People

Tom Avermaete

Professor
tom.avermaete@gta.arch.ethz.ch

After his architecture studies in Belgium and Denmark, Tom Avermaete (b.1971, Antwerp) obtained an MSc degree and a PhD in the history and theory of architecture at the University of Leuven, Belgium. Avermaete was lecturer in the history of architecture at the University of Copenhagen (1997), leader of the Centre for Flemish Architectural Archives at the Flemish Architecture Institute (2003), as well as associate professor (2006) and full professor of architecture (2012) at Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands.

Tom Avermaete has held several visiting professorships, amongst others at the Politecnico di Milano, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Tokyo Institute of Technology and the University of Copenhagen. He is on the editorial board of the “OASE Journal for Architecture”, and previously of the “Journal of Architectural Education” (JAE, until 2015) and of the “Architecture in the Netherlands Yearbook” (2012-2016).

Avermaete is a member of the advisory board of the “Architectural Theory Review” and “Docomomo Journal”, and a co-editor of the series “Bloomsbury Studies in Modern Architecture” (with Janina Gosseye, Bloomsbury Academic). He is a member of the scientific board of the Jaap Bakema Centre (HNI, Rotterdam), the programme committee of the Berlage Centre for Advanced Studies in Architecture and Urban Design, and of the Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC).

Courses

A Global History of Urban Design I
A Global History of Urban Design II

Research

The Work of Michel Ecochard

Lahbib El Moumni

Doctoral candidate
elmoumni@gta.arch.ethz.ch

Lahbib El Moumni graduated in 2014 from the school of architecture in Casablanca (EAC), he then worked at OMA-Rem Koolhaas before getting back to his hometown to open his practice and teach at EAC. His interest in Modern Moroccan architecture started when he co-founded MAMMA (Mémoire des Architectes Moderns Marocains) in 2016, an association that highlights the modern heritage of Morocco between 1950 and 1980. He joined the Institute for History and Theory of Architecture at ETH Zurich in 2022 to start his research project on the postcolonial urban design of Africa between 1956 and 1975.

Publications:

El Moumni, Lahbib and Dahmani, Imad. Modern Casablanca Map, Postcolonial Architecture 1947-1980. MAMMA, 2019.

Research contributions:

Cecilia, Martinelli, Eliana, Mossa, Emilo, Heritage of Modern Architecture in Morocco. Quaderni 1 MINING CITIES. Fumagalli, 2020, pp. 41-46

El Moumni, Lahbib. “Brazil & Morocco – Déjà vu”, Dia a Dia magazine at 12a Bienal Internacional de Arquitetura de São Paulo, vol. 6, 2019.

Sara Frikech

Doctoral candidate
frikech@arch.ethz.ch

Sara Frikech studied architecture at TU Delft and has practised as an architect at Shift A+U (Rotterdam) and at Korth Tielens (Amsterdam). She has shown her independent work at Le 18 (Marrakech), Salone del Mobile (Milan) and 2016 Marrakech Biennale. Her academic and artistic work has been supported by the Creative Industries Fund NL and a research fellowship from Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam. Her writing has been published in San Rocco Magazine and Trialog Journal. Currently, she is a doctoral fellow at the Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies (LUS), ETH Zurich. Her dissertation focuses on hydraulic infrastructures implemented in the city and hinterland of Meknes during the French protectorate (1912-1956).

Research

Doctoral project: Tamed Waters Ordering the City and Hinterland of Meknes, 1912–1956

Angela Gigliotti

Academic guest
gigliotti@arch.ethz.ch

Angela Gigliotti (1986) graduated in Building Architecture at the Polytechnic University of Milan (B.Sc., M.Sc.), and, within a double degree program (Alta Scuola Politecnica; 2011), at the Polytechnic University of Turin (M.Sc.). She studied learning processes’ anthropology, pedagogy and psychology at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan, Italy (Pg.Cer.). Her Ph.D. thesis in Architecture (Aarhus School of Architecture; 2016-19), “The Labourification of Work: the contemporary modes of architectural production under the Danish Welfare State”, reconstructs the evolution of Danish architectural professionalism, exploring over several centuries the concepts of “labour” and “work” as approached in political theory.

