Authors

Esra Akcan is Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Architecture, field member of Architecture and Near Eastern Studies, and board member at the Institute for Comparative Modernities, and Signale series of university press at Cornell University. Akcan’s research on modern and contemporary architecture and urbanism foregrounds the intertwined histories of Europe, West Asia and Northeast Africa, and offers new ways to understand architecture’s role in global, social and environmental justice. Akcan has authored seven books, edited four volumes and more than two-hundred articles and essays in scholarly books and professional journals of multiple languages on critical and postcolonial theory, geopolitical inequalities and peacebuilding, immigration, welcoming and cosmopolitan ethics, human and more-than human rights, critique of climate change and mass extinction, racism and reparations, translation, and global history.

Selected Publications

Architecture and the Right-to-Heal: Resettler Nationalism in the Aftermath of Conflict and Disaster, Durham 2025.

Offene Architektur: Migration, Staatsbürgerschaft und Stadterneuerung In Berlin-Kreuzberg Durch Die IBA-1984/87. Berlin 2025.

Art and Architecture of Migration and Discrimination: Pakistan, Turkey and their European Diasporas, co-edited with Iftikhar Dadi, London 2023.

Abolish Human Bans: Intertwined Histories of Architecture, Montreal 2022.

More Infos:
www.esraakcan.com

Born in Neuwied, Germany, Denis Andernach worked after his studies at the TU Kaiserslautern as an architect and as a research assistant at the Chair of Building Construction and Design Prof. Johannes Modersohn. With Nicolas Bahnemann he founded the architectural office Bau Eins Architekten BDA. In addition to this activity, he dedicates himself to architectural drawing - numerous exhibitions, teaching assignments e.g. at the TU Graz as well as a substitute professorship 2021 at the University of Kaiserslautern were the result. Since 2009 he is part of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft bildender Künstler Mittelrhein.




Exhibitions (selection):

2023: Apartement Dresden mit Stefan Lenke

2020: The Architecture Drawing Prize - John Soane`s Museum,London

2020: Gruppenausstellung Art Omi, New York

2019: Form und Farbe AKM Koblenz

2017: Londonsketchbookfestival, London

2017: Ein Teil des Ganzen, Haus Metternich, Koblenz

2013: Ausstellung im Zentrum Baukultur Mainz

2009: Landschaftshäuser 36 x 48, Haus 1, Berlin

2006: Caspars Häuser, Galerie Raumeins, Leer

Website

Bahar Avanoğlu is currently a PhD candidate at Istanbul Technical University (ITU), where she studies architectural representation in relation to esoteric practices. She holds a BArch and MSci degree from ITU, and a post-professional MArch II degree from the Cooper Union. She teaches design and drawing studios at Istanbul Bilgi University and MEF University. She was an exchange PhD researcher at Politecnico di Torino for the 2021-22 academic year. She initiated DrawingConstructions as an experimental drawing project in 2017. She draws and works on drawing instruments. Her drawings have been published and exhibited internationally.

Publication:

Şiir/Mimarlık: Binanın İhlali (Poetry/Architecture: Violation of the Building) , Istanbul 2021.

Website

Dr. Wolfgang Bachmann lingered after his architectural studies with a dissertation and then found shelter in architectural offices for a few years. There he could never decide what to crib from all the journals, so he escaped to Bauwelt in Berlin and went to Baumeister in Munich in 1991. First as editor-in-chief, from 2011 to 2013 as publisher. In the meantime, he lectures, judges, moderates, discusses, writes reviews, glosses and short stories for newspapers, magazines and books.

selected publications:

Drinnen. 77 Beobachtungen zwischen Tür und Angel, Hagen, 2014.

Alles Geier! Eine Farce über Architektur, eine Zeitschrift und einen Verlag, Stuttgart, 2019.

Draußen, Leipzig/Weissenfels 2021.

Jerome Becker is a lecturer at the Faculty of Architecture and Spatial Planning at TU Wien. He studied architecture at TU Vienna and philosophy at the University of Vienna. He is co-founder and co-director of MAGAZIN - exhibition space for contemporary architecture since 2018; in 2019 he joined the editorial team of ADATO, an architecture magazine based in Luxembourg.

