EXPLAINING JUNKSPACE
(2011)
Dr. Silke Ötsch is currently working on a research project on the role of architects as intermediaries in financialization founded by the Austrian Research Found (FWF) at the Department of Sociology at the University of Innsbruck. She worked as scientific employee at the Institute of Construction and Design at the Innsbruck University, as lecturer at the Institute for Architecture Theory at the University of Innsbruck (Austria), in the architectural offices of Arets Architekten in Maastricht as well as Haid und Partner in Nürnberg and for Attac Germany. Silke Ötsch received her doctoral degree at the Bauhaus-University Weimar and studied architecture in Weimar and Paris. She published books in the field of architecture theory with the title “Stripping las Vegas” (with K. Jaschke) and “Überwältigen und Schmeicheln”, and articels in the review GAM and others, and published in the field of political economy, among others the book “Das Casino schließen” (together with T. Sauer and P. Wahl) on the financial crisis and “Räume der Offshore-Welt” (together with Celia Di Pauli), which is a publication on concrete spaces of tax havens and offshore centres in Europe and their implications. Her main research interest is globalization and financial architecture.
EXTRA-STATECRAFT
(2011)
Keller Easterling is an architect, urbanist, and writer. Her latest book, Enduring Innocence: Global Architecture and Its Political Masquerades (MIT, 2005), researches familiar spatial products that have landed in difficult or hyperbolic political situations around the world. Her previous book, Organization Space: Landscapes, Highways and Houses in America, applies network theory to a discussion of American infrastructure and development formats. A forthcoming book, Extrastatecraft, researches global infrastructure as a medium of polity. Ms. Easterling is also the author of Call It Home, a laser disc history of suburbia, and American Town Plans. She has recently completed two research installations on the Web: “Wildcards: A Game of Orgman” and “Highline: Plotting NYC.” Her work has been widely published in journals such as Grey Room, Volume, Cabinet, Assemblage, Log, Praxis, Harvard Design Magazine, Perspecta, Metalocus, and ANY. Her work is also included as chapters in numerous publications. She has lectured widely in the United States as well as internationally. Ms. Easterling’s work has been exhibited at the Queens Museum, the Architectural League, the Municipal Arts Society, and the Wexner Center. Easterling is a professor at Yale’s School of Architecture.
FORM’S FALLOW FUNCTION
(2011)
Douglas Graf received an A.B. in architecture and urban planning from Princeton and a M.Arch. from Harvard and currently teaches courses in design and architectural theory at the Knowlton School of Architecture at the Ohio State University. His teaching career has included the Kentucky, Washington, and Yale, as well as positions in Britain, Germany, and Finland, where he first went on a Fulbright to study the work of Alvar Aalto. He has received five teaching awards. His interest in design theory has a primary focus on formal analysis, which is applied not only to architecture but also to urban form, landscape, photography, painting, product design, and graphics. One of his signature investigations has been into the structure and use of diagrams as tools for ‘close reading.’ Many of his investigations have explored ‘metaphoric time’ as a central design strategy. He has written about the idea of the ‘encyclopedic set’ as a persistent means of modeling complexity and the use of ‘fictive landscapes’ to derive narratives for the city. He currently divides his time between Columbus (the one in Ohio) and London (not the one in Ohio), where he has been researching the design strategies in English gardens and the formal structure of the pre-industrial village. He is one of the principals in Mid-Ohio Design, a firm of architects and urban designers whose work elides from the real to the academic and who have won a number of urban design competitions.
FRAGEN ZU HANNES MEYER
(2011)
Otto Karl Werckmeister war, neben Forschungsaufträgen am Warburg Institute, London und dem Deutschen Archäologischen Institut, Professor für Kunstgeschichte an der UCLA und der Northwestern University in Evanstown/Illinois, sowie Gastprofessor an den Universitäten Marburg und Hamburg. Die Strategien von Künstlern des 20. Jahrhunderts auf dem Weg zum Ruhm hat er ebenso untersucht wie das Bildrepertoire frühmittelalterlicher Buchillustrationen oder der japanischen Manga-Comics. Walter Benjamins Forderung nach einer „Aktualität des Denkens“ hat ihm als Motto seiner Untersuchungen gedient. Zu seinen wichtigsten Veröffentlichungen gehören: Ende der Ästhetik (1971), Ideologie und Kunst bei Marx (1974), Versuche über Paul Klee (1981), The Making of Paul Klee‘s Career, 1914-1920 (1988), Zitadellenkultur. Die schöne Kunst des Untergangs in der Kultur der Achtziger Jahre (1989); Linke Ikonen: Benjamin, Eisenstein, Picasso - nach dem Fall des Kommunismus (1997), Der Medusa-Effekt - Politische Bildstrategien seit dem 11. September 2001 (2005).
GENERIC REALISM
(2011)
Bettina Schürkamp completed her diploma in architecture at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart in 1995 and attended the graduate course „Histories and Theories of Architecture“ at the Architectural Association in London. For more than five years she worked as a practising architect for architectural firms in England and Germany such as Bolles+Wilson, Münster and Peter Kulka, Köln. From 2001 until 2007 she held a research and teaching position at the Institute for History and Theory of Architecture at Wuppertal University. Currently she is completing her dissertation on the Dutch architectural firm OMA*AMO She writes as a freelance journalist for architectural magazines in Germany and Switzerland and has been publishing in magazines such as Archithese, Arch+, Bauwelt and Deutsche Bauzeitung.