She has served as educator/researcher at Polytechnic University of Milan (2010-13); NMBU University in Ås (Fall 2014; 2015); DIS Copenhagen (s. 2016); Architectural Association – School of Architecture in London (Spring 2018); MIUR – Italian Ministry of Education (Fall 2020; Spring 2021). She is author of chapters, articles and papers presented in various contexts. Recently, she co-edited the book “Utzonia: From/To Denmark with Love” (Trento: LIStLab Publisher 2020). She co-founded the research-based architectural practice OFFICE U67 ApS based in Aarhus, Denmark (s. 2013).

Currently, she is the HM Queen Margrethe II’s Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow awarded by Carlsberg Foundation (2021-23) at Det Danske Institut in Rome, Italy. Her PostDoc project “Unheard workers: behind a foreign diplomatic architecture of the 1960s in Rome” is affiliated with the ETH Zürich / gta – Chair of the History and Theory of Urban Design Professor Dr. Tom Avermaete and at the Arkitektskolen Aarhus, Denmark.

Research

Unheard Workers

Selected Publications

Gigliotti, Angela, Fabio Gigone and Ludovico Centis. 2024. “A Dive in the Nordic Green: Foresturbia: a manual for a landscaped city” in Kousidi Stamatina (ed.) FOREST—ARCHITECTURE. In Search of the (Post)Modern Wilderness. 180-199. Milano: Mimesis Edizioni. DOI:10.7413/1234-1234027

Gigliotti, Angela. 2023.”Ceci N’est Pas Béton Armé: Unveiling the Backbone Behind the Bricks at Det Danske Institut in Rome” In Milocco Borlini, Mickeal, Andrea Califano, Anna Riciputo (eds.) Urban Corporis – To the bones. 94-103. Conegliano: Anteferma.

Gigliotti, Angela and Fabio Gigone. 2023. ‘The Commodification of the Danish Architectural Practice.’ In Building Diversity (eds.) who is the architect?. 98-107. Copenhagen: Danish Architectural Press.

Gigliotti, Angela. 2022. ‘Being Friis and Moltke: the construction of a golden narrative.’ In Hans Ibelings and Boris Brorman Jensen. Provocations against perfectionism: The Architecture of Friis and Moltke: 1950-1980, pp. 211-220. Amsterdam/Montreal: The Architecture Observer.

Gigliotti, Angela and Fabio Gigone. 2021. ‘A return ticket to academia.’ In Drawings, edited by Alberto Calderoni, Carlo Gandolfi and Jacopo Leveratto. STOÀ: Strumenti per l’insegnamento della progettazione architettonica, Year I, Volume 2, pp. 76-91. Napoli: Thymos Books

Gigliotti, Angela. 2021. ‘The end of montagecirkulære: how the American dream “saved” Danish architectural profession.’ In The Global City: the urban condition as a pervasive phenomenon, edited by Marco Petrelli, Rosa Tamborino and Ines Tolic, Insights, Volume D, pp. 193-204. Torino: AISU International, Politecnico di Torino, DIST (Dipartimento Interateneo di Scienze, Progetto e Politiche del Territorio).

Gigliotti, Angela and Troels Rugbjerg. 2020. ‘Utzonia: To/From Denmark with Love’ Trento: ListLab.

Gigliotti, Angela. 2020. ‘The Labourification of Work: The Contemporary Modes of Architectural Production under the Danish Welfare State.’ PhD Dissertation. Arkitektskolen Aarhus.

Gigliotti, Angela. 2020. The rise and the shortage of Danish-trained architects under Neo-Liberal Welfare State, AMPS Proceedings Journal Series, Volume 17, Issue 2, pp. 216-225.

Gigliotti, Angela. 2020. “Grounded Theory as method; Exhibition Design as mean” in Claus Peder Pedersen. CA2RE Aarhus, pp. 146-157. Aarhus: Arkitektskolens Forlag.

Gigliotti, Angela. 2020. Sweden as a knowledge exporter: the urgency of architectural efficiency under the Cold War in Christina Pech and Mikael Andersson. ArkDes Atlas, pp. 134-147. Stockholm: Arkdes Publisher.

Gigliotti, Angela. 2019. “Something is rotten in the State of Denmark” in Normal edited by Nicholas Korody and Joanna Kloppenburg, ED, Volume 3, pp. 57-61. Pasadena: Archinect.

Gigliotti, Angela. 2018. “Behind the scenes of the contemporary modes of architectural production” In Charlotte Bundgaard and Claus Peder Pedersen FORSK!, pp.30-31. Aarhus: Arkitektskolens Forlag.