MAGAZIN

ADATO

Anna Beeke is a fine arts and documentary photographer and videographer. She has an MFA from the School of Visual Arts New York and a photojournalism degree from the International Center of Photography in New York. Her work has received multiple awards and has been exhibited across five continents and her first monograph, Sylvania, was published in 2015.

Website

Regina Bittner studied cultural studies and art history at the University of Leipzig and completed her PhD at the Institute for European Ethnology at Humboldt University. She is head of the academy and deputy director of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation and has been an honorary professor at the Institute of Art History and Archaeology at Martin Luther University in Halle since 2019. From 2021 to 2022, she was a visiting professor at the Institute of Cultural Studies at Leipzig University.

Her research interests combine cultural anthropological approaches in architecture and design studies with questions of decolonization, transcultural modernity, critical heritage and its mediation in teaching and curatorial practice. Bittner was, among other things, curatorial advisor to the Bauhaus Imaginista research and exhibition project 2017-2019, jury member of the Federal Cultural Foundation for the Bauhaus Today Fund 2017-2019, and member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Mies van der Rohe House Berlin since 2019.

Bauhaus Dessau

Joachim Brohm, born in 1955, is a visual artist/photographer who lives and works in Leipzig. His photographic works can be found in public collections such as the Pinakothek der Moderne Munich, the Museum Ludwig Cologne, the Museum Folkwang Essen, the San Francisco MoMa and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Brohm's photographic projects have been exhibited and published internationally. His self-publishing company BR-ED recently published the book editions LESSMORE - buildings, sites and scenes in reference to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (2023) and STONED - Das Steinhaus in Steindorf by Günther Domenig (2024).

Joachim Brohm

Andreea Mihaela Chircă is a PhD candidate at ”Ion Mincu” University of Architecture and Urban Planning Bucharest. Her research entitled "Architecture as Art of Space. Conceptualisation and Representation" has been developed in co-tutorship with Sapienza Università di Roma through two study residencies. She is exploring ways to build thoughts and projects in the threshold space between art and architecture, between history, theory and practice. Through poiesis of space, Andreea curates an imaginary/virtual gallery of (non-)architectural references meant to trigger a critical visual consciousness.

Poiesis of Space

Sylvia Claus , Dr. phil., art and architecture historian. Since 2019, she has been Professor of Art History at the Brandenburg University of Technology, where she established the new degree program in Building and Art History (B.A. and, from 2025, M.A.). Previously, she was head of the MAS program in History and Theory of Architecture at ETH Zurich. Art, architecture and urban planning in the GDR have been her focus since her work in the architecture collection of the Berlin Academy of Arts in the 1990s. Her other research interests include the land question, the arts and crafts reform movement (particularly with regard to the transfer of knowledge and ideas) and the links between urban planning, literature and art theory.

BTU - Fachgebiet Kunstgeschichte

BTU - Bau- und Kunstgeschichte

born in Lübeck in 1946, studied sociology and German studies, theatre history and philosophy. He completed his doctorate on a topic related to the sociology of architecture. After working on the editorial staff of Bauwelt since 1989, he served as editor-in-chief of Daidalos between 1994 and 2000. Since 2000, Gerrit Confurius has worked as a freelance author. Gerrit Confurius has published essays in various magazines such as Bauwelt, Daidalos, archithese, Werk und Zeit, Wespennest and many more. He lives and works in Berlin and Brazil.


selected book publications:

Sabbioneta – oder die schöne Kunst der Stadtgründung, Munich 1983.

Der Pinocchio-Effekt. Vom Eigensinn des Ich in einer verkehrten Welt, Vienna 2009.

Architektur und Geistesgeschichte, Bielefeld 2017.

born 1983 in Madrid, she is a visual artist and curator. With The Ruin as a Replica. The Protocontemporary moment she received her PhD in Fine Arts from the Universidade do Minho, Universidad de Comillas, Portugal. She combines her work as a professor (Universidade do Minho, Universidad de Comillas) with her artistic and curating practice.

Her work has been awarded several prizes and grants by institutions around the world. Her projects have been exhibited and presented in museums, galleries, and festivals. In the year 2020, she founded PRESENTE (Porto, Portugal), a perambulating art-window aimed at showcasing artists whose work reflects on the idea of the Protocontemporary.

