feb. 6, 2009. Exhibition brochure catalog.
  • “Paul Rudolph: Transcending the Conventions of Architectural Drawing,” Drawing Matter, online journal of the Drawing Matter Foundation, London, January 27, 2025
  • Book chapter: “Drawing as Signature: Paul Rudolph and the Perspective Section,” Reassessing Rudolph, edited by Timothy M. Rohan (Yale School of Architecture and Yale University Press, 2017) p. 120-135. Reissued by Drawing Matter, London, February 2025.
  • “Challenging the Curtain Wall: Paul Rudolph’s Blue Cross and Blue Shield Building, The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, vol. 66, no. 1, March 2007, p. 84-109
  • "Rendering the Surface: Paul Rudolph's Art & Architecture Building at Yale," Grey Room. Vol. 1, no. 1, Fall 2000, p. 84-107

Courses Recently Taught

At UMass Amherst, Professor Rohan teaches courses on 19th century and modern architecture as well as an introductory survey on architecture from antiquity to the present. He also teaches graduate seminars on varying topics from architecture and postwar affluence to the modernist interior. He has won several campus teaching awards. Outside of Art History, he has worked on thesis projects with students from other departments at UMass, such as English, Landscape, and Architecture, and from other institutions in the Five Colleges Consortium and beyond. He has served as both graduate and undergraduate program director for the Department of Art and Architectural History.

  • ART-HIST 118: History of Architecture and the Built Environment
  • ART-HIST 342: 19th Century Architecture
  • ART-HIST 343: 20th Century Architecture
  • ART-HIST 385: Frank Lloyd Wright Houses
  • ART-HIST 743: The Modernist Domestic Interior

Meet Tim Rohan!