‘Politics is nothing more than medicine on a larger scale.’

Rudolf Virchow


‘Beauty, cleanliness, and order obviously occupy
a special position among the requirements of civilization.’

Sigmund Freud


-------------


Daniel Simon Ayat is a Lebanese-American artist, writer, and educator based in New York City and Arizona.

He has been a professor of history, theory, and design at TSOA: The School of Architecture founded by Frank Lloyd Wright since 2022. From 2016 to 2018, he was a visiting assistant professor in Humanities and Media Studies at the Pratt Institute School of Architecture. He co-founded the AA’s Visiting School program in Lyngør, Norway, which ran from 2015 until 2019. He holds an MSc in the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology from the University of Oxford and an MA in Art and Science from Central Saint Martin's College of Art and Design. He also has an MA in the Histories and Theories of Architecture from the Architectural Association in London, where he assisted in the History and Theory Studies department from 2010-2012.

-------------


Interests:

urban and architectural history
sewerage and public toilets
landscape and the agricultural hinterland in the social imagination
the value of waste and the legacy of the junk aesthetic 
history of sociology
rationalisation and statecraft
public hygiene
infrastructures
the res publica and ‘the civilizing process’
organization theory
‘matter out of place’
the infraordinary