Nora Wendl will present “Almost Nothing,” the 2026 Curt F. Dale Guest Lecture in Architecture, at 4 p.m. Friday, April 24, in the College of Design’s Kocimski Auditorium.
In her talk, based on her book of the same name, Wendl—an essayist, artist, and associate professor of architecture at the University of New Mexico—will illustrate her approach to rewriting modernist architectural history and share elements of her current work-in-progress, a nuclear memoir.
About the speaker
Wendl teaches studio and theory at the University of New Mexico. Her work has been supported by the Graham Foundation, Santa Fe Art Institute, and National Trust for Historic Preservation, among other institutions.
She has exhibited and published widely, and her most recent book, “Almost Nothing: Reclaiming Edith Farnsworth” (University of Ilinois Press, 2025)—an architectural history as memoir—was shortlisted for the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize. From 2021–2024, she was the executive editor of the Journal of Architectural Education.
She holds a bachelor of architecture and a master of architecture from Iowa State.
About the named lecture
The Curt F. Dale Guest Lecture in Architecture was established in 2003 in memory of 1969 Iowa State University architecture alumnus Curt F. Dale, who died in a skiing accident that year. Dale’s family and his firm, AndersonMasonDale Architects in Denver, created the endowed fund for the Iowa State architecture department to bring distinguished practitioners to campus as guest lecturers.