Departmental homepageA native of Jyväskylä, Finland, Dr Nivarti (née Singler) trained as an architect at the University of Cambridge and the Yale School of Architecture, where she held the Edward P. Bass Scholarship in Architecture. She practised architecture in Boston, MA, with a focus on educational and infrastructural projects, and completed her PhD in architectural history at Cambridge as a Gates Scholar.
Dr Nivarti teaches various undergraduate and graduate modules at the Department of Architecture. Currently, her teaching palette includes courses on the histories and theories of modern architecture, the history of 20th-century design, the relationship between religion and modern architecture and archival theory.
Dr Nivarti's primary research specialism is the critical analysis of the architecture, urbanism, design and thought of Finnish modernists Alvar, Aino and Elissa Aalto and their associates. Her other research interests lie in the histories and theories of modern architecture, Indigenous architectures in the Arctic – especially Sápmi – and architectural pedagogies for children. Her research frequently informs her curatorial practice. She curated the exhibition Alvar Aalto in Deutschland: Gezeichnete Moderne = Alvar Aalto in Germany: Drawing Modernism at the Tchoban Foundation, Berlin (September 2023 to January 2024).
Singler, Sofia. The Religious Architecture of Alvar, Aino and Elissa Aalto. London: Lund Humphries, 2023.
Singler, Sofia. "Constructing Country, Community and City: Alvar Aalto’s Cross of the Plains (1951-66)" in Territories of Faith: Religion, Urban Planning and Demographic Change in Post-War Europe, 1945-75, edited by Sven Sterken and Eva Weyns. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2022, pp. 95-122.
Singler, Samuel and Sofia Singler. "Peripheral Parliament: Sovereignty, Collective Rights, and Political Representation in the Sámi Parliament of Finland" in Parliament Buildings: The Architecture of Politics in Europe, edited by Sophia Psarra, Claudia Sternberg and Uta Staiger. London: UCL Press, 2023, pp. 391-406.
Singler, Sofia. "Contradictory Contemporaneity? Sámi Building in Nordic Architectural Discourse" in Joar Nango, edited by Axel Wieder. London: Sternberg Press, 2025 (forthcoming).