Website

Salvatore Dellaria is an architectural historian. He is concerned with the interactions of modern and postmodern architecture with the racial capitalist state. His most recent research has addressed the presumed unanimity of modernist public housing and postwar Britain’s welfare state. Dellaria studied Urban and Public Affairs (B.A.) and Design Criticism (M.A.) at the University of Illinois, Chicago and History of Architecture and Urban Development at Cornell University, NY, where he also received his Ph.D. He has taught at Cornell University and since this year, he is Visiting Assistant Professor of Architectural History at the College of Charleston.

born in Cairo, historian and architect. She was Professor of Architectural History at the Department of Art History at the University of Geneva and researched the history of architectural heritage, vernacular architecture and Arab-Muslim architecture. Her books and numerous articles in academic journals include important works on the Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy. She is currently a member of the Swiss historicism network Historismus.ch, the Manazir network, a platform for the arts in the MENA region, and the scientific committee of the Art Deco Architecture in Cairo project. She is also secretary of the SOS Patrimoine CEG association, which she founded in 2017.

Fala is an architecture practice based in porto. Their architecture has been described as very Portuguese by foreigners, and as outlandish by locals; both views are probably right.

Website

Pedro Gadanho is an architect, curator and writer. A 2020 Loeb Fellow from Harvard University, Gadanho holds an MA in art and architecture, and is a PhD in architecture and mass media. From 2012 to 2016, he was the curator of contemporary architecture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Between 2015 and 2019, he was the founding Director of MAAT, the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, in Lisbon, where he initiated more than 50 exhibition projects, including shows and publications such as Utopia/Dystopia, Tension & Conflict, and Eco-Visionaries. After the Executive Direction of a bid for European Capital of Culture 2027 by a coalition of 17 cities in Portugal’s interior, he became a Guest Professor at the University of Beira Interior. He has edited the BEYOND bookazine, the ShrapnelContemporary blog, and contributes regularly to international publications.

Selected Publication:

Climax Change! How Architecture Must Transform in the Age of Ecological Emergency, New York / Barcelona 2022.

Arquitetura em Público, Porto 2011.

born in Munich in 1968, graduated from the Ludwigsburg Film Academy. Since 1999 he has been working as a freelance filmmaker, editor and media designer. In 2012, he founded the fictitious real estate company "Goldgrund" with Alex Rühle and Till Hofmann. This kicked off a long series of events, at the end of which is the Munich social cooperative "Bellevue di Monaco". Ganzer works for the latter in public relations and on media projects.

Bellevue di Monaco

born 1955, active in the fields of building culture, architecture, urban planning, architectural criticism/publicity, teaching and research, worked in various office partnerships, today Geissbühler Venschott Architekten - together with Gerlinde Venschott in Lucerne. Active in teaching and research, at the ETH Zurich at the chair of Prof. Flora Ruchat-Roncati (design and construction), at the chair of Prof. Dr. André Corboz (history of urban planning) and at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts in the Master in Architecture, focus architecture & material. Numerous articles in the daily press, in books and in specialist journals.

Publikationen:

Räumliches Denken, Die entwerferische Relevanz der Werkstoffe, Lucerne 2012.

Durchdringung als Bedingung, Lucerne 2020.

born 1967, lives and works in Zurich. He graduated as an architect from ETH Zurich in 1993 and has worked as a freelancer in various offices. He has published essays and reviews in international architecture journals; from 2009 to 2023 he was editor of Werk, Bauen + Wohnen. He teaches architectural criticism at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences in Winterthur, where he is also responsible for communication. He conducts research, gives lectures and works on book and exhibition projects.

Book publications:

Shinoharistics: An Essay About a House, Zurich 2020.

Pamela Karimi is an associate professor of history of art and architecture at Cornell University. Her expertise lies primarily in the art, architecture and visual culture of the modern and contemporary Middle East. She is the author of Domesticity and Consumer Culture in Iran: Interior Revolutions of the Modern Era (2013), Alternative Iran: Contemporary Art and Critical Spatial Practice (2022), and Women, Art, Freedom: Artists and Street Politics in Iran (2024).

