Michael Speaks ist Dekan an der Universität des Kentuck Collge of Design und ehemaliger Gründungsvorstand des Metropolitan Research and Design Postgraduate Program der Sci-Arc in Los Angeles. Er leitet ebenfalls Big Soft Orange, eine niederländisch-amerikanische Stadtforschungsgruppe mit Standorten in Rotterdam und Los Angeles. Er war Herausgeber und Gründer des Kulturjournals Polygraph, sowie Mitherausgeber von Architecture New York und a+u (Tokyo), und arbeitet derzeit als beitragender Herausgeber für das Architecutral Record. Als Lehrer, Forscher und Herausgeber hat Speaks in zahlreichen Institutionen innerhalb der Vereinigten Staaten wie auch im Ausland mitgewirkt, darunter die Technischen Universität Delft, die Yale School of Arts, die Harvard University, die Columbia University, die University of Michigan, das Berlage Institut in Rotterdam und die University of California, Los Angeles. Außerhalb des Hörsaals hat der in Los Angeles lebende Schriftsteller und Kritiker sich in Vorträgen und Veröffentlichungen zur Kunst, Architektur, der Stadt- und Szenarienplanung geäußert. In jüngeren Diskussionen um die Rolle von Innovation und Prototypenentwicklung für das Design nimmt er eine zentrale Position ein und hat eine vielzahl einflussreicher Aufsätze geschrieben, welche auf die Bedeutung dessen verweisen, was er eine „Design Intelligence“ nennt.
Richard Shusterman received a B.A. and M.A. in Philosophy from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and completed his doctoral studies in Philosophy at Oxford University. In Israel he taught at the Hebrew University and the University of the Negev, and then moved to the United States, where he was Professor of Philosophy at Temple University, and chaired its department from 1998-2004. He then was awarded the Dorothy F. Schmidt Eminent Scholar Chair in the Humanities at Florida Atlantic University, where he also directs the Center for Body, Mind, and Culture. His authored books include Surface and Depth (2002); Performing Live (2000); Practicing Philosophy: Pragmatism and the Philosophical Life (1997); Sous l’interprétation (1994), Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art (1992, 2nd edition 2000); T.S. Eliot and the Philosophy of Criticism (1988); and The Object of Criticism (1984). His most recent book, Body Consciousness: A Philosophy of Mindfulness and Somaesthetics was published by Cambridge University Press. It provides the most detailed formulation of his project of somaesthetics.
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.
Lara Schrijver is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Architecture of the TU Delft. She is one of three program leaders for a new research program in the department of architecture, ‘The Architectural Project and its Foundations’. Schrijver holds degrees in architecture from Princeton University and the TU Delft. She received her Ph.D. from the TU Eindhoven in 2005. Schrijver has taught design and theory courses, and contributed to conferences in the Netherlands as well as abroad. She was an editor for OASE, journal for architecture, for ten years, and was co-organizer of the 2006 conference ‘The Projective Landscape’. Her current work revolves around the role of architecture in the city, and its responsibility in defining the public domain. Her first book, Radical Games, on the influence of the 1960s on contemporary discourse, is forthcoming in the spring of 2009.