Ringvorlesung Architectural Research

Despina Stratigakos, Ph.D., is a writer, historian, and professor at the University at Buffalo and internationally recognized scholar of diversity and equity in architecture. She is the author of four books that explore how power and ideology function in architecture, whether in the creation of domestic spaces or of world empires. Her most recent book, Hitler’s Northern Utopia: Building the New Order in Occupied Norway (Princeton, 2020), has been recognized with the Spiro Kostof Book Prize of the Society of Architectural Historians. In addition, she has published extensively on barriers to equity and diversity in the building professions, including stereotypical representations of architects in the media, lack of diversity among elite architecture prize winners, and the absence of female architects and architects of color in films. An engaged scholar, Stratigakos participated on Buffalo’s municipal Diversity in Architecture taskforce and was a founding member of the Buffalo Public School’s Architecture and Design Academy.

Itohan Osayimwese is Director of Graduate Studies and Associate Professor of the History of Art and Architecture and Urban Studies at Brown University. Her research engages with theories of modernity, postcolonialism, and globalization to analyze built environments in nineteenth and twentieth-century West Africa, the Anglo-Caribbean, and Germany. She is author of Colonialism and Modern Architecture in Germany (Pittsburgh, 2017), and editor of German Colonialism in Africa and its Legacies: Architecture, Art, Urbanism, and Visual Culture (Bloomsbury, 2023). Osayimwese’s work has also been published in the Journal of Architecture, Journal of Architectural Education, Architectural Theory Review, Traditional Dwelling and Settlements Review, Perspecta, Thresholds, African Art, and ABE Journal. Her research has been funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation, Canadian Center for Architecture, Gerda Henkel Foundation, German Academic Exchange Service, Graham Foundation for the Fine Arts, Social Sciences Research Council, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Most recently, Osayimwese was awarded the 2020 Schelling Foundation Prize for Architectural Theory. She has served on the Board of Directors of the Society of Architectural Historians, is currently a board member of the European Architectural History Network and Thresholds, and is co-chair of the Minority Scholars Affiliate Group of the Society of Architectural Historians. Her current research explores migration, property, and emancipation in the Anglo-Caribbean, and the problem of translation in the historiography of African architecture.

Julian Müller is Deputy Professor at the Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy at the University of Marburg. After studying sociology and philosophy, he worked, among other places, at the University of Munich, the University of Lucerne and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities. In the summer semester of 2022, he was a Visiting Professor at TU Graz, where he gave courses on urban and architectural ethnography. Beyond that, Julian was editor of the renowned sociological journal “Soziale Welt”, he is currently leading a research project on new forms of political communication, and together with Matthias Castorph he founded the “Institut für Allgemeinarchitektur”, based in Munich, which gives them the opportunity to investigate urban banality, ordinary architecture and everyday situations.

Sebastian Gießmann is Reader in Media Theory at the University of Siegen. He is principal investigator of the research project “Digital Network Technologies between Specialization and Generalization” within the DFG-funded CRC Media of Cooperation. Throughout his works, Gießmann intertwines practice theory, cultural techniques, STS and histories of (digital) media. Recent publications include a translation of Susan Leigh Star into German – Grenzobjekte und Medienforschung, – an edited volume on Materiality of Cooperation, and a forthcoming translation of Connectivity of Things: Network Cultures Since 1832. His next new book is called Das Kreditkartenbuch: Geschichte und Theorie des digitalen Bezahlens.

Matthias Castorph is an architect and urban planner. He studied architecture at the Technical University of Munich with Friedrich Kurrent and Uwe Kiessler. He was an assistant to Andreas Hild and received his PhD from the University of Kaiserslautern in 1999. After his junior professorship at the TU Kaiserslautern (2002-2008), he taught as a visiting professor at the TU München and as an adjunct professor at the TU Kaiserslautern, where he represented the teaching and research area „Stadtbaukunst“. He was appointed university professor in 2020. In 2021 he became head of the Institute of Design in Existing Structures and Architectural Heritage Protection at TU Graz. His teaching, research and publication activities focus on the urban planning works and writings of Karl Henrici, Cornelius Gurlitt and Theodor Fischer. Together with his partners Felicia Lehmann and Haiko Tabillion he co-founded the architecture practice "Lehmann, Tabillion & Castorph Architektur Stadtplanung Gesellschaft mbH" in Munich (until 12/2021: Goetz Castorph Architekten und Stadtplaner GmbH). Together with his team, Matthias Castorph is involved in urban planning, development consulting for municipalities, the design and realisation of new buildings (with a focus on residential and office buildings), buildings in existing structures and renovations in accordance with the heritage protection. www.ltundc.de

Sabine von Fischer is an architectural historian, architect, and writer, and until recently was the editor for architecture and design at Neue Zürcher Zeitung. She is the author of numerous award-winning essays and books, most recently "Das akustische Argument. Wissenschaft und Hörerfahrung in der Architektur des 20. Jahrhunderts“ (gta Verlag, 2019). She taught internationally, e.g. as lecturer at the ETH Zürich, and participated in transdisciplinary research projects in Lausanne, Berlin, New York and Montréal.

Isabelle Doucet is Professor of Theory and History of Architecture at the Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering at Chalmers University of Technology. Her research focuses on the relationship between architecture, (urban) politics, and social/environmental responsibility, which she examines through both conceptual-methodological inquiries and historical and contemporary cases. Ongoing research focuses on women in architecture after 1968. She is the author of The Practice Turn in Architecture. Brussels after 1968 (2015). Recent editorial projects include the edited volume Activism at Home. Architects Dwelling between Politics, Aesthetics, and Resistance, coedited with Janina Gosseye (2021), and the thematic issue “Resist Reclaim Speculate: Situated Perspectives on Architecture and the City”, coedited with Hélène Frichot, in Architectural Theory Review (2018). Isabelle is a member of the steering committee of the Architecture Humanities Research Association (AHRA), an advisory board member of the journal Dimensions. Journal of Architectural Knowledge, and scientific committee member of the journal CLARA Architecture/Recherche.