Webiste

Bettina Köhler, (Prof. Dr. Phil.), lives and works as a author in Krefeld (GER) since 2019. She studied art history, classical archaeology and urban planning at the University of Bonn. Her dissertation, developed in Paris, is dedicated to the theory of the urban private house and was published in 1994. A research assistantship at the institute gta of the ETH Zurich was followed by an assistant professorship in the history and theory of architecture at the architecture department of the ETH from 1996 to 2003. From 2005 to 2019, she taught as professor of art and cultural history at the FHNW, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, Basel, and was responsible for seminars and lectures at the Institute of Fashion Design and the Master Studio Integrative Design.


selected publications:

"Architektur ist die Kunst, gut zu bauen". Charles Augustin D'AvilersCours d'architecture qui comprend les Ordres de Vignole, Zürich/Berlin 1997.

Die Stadt Paris und das Wohnhaus: zum "Bâtiment Particulier" in der französischen Architekturtheorie von 1600–1750, Weimar 1994.

"Nähe und Distanz", in: Du, Schweizer Zeitschrift für Kultur, Themenheft Stadtplanung Keine Siedlungen sondern Quartiere, 904, Dezember, 2020,S. 58-63.

"Warum man sagt, das Haus habe eine Haut", in: Solaris #03, Heftreihe vom Hochparterre für Solararchitektur, Juni 2019, S. 8-10.

"On the audacity of fashion in an age of globalization", in: Cultural Spaces and Design, Prospects of Design Education, Regine Halter, Catherine Walthard (EDS), Basel, Frankfurt a. M., 2019, S. 48-61.



Website

Claudia Kromrei is professor of architectural theory and architectural history at the University of Applied Sciences Bremen and lecturer at the Architekturwerkstatt St. Gallen, but lives in Berlin. She researches and writes on urban building typologies and the connection between thought, language and concrete building.

After studying architecture in Berlin and Zurich, she worked as an architect and research assistant. She received her PhD from the TU Berlin in 2009 on the type of urban tenement house and on the theoretical and practical work of architect Albert Gessner, taught in Potsdam and Hangzhou (China), was chair of the Deutscher Werkbund Berlin, and most recently published on buildings and thoughts of postmodernism.

selected publications:

Postmodern Berlin. Non-Residential Buildings of the 70s and 80s, Salenstein 2023.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light in: Verena Konrad (Hg.): Le Corbusier Ronchamp, Zurich 2022.

Transformational Public Space in: Transformational Buildings (www.transformational-buildings.de), Munich 2021.

Hans Grisebach. Ein Architekt und sein Werk, Salenstein 2020.

Postmodern Berlin. Residential Buildings of the 80s, Salenstein 2019.

Kein Dogma, nirgends in: Deutscher Werkbund Berlin (Hg.): Taut baut. Geschichten zur Architektur von Max Taut, Berlin 2017.

Albert Gessner. Das städtische Miethaus, Berlin 2012.

Bart Lootsma is a historian, theoretician, critic and curator in the fields of architecture, design and the visual arts. He was a Professor for Architectural Theory at the University of Innsbruck and Guest Professor at several other universities. Bart Lootsma published numerous articles and was an editor of different international magazines. Bart Lootsma has lectured all over the world. He curated among others ArchiLab 2004 in Orléans, the Montenegrin Pavillion at the 2016 Venice Biennale, and Radical Austria, Everything is Architecture for the Design Museum Den Bosch in 2021. He was a board member of the IBA 2022 New Social Housing in Vienna and of Europan Austria.

Publications (selection):

Media and Architecture, Hilversum/Berlage Institute, Amsterdam 1997

SuperDutch, Princeton Architectural Press, New York 2000

Reality Bytes, Basel 2016

Italian Collage, Siracusa 2020.

