Ringvorlesung Architectural Research 2023/24

Alexander Passer is Professor for Sustainable Construction at Graz University of Technology. Since 2011 he has headed the Sustainable Construction Working Group, which deals with topics of Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA), its application in the design process and the optimisation of the life cycle performance of buildings, taking into account systemic interactions. His research focuses on operationalising sustainability in construction, esp. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Life Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA), Multicriteria Decision Models (MCDM) and Building Information Modelling (BIM). Passer is an Austrian delegate in the committees of CEN/TC350 and CEN/TC 442 as well as other national and international technical committees. Since 2018 he has been chairman of the Sustainability Advisory Board of TU Graz. He has been on the board of the Climate Change Centre Austria (CCCA), the Climate Research Network Austria since 2018. In 2014, he was a visiting professor at the Chair of Sustainable Construction at ETH Zurich. He is also subject editor for the International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment in the area of construction materials and buildings.

Robert Jan van Pelt has been teaching at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture since 1987 and has held positions at many institutions of higher education worldwide, including the AA London, TU Vienna, University of Kassel, National University of Singapore, University of Virginia, Clark University, and MIT. He has published 13 books dealing with topics such as the cosmic speculations on the Temple of Solomon, relativism in architectural history, the history of Auschwitz, the history of the Holocaust, Jewish refugees, Holocaust denial, and his most recent work, An Atlas of Jewish Space, which coincided with the opening of a new synagogue at the Babyn Yar massacre site in Kyiv in 2021. Most recently, he has completed a book on the history of concentration camp barracks which will appear with Park Books. His forensic work on the crematoria of Auschwitz generated „The Evidence Room“, an installation, created in collaboration with Waterloo professors Anne Bordeleau and Donald McKay, first shown at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale. Van Pelt is the chief curator of the international traveling exhibtion „Auschwitz. Not Far Away. Not Long Ago“. He was also a member of the KPMBDaoust Lestage architectural team that won the competition for a new home for the Montreal Holocaust Museum.

Lisa Yamaguchi is an architect based in Munich where she runs the architectural office dreisterneplus together with Florian Hartmann, Oliver Noak and Andreas Müsseler. The office deals with the installation, renewal and replacement of individual urban building blocks up to urban development projects on all scale levels. After studying architecture at the University of Karlsruhe (KIT), she first worked at Janson + Wolfrum, Architecture and Urban Planning (2004-2006) and since 2006 at Meili, Peter München (now dreisterneplus). Since 2011 she has also been active in teaching at several Chairs at TU Munich, where she also held a visiting professorship in the winter semester of 2020/21. This was followed by a teaching position at the Munich University of Applied Sciences and another visiting professorship at the OTH Regensburg (2022). Since March 2023 she holds the professorship for Integral Architecture at TU Graz. The focus of her academic work is on design as an integral and dialectical method - eminently suitable as a sustainable model for solving the complex issues of our time. In her examination of design methods, she tries to closely link research with teaching and her own practice as an architect.

Ana Maria Durán Calisto is a designer, planner and scholar from Quito, Ecuador. In 2002, she co-founded Estudio A0 with her husband, British-Punjabi architect Jaskran Kalirai. Estudio A0 has designed a diverse array of multi-scalar projects in close collaboration with its clients and community partners. Estudio A0’s projects have been extensively published and their work has been featured in the 18th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale "The Laboratory of the Future" (2023). Durán Calisto has taught research seminars and design studios at the FADA of Universidad Católica del Ecuador, Harvard University’s GSD, Pratt Institute’s School of Architecture, Columbia University’s GSAPP, the University of Michigan Taubman College, the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia, the Architecture School of Universidad Católica de Temuco, and UCLA´s Institute for the Environment and Sustainability. In 2022, Durán Calisto received the Mark Cousins Theory Award for her work on extractivism and the built environment, and her interest in the principles of ancestral urban ecologies. She has co-edited the books Ecological Urbanism in Latin America (2019), Beyond Petropolis: Designing a Practical Utopia in Nueva Loja (2015), and IV Taller Internacional de Vivienda Popular (2007). She co-authored the Charter Toward re-entanglement: A Charter for the City and the Earth (Bauhaus Earth, 2022). Durán Calisto has lectured extensively and actively publishes in magazines such as Domus, Log, Mold, The Architectural Review, Harvard Design Magazine, Casabella, Arquine, Pangea, Manifest, Rivista Territorio, Ness, Revista Cardinalis, Rita, LatinArt Magazine, Revista 30-60, Revista Plot, Revista Radar, Trama, GAM, Aula, and Deco Journal. In 2010-2011, Durán Calisto received a Loeb Fellowship for her proposal to weave a South American network devoted to critically and creatively addressing the infrastructural integration of South America. She is a member of the Science Panel for the Amazon, convened by SDSN & the UN. She co-authored its report´s chapter on urbanization. In 2015, she was the academic advisor to the Ecuadorian Minister on Housing and Urban Development for the UN Conference Habitat III. She collaborates with CAF’s program on BiodiverCities, and with the IDB on its BioCities program for Brazil. She is a Ph.D. candidate in the urban planning department at UCLA. Under the advice of Susanna Hecht, she is writing a dissertation on the urban history of Amazonia, with a focus on indigenous systems of territorial planning and colonial disruptions.