Avigail Sachs

Avigail Sachs teaches the history and theory of architecture and landscape and studies the design professions in the United States. Her most recent book The Garden in the Machine: Planning and Democracy in the Tennessee Valley Authorityexamines the transformation of utopian ideals into practice in the first two decades of the TVA’s operation. Her first book, Environmental Design: Architecture, Politics and Science in Postwar America, was recognized with an Award of Excellence by the Southeast Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians (SESAH) in 2019. She is currently working on two projects. The first, a collaborative project with Micah Rutenberg, is titled The Mechanized Landscape and charts the impact of the TVA’s statecraft on the  Tennessee Valley. This project combines maps and photographs to provide a visual study of the region. A second project examines one of the TVA lakes – the Norris Reservoir – and its development as a “Landscape of Leisure.” Sachs earned a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, a M.S. from MIT and a B.Arch from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology. She practiced as an architect and taught design studio for five years before training as an historian.