Website:

www.architekturtheorie.eu

Randa A. Mahmoud is an architect and urbanist whose academic path took her to France, where she completed her PhD at the IUP (Institut d'Urbanisme de Paris) at Paris-12 Val-de-Marne University. She is currently a professor of environmental planning at Ain Shams University in Cairo, alongside her role as a Senior Architect and Urban Planner at DAR. In 2013, she was nominated for the Agha Prize for Architecture, primarily for her work on the Beit Ãl Rawi housing project. She is the former head of the Architecture Department, and she is currently the coordinator of the dual diploma program at the French University of Egypt. Her contribution to academia and the field of architecture is highlighted by international and local publications focusing on areas such as urban and social resilience, vernacular architecture, gentrification, social integration and climate comfort.

Born 1962, married to a ceramicist, with a son who works as a visual artist and filmmaker. Social communicator and journalist. Consultant, lecturer and teacher, since 2010, in public management, integrated urban projects, habitat, culture and social participation, with short- and long-term posts in 145 cities in 18 countries. Teacher at the universities Tadeo Lozano (Bogotá, Master’s in cultural and audiovisual management and production) and INSPER (São Paulo, postgraduate course in social urbanism). Also guest teacher, each term, at the Complutense University (Madrid), FLACSO (Buenos Aires) and CLAEH (Montevideo). Lifelong links with social projects for the transformation of Medellín, from neighbourhood associations and NGOs right up to the public administration. Previously held posts as Head of Central Medellín (2004-05), Secretary of Civic Culture for Medellín (2005-09) and Secretary of Social Development for Medellín (2009-10). Author of articles published in thirty books, and coordinator of several books on habitat, social inclusion and culture for social transformation.

Jonathan Metzner is an academic assistant in the Department of Architectural Theory at BTU Cottbus - Senftenberg. He researches concepts of identity in the history of architecture and everyday life from the 1960s to the 1980s. After studying architecture in Dresden, Berlin and Cottbus, he worked in various planning offices for architecture and urban development. Since 2022 he has been doing his doctorate at the BTU Cottbus - Senftenberg on the left-wing alternative Heimat topos in the context of the IBA 84/87.

Matthias Moroder studied architecture (AA Dipl.) at the Architectural Association in London, art history (BA) and philosophy (BA) at the University of Vienna and history and theory of architecture (MAS) at the ETH Zurich. Since 2015 he works together with Sebastian Bietenhader as Büro Bietenhader Moroder (Zurich/Vienna). In 2018 he co-founded MAGAZIN, an independent exhibition space for architecture in Vienna. He is currently a PhD student at the department of art history of the University of Vienna doing a thesis on the architecture and architectural theory of Viennese architect Hermann Czech. Matthias Moroder has taught architecture history and theory at the University of Vienna.

MAGAZIN

Nadia Musumeci graduated in architecture from the University of Florence in 1997 with a thesis on public building in Florence at the beginning of the 20th century. In the same year, she began collaborating with the Fondazione Giovanni Michelucci on research into modern and contemporary architecture in Tuscany. She is the author of numerous scientific articles, essays and monographs and has curated exhibitions on the graphic and planning works of Giovanni Michelucci. Since 2015 he has been director of the archives of the Fondazione Giovanni Michelucci.

Giacomo Pala is an architect, designer, and scholar. He works as a research associate at the Institute of Architectural Theory at the faculty of Architecture at the University of Innsbruck, where he investigates the concept of syncretism theoretically and historically, as well as through teaching design workshops, projects and exhibitions. He has previously held workshops at various institutions, including Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok (2020), collaborated with various studios, and tested his hypotheses through projects, publications, book chapters, installations, and exhibitions in Vienna, Venice, Innsbruck, Vezprem, and elsewhere.

selected publications:

“A[-]Human Time”, in: Gabriella Galati, Alberto Giacomelli u.a. (Ed.), Scenari, Rivista di Filosofia Contemporanea, Nr .11, Milano 2019.

“Anthropocene, Architecture and Modernity”, in: Giovanni Aloi (Ed.), Antennae: the Journal of Nature in Visual Culture - Spaces and Species, Autumn 2021.

“Günther Domenig’s Rational Centre”, in: Isabelle Doucet and Janina Gosseye (Ed.), Activism at Home: Architects’ Own Dwelling as sites of Resistance, Leipzig 2021.

“Senses of Reality, or: Realism and Aesthetics, today?”, in: Elie Haddad (Ed.), the Contested Territory: Architectural Theories after 1960, London 2022.

