New professors for Univ.prof. Architectural Theory and Architectural Design as of 1.10.: Cornelia Escher und Lars Fischer

Cornelia Escher teaches the history and theory of architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts Düsseldorf since 2017. She holds a PhD from ETH Zurich (2014), where she was a research assistant from 2011 to 2013. From 2014 to 2017 she was a postdoctoral researcher in the research group Global Processes at the University of Konstanz.

Her research and publications focus on modern and contemporary architecture, the interrelation of architecture and the arts, the planetary and transcultural history of architecture, as well as architecture and sociology. Her publications include the book series “Negotiating Ungers I-III” (common books 2020-24, ed. with Lars Fischer), “Zukunft entwerfen (Designing the future)” (gta Verlag 2017), and “Atelier Bow-Wow. A Primer” (Walter Koenig, 2013, with Laurent Stalder and others). She has published articles in Arch+, Oase Journal, the Journal of Urban History and the Journal of Architecture, and others. She curated and co-curated exhibitions in museums and institutions such as CIVA Brussels, the FRAC Centre Val de Loire, Orléans, and ETH Zürich.

At the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, she will work cooperatively with Lars Fischer on a research and teaching project on postcolonial materiality in Vienna and (post-)colonial architectural ecologies in Cameroon. Other transnational research and teaching projects include „Negotiating Ungers“ in cooperation with Lars Fischer, KU Leuven, the Ungers Archives in Cologne and the Academy of Fine Arts Düsseldorf, and the research project „Figurations of ecologies in architecture“.

Lars Fischer is an architect and a founding member of common room, a socially engaged architectural practice concerned with the built environment, art and politics

Founded in 2006 common room is a collaborative platform consisting of architects, a graphic designer and an architectural historian. It is an architectural practice, a publishing imprint (common books) and an exhibition space in New York and Brussels. common room considers architecture not only as a form of object, but also as a mediating infrastructure. The practice understands the architectural project as a process of society, building and living in an ecologically, economically, socially and culturally sustainable way. common room works with cultural producers, institutions and users worldwide to create new forms of sociality in a variety of disciplines. Projects have included a redesign for the International Center of Photography, New York, an exhibition and pavilion for the Zuiderzee Museum in the Netherlands, and a co-housing, co-working project in Brussels.

Lars is faculty at KU Leuven, Faculty of Architecture, Campus Sint Lucas Brussel. Over the last two years he also worked at the Peter Behrens School of Arts in Düsseldorf. From 2007 to 2011 he taught design at the NYIT School of Architecture and Design in New York. He teaches architectural design with an emphasis on the mediation of an ecological architecture, as a spatial, material medium.

Research projects include “Negotiating Ungers”, which looks at a number of lesser-known projects by the German architect Oswald Mathias Ungers in the light of questions arising from today‘s global transformation processes. And most recently, “Postcolonial ecologies. Architectural materiality in Cameroon”, a project that analyses the long history of the building complex of the Université de Yaoundé I in the light of planetary questions of climate change and architecture. Both projects are done in collaboration with Cornelia Escher.

The publishing imprint common books has received two grants from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. Publications include the book series Negotiating Ungers I-III (common books 2020-24, ed. with Cornelia Escher) and Disquietude. Architecture and Energy in Portugal (common books 2022). Articles by common room and Lars Fischer have been published in numerous publications, such as Oase Journal, Volume, Perspecta, and Artforum.