Architecture Theory
The processes that shape large-scale built environments require critical analysis. Read through their social impact, bureaucratic and (proto-)digital design processes are understood in a multi-layered and intersectional way. This includes the critical examination of technophilic rhetoric of efficiency, rationalization, precision or function as well as the widening of actor circles or the consideration of consequences of architectural action. The urgent questions of our discipline concerning sustainability (also beyond technicist belief in progress) or diversity (as a real change of perspective, scientifically as well as in practice) are in the foreground. The questions that concern us are therefore the following: who produces which architectures with what (social, political or aesthetic) intention? At whose expense are they produced? Who and what is included or excluded? Which societal images are constructed, and what architectures are projected by societies? In teaching and research, we deepen selected questions methodologically and thematically, always closely linked to reading and writing practices through iterative text production and by approaching multi-perspective bibliographies and formats. Architectures, or better, spatial practices, shape environments in the midst of communities and societies. The responsibility this entails makes informed critical historical and theoretical engagement urgent.
Prof. Dr. Anna-Maria Meister, 2023
The date is fixed! The conference Architecture_Computing, organized by Joshua Silver and Maryia Rusak, will take place from 7-8 September 2026 in person at Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT).
All architectural workers know it. That feeling you get behind your eyes after staring at Revit or Rhino for too long. Working overtime with computer fans raging against the digital entities you manipulate, themselves shadows of the information shared on some shadowy server. Emails whizz back and forth, networking the whole globe into the ecology of architectural production as building materials and digital commodities circulate from “sacrifice zones” to architectural offices, consultant workspaces and construction sites. This moment of intensified global digitalisation offers an opportunity to re-evaluate and reflect on architecture’s encounters with, and imbrications in, digital technologies.
MA and BA students! Need help figuring out your essays or final projects? Come by our THEORY CLINIC, June 23th, from 3:30 - 5:30 pm, in room 258 (Seminar room Architecture Theory), and we will help you get back into the flow of things!
Four times per semester we offer our "theory clinic": stop by without an appointment to discuss your design process and where it hurts. We offer references, comments and feedback for the neuralgic points in open table critiques - completely unbiased. Just show up, walk-ins are welcome!
A Transdisciplinary Workshop organized by Hana Gründler and Alejandro Nodarse Jammal, Research Group Ethico-Aesthetics of the Visual, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut from 11.-12. June 2026.
Across two days, fourteen speakers approach care and solace as historically contingent and politically fraught. Resisting purely affirmational or presentist accounts, they draw attention to the structures that mediate care: systems of governance and surveillance, regimes of labor and institutionalization, and the shaping of identity along gendered and racialized lines. Together, the speakers offer alternative genealogies of care and solace—and consider their critical futures.
As part of the conference, Dr. Virginia Marano will present a paper with Rosemarie Garland-Thomson on “From Orphanage to Museum: An Account of Adaptive Reuse at the Museo degli Innocenti”.
MA and BA students! Need help figuring out your essays or final projects? Come by our THEORY CLINIC, June 10th, from 1 - 3 pm, in room 258 (Seminar room Architecture Theory), and we will help you get back into the flow of things!
Four times per semester we offer our "theory clinic": stop by without an appointment to discuss your design process and where it hurts. We offer references, comments and feedback for the neuralgic points in open table critiques - completely unbiased. Just show up, walk-ins are welcome!
The Society for the Study of Pregnancy and Birth (SSPRB) is excited to present its 2026 Virtual Symposium Program. This symposium brings together an international community of scholars across many fields, including the arts and architecture, humanities, midwifery studies, psychology, and the social sciences. Submittors included scholars across a wide range of fields, as well as artists and practitioners.
As part of the conference, Dr. Virginia Marano will present a Keynote on “Touch, Autonomy, and the Non-Visual Aesthetics of Pregnancy”.
How do we want to live together? Come by to try out games and to drink lemonade. At the end of the seminar week "Wohnen durchgespielt", participatory games about communal living will be tested - developed by students of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in cooperation with Prof. Dr. i.V. Sabine Hansmann at the Department of Architectural Theory and the collective vonwegenleer.
An event as part of the Hamburg Architecture Summer 2026.
29 May 2026, 3 pm, on the 6th floor at Sonninstraße 28, 20097 Hamburg.
All architectural workers know it. That feeling you get behind your eyes after staring at Revit or Rhino for too long. Working overtime with computer fans raging against the digital entities you manipulate, themselves shadows of the information shared on some shadowy server. Emails whizz back and forth, networking the whole globe into the ecology of architectural production as building materials and digital commodities circulate from “sacrifice zones” to architectural offices, consultant workspaces and construction sites. This moment of intensified global digitalisation offers an opportunity to re-evaluate and reflect on architecture’s encounters with, and imbrications in, digital technologies.
