Natsumi Nonaka

Independent Scholar (Japan)

Weinberg Fellow in Architectural History and Preservation

Sylvo-urbanism: reframing nature and urban trees in Early Modern Rome

2025–⁠2026: Spring

Natsumi Nonaka is a historian of architecture and the built environment focusing on early modern Europe. She holds a PhD in the History and Theory of Architecture from the University of Texas at Austin, an MA in Letters (French Literature) and a BA in Liberal Arts (French Studies) from the University of Tokyo. She has held research fellowships at Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence, Italy, and Dumbarton Oaks in Washington DC, United States.

Natsumi’s research concerns the relationship between humans and nature in the city, the cognitive experience of architecture and landscapes, transcultural encounters and the transmission and cross-fertilization of artistic forms and ideas, and the study of nature and the classification of knowledge.

Among her publications are Renaissance Porticoes and Painted Pergolas (2017), the first study of the portico and its decorative program as a cultural phenomenon in early modern Italy; “Verdant Architecture and Tripartite Chorography” (2019), on the spatial understanding in the classical tradition in which landscapes are perceived in three divisions; “The Aviaries of the Farnese Gardens on the Palatine” (2016), on the architectural typology of the aviary and the confluence of European and Ottoman artistic traditions; and “Une épistémologie du treillage (Framing Knowledge)” (2024), on the intersection between the aviary, the art and craft of treillage, and cataloguing nature.

Natsumi has also been part of collaborative research projects including The Interactive Nolli Map Project (Stanford University; https://web.stanford.edu/group/spatialhistory/nolli/) and the PuNaCa (Putting Nature in a Cage) Project (Sorbonne Université, Muséum national d’histoire naturelle, Università di Roma La Sapienza, Université Lumière Lyon; https://etudierlesvolieres.wordpress.com/).

At the Italian Academy, Natsumi will work towards completing the manuscript for her second monograph, tentatively titled The Century of Trees: Nature and the City in Early Modern Europe. The study deals with the greening of early modern cities with special focus on Rome, proposing sylvo-urbanism as a viable approach for the future.