Website

Moisés Puente studied at Barcelona. He was editor of Gustavo Gili publishing house (1998-2020), editor of the 2G (1999-2016, and its director since 2016. In 2016, he founded his own publishing house, Puente editores, which publishes essays on contemporary art and architecture. He is also an architectural writer, translator and curator. In 2010, he won the FAD Prize for Thought and Criticism for his editorial work, and in 2021, he received the Medal of the of Architects Association of Catalonia (COAC) for his career as an architectural editor. He is currently the director of the cultural department of the Architects Association of Catalonia.

Puentes editores

Mario Rinke is a professor at the University of Antwerp. He researches and teaches on structural engineering and construction aspects of architecture. Trained as a civil engineer and working in the field of architecture for many years, he is particularly interested in transformation processes of technical knowledge, materials and institutions. As a structural engineer, he worked for offices in London and Zurich. He received his PhD from ETH Zurich in 2013 and has been a lecturer at the Faculty of Architecture at ETH Zurich and at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, as well as a visiting professor at Tor Vergata University in Rome. He is a founding member of the International Association of Structures and Architecture (IASA).

selected publications and exhibitions

The Bones of Architecture, Lissabon 2019.

Before Steel, Sulgen 2010.

Holz: Stoff oder Form, Sulgen 2014.

Born and raised in Porto, Portugal. Editor of the podcast "Arquitetura Entre Vistas" since 2020. In addition to her architecture studies at FAUP, she spent the semester breaks in architecture studios (Camilo Rebelo 2019, fala atelier 2022), participated in architecture workshops such as Porto Academy (Johansen Skovsted studio, Salotto Buono studio), Atelier Aires Mateus Workshop (MArch Valencia), NEB Goes South (FAUP), Drawing Architecture (Corpo Atelier). She is involved in "Experiência do Desenho" (Open House Porto/Lisboa), she worked with Ana Aragão on the exhibition "No plan for Japan", which was shown in Lisbon and Japan.

Arquitetura Entre Vistas

born in Ireland in 2002, always tries to express his imagination in the form of words and pictures. Since his school days he has written fictional novels ranging from down-to-earth novels to epic science fiction dramas and made countless drawings to accompany them. Studying Architecture at University Limerick, he has been pursuing his love of writing and sketching daily since 2021. 

studied art history and monument conservation in Berlin and Rome, then worked at the TU Berlin, where she completed her doctorate in 2008. In her post-doctoral period, she taught at the Bauhaus University Weimar and researched the tourist heritage of the GDR as part of her habilitation. In 2019, she was appointed Professor of Building History and Monument Conservation at Anhalt University of Applied Sciences in Dessau. In 2023, she returned to Weimar to take up the professorship for monument preservation and architectural history at the Bauhaus University. In addition to the history of architecture and urban planning in the 20th century, she is interested in questions of monument theory.

Ausgewählte Publikationen:

Die Città Nuove des Agro Pontino im Rahmen der faschistischen Staatsarchitektur, Petersberg 2010.

Urlaubs(t)räume des Sozialismus. Zur Geschichte der Ferienarchitektur in der DDR, Berlin 2020.

Städtebau für Mussolini. Auf der Suche nach der neuen Stadt im faschistischen Italien (mit Harald Bodenschatz), Harald Bodenschatz (Hg.), Zweite, erweiterte Auflage Berlin 2022.

«Volkszorn und Denkmalstürze. Überlegungen im Kontext der Black-Lives-Matter-Bewegung im Jahr 2020», in: Denkmal_Emotion. Politisierung - Mobilisierung - Bindung. Veröffentlichungen des Arbeitskreises Theorie und Lehre der Denkmalpflege e.V., Bd. 30, Heidelberg 2021, S. 74-81.

«Sulle colonni e gli archi. Die Autarkie-Debatte und ihre Auswirkungen auf die Architektur im faschistischen Italien», in: kritische berichte, Jahrg. 51, Ausg. 2.2023, S. 16-27.

«Italy’s dealing with its fascist legacy», in: Victoria Grau / Max Welch Guerra (Hg.), Histories of Urban Planning and Political Power, New York 2024, S. 85-97.