Format:
The conference will take place at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Karlsruhe, Germany early September. It is planned as a 1.5 day, single-stream in person event, structured around three thematic blocks (morning and afternoon), each combining short paper presentations with discussion.
Submissions:
Please submit an abstract of 300 words, along with one image and a short biographical note (100 words) as a single pdf, to joshua.silver@kit.edu by May 31, 2026. Acceptance notifications will be sent by early June. The conference is planned for early September.
We will work towards developing these papers toward a publication.
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MA and BA students! Need help figuring out your essays or final projects? Come by our THEORY CLINIC, May 5th, from 2 - 4 pm, in room 240 (Seminar room Baukonstruktion und Entwerfen, Konstruieren und Entwerfen), and we will help you get back into the flow of things!
Four times per semester we offer our "theory clinic": stop by without an appointment to discuss your design process and where it hurts. We offer references, comments and feedback for the neuralgic points in open table critiques - completely unbiased. Just show up, walk-ins are welcome!
We are delighted to announce that YIG Prep Pro Junior Research Fellow Dr. Virginia Marano has been awarded the 2026 Scott Opler Emerging Scholar Fellowship! In her work, she takes a critical look at contemporary art from the perspective of disability studies and the history of architecture and design. In doing so, she aims to raise the visibility of these topics in research and teaching.
Created in 2002 by a gift from the Scott Opler Foundation, the award honors the memory of the late historian of Renaissance art and architecture. Fellowships of up to $1,000 each support emerging scholars whose papers have been accepted for delivery at the SAH Annual International Conference. Although not restricted by subject area, applicants must be an emerging scholar, a person who, regardless of age, is within five years of having received a terminal degree (PhD) in architectural history or a related discipline.
On 24 April 2026, Hannah Knoop successfully defended her doctoral thesis at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology! Her thesis was supervised by Prof. Dr Georg Vrachliotis and Prof. Dr Anna-Maria Meister and explores the question: How do human rights become space?
In December 1982, the UNHCR published a small blue book of 200 pages with 14 sketches — and created one of the most influential documents in humanitarian emergency relief to date. This dissertation examines the first edition of the UNHCR Handbook for Emergencies as a turning point: from context-specific, often ad-hoc organised emergency architecture towards an increasingly institutionalised, globally operating apparatus. At its centre stands the Paradox of Standardisation — for the handbook paradoxically established the very professional standardisation it simultaneously sought to avoid, while explicitly calling for local, context-specific solutions and to "involve the refugees, whose home it will be."
With her contribution, “(Re)-Evaluating Artistic Norms and Temporalities: Feminist Perspectives in Contemporary Art”, Dr Virginia Marano is one of the 17 authors who make up the book "Re-Evaluations in Feminism and Contemporary Art" published in January 2026.
"It could be said all new research contains a “re-evaluation” of past work but these two volumes attempt a re-evaluation of feminist research in contemporary art as it has developed over the last 50 years in relation to different local/global dynamics and/or about certain artists, artworks or exhibitions. Feminism(s) aim was to interrogate existing histories and provide significant corrections to what constitutes “history”. The two volumes explore some of the ways feminism(s)’ challenges have changed museums’ curatorial practices, critical writing and art history and how feminism itself has been transformed over time and its presence in many locations. Feminism’s absence from the stories told today about the recent past and present of contemporary art represents a starting point for these essays to explore the different strategies that have been attempted in cultural and political terms and to offer fresh assessments..."
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There are currently about 882,000 square meters of empty office space in Hamburg. If this space were converted to the average living space per person (38.7 square meters), it could create housing for around 22,800 people. This simple idea was the starting point for the Pop-up Wohnen project, which addresses the paradox that large areas of office space remain unused while the shortage of affordable housing worsens.
Together with the collective vonwegenleer and students from HCU Hamburg, substitute professor Sabine Hansmann established a real-world laboratory right in the heart of Hamburg last year. As part of the accompanying design course, photographs by Arman Jeddi and housing ethnographies by the participating students who temporarily inhabited the empty office space were created. This feature describes the implementation of the project and highlights the paradoxical juxtaposition of housing shortages and empty office space.
Guest editors: Leona Erdmann, Juli Sottorf, Emma Stiehle (vonwegenleer), V.-Prof. Dr.-Ing. Sabine Hansmann (Professorship Architecture Theory, KIT Karlsruhe)