GENUFLECTION AND EMPIRE
(2011)
Eymen Homsi has degrees in architecture from the Ohio State University and biology/botany from the University of Southern Colorado. He taught design and theory at the Ohio State University (1991–99), worked at the Atelier Jose Oubrerie (1991–1995), and was Director of Design at the Columbus Neighborhood Design Centre (1998–99), where he designed the Salvation Army Transitional Housing, Friends of the Homeless Dormitory, and other public projects. He established Studio Noni in Helsinki (2000–04) for experimental projects, speculative works, competitions. He was coordinator of Habitation Studio at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (2004–09). He returned to Istanbul in 2009 after an absence of thirty five years to teach studio at Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts (2009–10). Currently he teaches studio at Istanbul Technical University, and theory at Kültür University. His research concerns the relationship between rites of worship in Islam and the space of the mosque.
HOW CRITICAL IS CRITICALITY?
(2011)
Rixt Hoekstra is an architectural historian and a Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin at the Leopold Franzens University of Innsbruck, where she teaches theory and history of architecture. Hoekstra studied architectural history in Groningen, the Netherlands, and received her PhD in architectural history in 2005. Her publications include: Building versus Bildung, Manfredo Tafuri and the construction of a historical discipline (2005) and Lost in Translation? Tafuri on Germany, Tafuri in Germany, a history of reception (2008). Currently, her research interests focus on the status of criticality in architecture in relationship to the legacy of the Venice School and on genderstudies in architecture.
Studium der Architektur an der Technischen Universität Wien. Von 2001 bis 2002 Lehrbeauftragte am Institut für künstlerische Gestaltung der TU Wien. Im Zeitraum 1997-2002 Wettbewerbe, Planungen und Realisationen in den Architekturbüros „the unit“ und „ckp“, 2002-2007 „limit architects“, Wien. Seit 2008 querkraft architekten wien. Dissertationsprojekt seit 2004: Design Strategies: Case Study of Six Projects of Rem Koohaas/ OMA. Seit 2008 wissenschaftliche Assistentin am Institut für Architekturtheorie, Kunst- und Kulturwissenschaften der TU Graz. Forschungsschwerpunkte: Architekturtheorie, Gegenwartsarchitektur, Entwurfsmethoden, Architectural Research/Design Studies, Wahrnehmung und Architektur.
IST DAS BAUHAUS AKTUELL?
(2011)
Geboren 1922 in Buenos Aires, ist Tomás Maldonado heute Professor Emeritus für Umweltplanung am Politecnico in Mailand. Er studierte an der Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires. 1954 bis 1967 war er Dozent an der Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG) Ulm, 1955-1956 Prorektor, bis 1960 Rektor der HfG. 1965: Lethaby Lecturer am Royal College of Arts, London. 1966 wurde er zum Fellow des Council of Humanities an der University Princeton (USA) ernannt, von 1968 bis 1970 lehrte er an der School of Architecture dieser Universität. Die Society of Industrial Artists and Designers (GB) verleih ihm 1968 die „Design Medal“. Er war von 1967 bis 1969 Vorsitzender des Präsidiums des International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID). Von 1971 bis 1983 lehrte er zusätzlich an der Universität von Bologna. 1976 bis 1981 war er der Herausgeber der Zeitschrift Casabella in Mailand. 1979 Research Fellow an der Graduate School of Design der Harvard University. Ausgewählte Schriften erschienen 2007 unter dem Titel „Digitale Welt und Gestaltung“ in Zürich.
Hermann Czech studierte Architektur an der Technischen Hochschule und in der Meisterschule von Ernst Plischke an der Akademie der bildenden Künste in Wien. 1958 und 1959 war er Seminarteilnehmer bei Konrad Wachsmann an der Sommerakademie in Salzburg. An der Akademie für angewandte Kunst in Wien war er von 1974 bis 1980 Assistent bei Hans Hollein und Johannes Spalt, 1985/86 Gastprofessor an derselben Hochschule. 1988/89 und 1993/94 war er Gastprofessor an der Harvard University in Cambridge/USA, 2004-07 Gastprofessor an der ETH Zürich. Sein ungleichartiges architektonisches Werk umfasst Planungen, Wohn-, Schul- und Hotelbauten ebenso wie Interventionen in kleinem Maßstab und Ausstellungsgestaltungen. Seine Projekte haben starken Bezug zum Kontext und beinhalten bewusst die vorhandenen Widersprüche. Ab den 1970er Jahren (»Architektur ist Hintergrund«) wurde Hermann Czech zum Protagonisten einer neuen, »stillen« Architektur, die »nur spricht, wenn sie gefragt wird«. Er ist Autor zahlreicher kritischer und theoretischer Publikationen zur Architektur. In seiner Theorie spielen die Begriffe Umbau und Manierismus eine zentrale Rolle. Veröffentlichungen (Auswahl): ‚Zur Abwechslung. Ausgewählte Schriften zur Architektur. Wien‘, Wien 1996, ‚Das Looshaus‘, Wien 1976 (mit Wolfgang Mistelbauer), ‚Komfort – ein Gegenstand der Architekturtheorie?‘, in: werk,bauen+wohnen, Zürich, 3/2003, S. 10-15.