Gabriel Agostini

I have written a lot about cities and geography during my undergrad. Here is some of that work:

Brazilian Urban Planning:

• In the essay Naturally Artificial: Continuity and Change in the Street Network of Rio de Janeiro , I use street network analysis on historical maps to study the change in the street layout of Rio de Janeiro during the colonial period.
• In the essay Confluences of the Past in Brasília: Another Plano Piloto for Brazilian Modernist Urbanism , I look at the eurocentric historiography that predominantly constrained Brazilian Modernism and propose alternative, de-colonial avenues for future research rooted within Brazil's own city-planning tradition. This piece was published on the Barnard Columbia Urban Review Fall 2021 edition. I wrote a review essay on the same topic.

Architecture and Urban Planning through Art and Fiction:

• Still looking at modernism (and Brasília!), I discuss the dissonances between the British architectural collective Archigram and modernist town planning in my essay The Life of Yellowing Papers .
• Continuing on the theme of British literature and architecture, I use spatial analysis and GIS to study movement in B.S. Johnson's brutalist novel Albert Angelo as detailed in the essay OH, FUCK ALL THIS WALKING! The Metafictional Geography of Movement in Albert Angelo .
• What happens when data is returned to the real world via art? I am currently producing a short film about urban data in collaboration with New York based multimedia artist Tianyi Sun through Cornell Tech's Backslash Fellowship---which pairs PhD students with artists engaged with new technologies. We are working on BADWIZARD, an experimental piece about how an urban dataset of complaints and requests fabricates a shared civic memory among citizens and data scientists.

Mezcal is my adorable yet sometimes grudgy cat. Check out some pictures of him.

Important clarification: The cat in my profile picture is not Mezcal. That is Scotty, one of my feline godchildren. Mezcal would be extremely upset if I tried to put him on my shoulders. I have tried.

I'm an amateur mixologist and enjoy creating themed cocktail menus. Follow my cocktail adventures on Instagram. Check out my Pumpkin Party menu (which is a yearly holiday I celebrate) and my Oscars 2025 menu.

I spend too much time not only listening but analyzing Taylor Swift songs. I also produce academic research on her music. Because I unfortunately have not yet found a reputable journal on Taylor Swift Studies to publish my work, you can read the preprints below:

• This essay, which I wrote for my Columbia's Contemporary Civilization class in 2021, investigates Swift's re-recordings and their ontological implications in Aesthetics. I use canonical texts from Western philosophy, such as Marx and Nietzsche, to support my point.
• I had been thinking about these ideas much earlier in my Swiftie career, and this essay from 2017 focuses on the themes of memory and repetition in Taylor Swift's music as she released reputation.