Society of Fellows alumna María González Pendás (2016-2019) has been awarded a 2026 grant for her forthcoming publication, Holy Modern: Technocratic Fascism, Imperial Architectures, and Opus Dei, from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. The Foundation fosters the development and exchange of diverse and challenging ideas about architecture and its role in the arts, culture, and society. The book will be published by Duke University Press in 2027.

About the publication

From the mid-1930s through the 1950s, a new revolutionary subject emerged at the intersection of fascism and Catholicism: a man who practiced modernization as imperial regeneration, technocracy as evangelization, and innovation as spiritual social cleansing. For this actor, the ongoing mission of empire was pious, technological, invisible—and architecture served as a primary site for its enunciation. Traversing homes, laboratories, building sites, pavilions, government buildings, and the occasional church, Holy Modern reveals how architecture forged the political theology and aesthetics of this “cryptic technofascism” within the Franquista dictatorship (1939–75) and at the genesis of Opus Dei. As the first critical cultural history of this potent yet obscure Catholic organization, the book follows its founding members as they leveraged a “holy aesthetics” of modernization to revitalize the imperial myth of Hispanidad and promote a global revolution of the religious and neoliberal ultra-right—one that, in its formative years, endowed modern architecture with an enchanting and formidable political power.

Read more about Maria, the project, and the grant here.