Jeff Balmer
Jeff Balmer
Jeff Balmer is an associate professor in the School of Architecture at UNC Charlotte. His scholarship engages the history of modernist and contemporary architecture in Italy, foundations design pedagogy, and the history and practice of the architectural diagram. In 2018, he published the second edition of Diagramming the Big Idea: Methods for Architectural Composition (co-authored with Michael T. Swisher, Routledge Press). He is currently working on a book on the architecture of Luigi Moretti.
Balmer’s teaching focuses on the architecture and urban history of the city of Rome, design studio, and postwar cultural history. He has led international study abroad programs for more than 25 years, including the University of Waterloo and Iowa State University programs in Rome. In 2018, he inaugurated UNC Charlotte’s semester abroad program in Rome, providing undergraduates with a capstone experience in their final semester before graduating.
EXPLORE HIS RECENT WORK
Balmer leads the annual SoA Rome semester program for 4th-year architecture students.
Balmer has received the 2021 Outstanding Peer-Reviewed Research Award for “Best Paper” from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture for his research, “Marble & Lead: Aldo Moro, Luigi Moretti, and the Bunker Courtroom of the Foro Mussolini.”
In Diagramming the Big Idea, Jeffrey Balmer and Michael T. Swisher introduce the fundamentals of design thinking by illustrating how architects use diagrams to clarify their understanding of both specific architectural projects and principles of form and order.