SAVIA PALATE
Savia Palate is a lecturer of History and Theory in Architecture at the University of Cyprus.
She holds a PhD in Architecture from the University of Cambridge (2021) as a Cambridge Trust Scholar (Vice-Chancellor Award). During that time, she has been a doctoral resident at the Canadian Centre of Architecture (2020), and an A.G. Leventis Foundation Scholar. She holds an MA in History and Critical Thinking from the Architectural Association School of London with Distinction (2015), and an MArch II in Theory and Design (cluster: Space, Society, and Culture) from the Pennsylvania State University (2014) as a Fulbright Scholar.
Her research endeavours focus on the production of critical histories that relate to prescriptions of space, as these may be produced and transmitted by agents and methodologies within and beyond the disciplinary boundaries of architecture.
She is currently exploring "uneasy but shared heritage" on contested territories (USHer - www.ucy.ac.cy/usher), investigating the role of architectural history in contributing to the intangible value of modern architecture as heritage that can be shared. This project involved the development of an interactive guide to modern architecture in Cyprus as a digital archive that listens. She co-chaired a paper session titled "What is Shared? Architectural Heritage in Conflict" at the 2023 SAH conference, which led to the recently published special guest issue in Fabrications (SAHANZ journal).
She is particularly interested "on buildings that no longer exist" as explored through colonial, postcolonial, and decolonial theoretical frameworks, exploring narratives of vanishment and the effect of vanishment in methods and media of architectural historiography. She is the co-convenor of the EAHN Interest Group On Vanished Buildings.
- modern and contemporary history + theory of architecture
- media and methods of architectural historiography
- "uneasy but shared" architectural heritage
- transmedia storytelling of architectural history
- on buildings that no longer exist
- design-by-words
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
Savia Palate and Panayiota Pyla, "The Salamis Bay Hotel: A Residual Imperialism in Cyprus," Architectural Theory Review (2025), 1-19. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13264826.2025.2459938
Savia Palate, “USHering People to Architectural Counterhistories of Shared Heritage,” Charrette vol. 9 no. 2: Architectural History isn’t What it Used to be (2024).
Savia Palate, “Heating Standards and Obsolescence in Post-war Britain’s Homes for Today and Tomorrow,” Urban Planning vol. 9 [Issue: Housing Norms and Standards: The Design of Everyday Life] (2024), 1-14. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17645/up.7754
Savia Palate, “Homes for Today and Tomorrow: Britain's Parker Morris Standards and the West Ham Experimental Scheme,” Architecture and Culture (2022), 457-482. DOI: 10.1080/20507828.2022.2198299
Savia Palate, “Designing playspaces for the emerging society of car owners in post-war council housing in Britain” studies in History and Theory of Architecture [Special Issue on Ideas at Home: Housing Concepts in Architecture], no. 9 (2021), 116-131.
Savia Palate, “Letting me decay. Letting you Forget? Ruination ‘in peace’ in the wounded landscape of Cyprus,” AR/Architecture Research [Issue: The Artifice of the Redress], 2021.
Savia Palate, “Border Conditions: Sightseeing in Contested Varosha, Cyprus,” InForma #12: Site Conditions (2019), 204-215.
Edited Journal Issues
Savia Palate and Panayiota Pyla (guest eds.) “What is Shared? Architectural Heritage in Conflict”, Fabrications vol. 34 no. 2 (SAHANZ Journal) (2024). Editorial DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10331867.2024.2395233
Yasmina El Chami and Savia Palate (eds.) [Names alphabetically ordered] Concinittas - Scroope 28: The Cambridge Architecture Journal (June 2019).
Journal Articles
Savia Palate, “How to start your own country (But could you really?)” PLAT 9.0 Commit - Rice University Journal (October 2020).
Savia Palate, “Can affordability be flexible,” MONU 32: Affordable Urbanism (April 2020).
Savia Palate, “The Age of Fragmentation: Thank you for not sharing,” Pidgin 24: The Princeton Architecture Journal (November 2018).
Exhibition Catalogues / Other Handbooks
Savia Palate, “Intangible, yet Impending Lives of Modern Heritage in Obsolescence: The Case of Berengaria Hotel,” International Handbook for Students on Research and Design for the Sustainability of Heritage (HERSUS, 2023).
Savia Palate and Anny Stephanou, “A dome and a line in a dot,” in Anachoresis: Cyprus Pavilion Catalogue for the 17th Venice Biennale (November 2021).
Savia Palate, Petros Phokaides, Panayiota Pyla, “More than a Hotel: Ledra Palace through the Stories of Tourism and Modernism,” in Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert, Loukia Loizou-Hadjigavriel, Antigone Heraclidou (eds.) Ledra Palace: Dancing on the Line (Nicosia: A.G. Leventis Foundation, 2021). – In Greek and English