Almost Nothing, Reclaiming Edith Farnsworth -

Join Head Hi, author Nora Wendl, Paul Lisicky, and Olga Touloumi for the launch of Almost Nothing, Reclaiming Edith Farnsworth, a creative nonfiction biography of the Edith Farnstworth House and its central figures. The event will feature a conversation, book signing, and celebration.

More about the book:

The iconic Edith Farnsworth House is a singular glass home designed by Mies van der Rohe. But the oft-told history of the house overwrites Farnsworth’s role as Mies’s collaborator and antagonist while falsely portraying her as the architect’s angry ex-lover.

Nora Wendl’s audacious work of creative nonfiction explodes the sex-and-real-estate myth surrounding the Edith Farnsworth House and its two central figures. An eminent physician and woman of letters, Farnsworth left a rich trove of correspondence, memoirs, and photographs that Wendl uses to reconstruct her voice. Farnsworth’s memories and experiences alternate with Wendl’s thoughts on topics like misogyny and professional ambition to fashion a lyrical examination of love, loneliness, beauty, and the search for the divine.

Eloquent and confessional, Almost Nothing restores Edith Farnsworth to her place in architectural history and the masterpiece that bears her name.

Gerard & Kelly, Modern Living, 2017. Performance view: Farnsworth House, Plano, Illinois, presented

Nora Wendl, Glass House (Beth), 2015, C-print.

Unidentified Woman (likely Jenny Geering), Edith Farnsworth House, c. 1954. Courtesy Newberry Librar

Women at a picnic in coastal Maine: M.G.P. (Mary “Polly” Porter, Alicia Rosenbaum, Dorothy Blake, Ed

Edith Farnsworth, Edith Farnsworth House, 1969. Courtesy Farnsworth family and Newberry Library.

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Nora Wendl is an essayist, artist, and educator whose work engages feminist archival practices to subvert and reframe received historical narratives about the built and unbuilt environments. Her projects have received support from institutions including the Graham Foundation, Santa Fe Art Institute, and National Trust for Historic Preservation, and she has exhibited and published widely. Her most recent book, Almost Nothing: Reclaiming Edith Farnsworth (University of Illinois Press, 2025), was shortlisted for the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize. Wendl’s recent public scholarship, such as “Trinity Fallout: Nuclear Downwinders in New Mexico” in Places journal, has taken up the question of nuclear coloniality, a subject she also frames in her courses at University of New Mexico where she teaches both studio and theory. From 2021–24, she was the Executive Editor of the Journal of Architectural Education.

Paul Lisicky is the author of seven books including SONG SO WILD AND BLUE: A LIFE WITH THE MUSIC OF JONI MITCHELL, LATER: MY LIFE AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD, THE NARROW DOOR: A MEMOIR OF FRIENDSHIP, and UNBUILT PROJECTS. He’s been the recipient of awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and has published his work in THE ATLANTIC, BUZZFEED, CONJUNCTIONS, THE CUT, FENCE, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, and elsewhere. He’s taught at Cornell, NYU, Sarah Lawrence, UT-Austin, and Rutgers University-Camden, where he’s been a professor since 2011. He divides his time between Brooklyn and Southern Louisiana.

Olga Touloumi is an architectural historian, feminist writer, and educator, whose research focuses on questions of media and political form. She is currently researching informal archives, care epistemologies, and the stories we can tell through one’s life. She is the author of Assembly by Design: The United Nations and Its Global Interiors (University of Minnesota Press, 2024); and co-editor of Athens in Flux (Architectural Histories, 2024); Computer Architectures (Routledge, 2020) and Sound Modernities (Journal of Architecture, 2018). She is the co-founder of the Feminist Art and Architecture Collaborative (FAAC) and teaches at Bard College.

Head Hi is an organization dedicated to art and design specializing in publications and cultural programming with an espresso bar located in Fort Greene, Brooklyn by the Navy Yard. We feature a curated selection of publications from around the globe. Working with local and international artists, designers, publishers, community members and organizations in various fields, Head Hi is a space for exploration and interaction that hosts talks, book launches, art shows, music performances and other events.

Image Credits: Gerard & Kelly, Modern Living, 2017. Performance view: Farnsworth House, Plano, Illinois, presented by the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial. Julia Eichten. Photo: Bradley Glanzrock, Courtesy of the artists and Marian Goodman Gallery.; Nora Wendl, Glass House (Beth), 2015, C-print.; Unidentified Woman (likely Jenny Geering), Edith Farnsworth House, c. 1954. Courtesy Newberry Library and Farnsworth family.; Women at a picnic in coastal Maine: M.G.P. (Mary “Polly” Porter, Alicia Rosenbaum, Dorothy Blake, Edith Farnsworth, Dodo Blake, and Katherine Lindsay), Summer 1926. Mary W. “Molly” Dewson, photographer. Image courtesy of the Castine Historical Society.; Edith Farnsworth, Edith Farnsworth House, 1969. Courtesy Farnsworth family and Newberry Library.