Gigliotti, Angela. 2018. ‘The architectural practices and the Danish Welfare State: a changing open relationship’ in Walter Unterrainer ‘Emerging Architectures / The Changing Shape of Architectural Practices’, pp. 74-81. Aarhus: Arkitektskolens Forlag.

Sanna Kattenbeck

Doctoral candidate
sanna.kattenbeck@gta.arch.ethz.ch

Sanna Kattenbeck pursued her architectural studies at the Brandenburg University of Technology and as a Jasso scholarship recipient in the Prof. Momoyo Kaijima Studio (atelier bow-wow) at the Institute of Art and Design, University of Tsukuba in Japan. Following her MSc degree, she gained professional experience by working in architectural offices in Lucerne and Zurich. In the autumn of 2021, she graduated with a second master’s degree (Master of Advanced Studies, MAS) from the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta) at ETH Zurich. In the framework of the MAS ETH gta program, she contributed to the exhibition project “Cooperative Conditions. A Primer on Architecture, Finance and Regulation in Zurich” for the Venice Architecture Biennale 2021 and was actively engaged in teaching activities for the MAS program as a research assistant. The book on the research project was recently published by gta Verlag.

Starting in October 2021, Sanna commenced her doctorate at the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta) at ETH Zurich, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Tom Avermeate as part of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF)-funded project “Codes and Conventions for Future Zurich”. Her doctoral thesis titled “City of Codes. A Historical Analysis of Urban Codes and Urban Form in the Production of the City of Zurich, 1831–1946” examines the intricate relations between urban codes and urban form that have shaped the urban development of Zurich from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. Apart from her participation in specialized conferences, symposia, and the publication of academic articles, Sanna has contributed to teaching at ETH since the autumn semester of 2021. She recently applied her research expertise to a seminar titled “Uncovering the ‘Hidden Project’ of Zurich”.

Teaching

HS23. “Uncovering the ‘Hidden Project’ of Zurich”.

Publications

Kattenbeck, Sanna. “Female Reformers.” Conference Proceedings. Listening In: Conversations on Architectures, Cities and Landscapes. ETH Zurich, Departement of Architecture. 2023.

Kattenbeck, Sanna. “Urban Codes as Vehicle for Urban (Re)-Structuring.” Conference Proceedings. Symposium of Urban Design History and Theory. TU Delft/ETH Zürich. 2023.

Kattenbeck, Sanna. “City of Codes.” NSL-Newsletter, no. 60, Resilient Urban Systems (2023).

Nicole de Lalouvière

Lecturer     lalouviere@arch.ethz.ch

Nicole de Lalouvière holds a liberal arts degree with concentrations in architectural history and geology from Colgate University (Hamilton, New York). In 2014, she graduated with a Master of Architecture from the University of British Columbia (Vancouver), where she received the thesis prize for her research and design work on possible futures for Diego Garcia (British Indian Ocean Territory). She has spent time studying art history in London and architecture at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. She has practiced as an architect and landscape architect at MAD Architects (Beijing), PUBLIC (Vancouver), Hapa Collaborative (Vancouver), Vogt Landschaftsarchitekten (Zurich), and Baumschlager Eberle Architekten (Zurich). She is now doctoral fellow at the Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies (LUS), ETH Zurich. Her doctoral research is an investigation into the landscape and material history of the irrigation commons of Canton Valais, Switzerland.

Research
Irrigation Systems of Canton Valais: Transformations in Material Culture and the Resilience of Landscape Commons
Viral Balcony

Selected Publications

“Urban Landscape Transformations and the Malaria Control Scheme in Mauritius, 1948– 51.” Epidemic Urbanism: Contagious Diseases in Global Cities, edited by Mohammad Gharipour and Caitlin DeClercq, 2021, pp. 312–20.
https://www.intellectbooks.com/epidemic-urbanism

“Conceptualising ‘Cultural Landscape Commons’: Retracing Ecological Thinking from the Swiss Alpine Landscape to Social-Ecological Systems.” Journal of Alpine Research | Revue de géographie alpine, no. 109–1 (April 3, 2021).
https://doi.org/10.4000/rga.8414

“The Irrigation Systems of Valais: A Landscape Shaped by Care Work (Exhibition Display).” Zurich: Zurich Architektur Zentrum, 2021.

“The Five Wounds of Christ: Possible Futures for Diego Garcia.” The Site Magazine 37, no. Future Legacies (online edition) (December 5, 2017).
http://www.thesitemagazine.com/read/the-five-wounds-of-christ

“Fiction and Futures: Radical Alternatives for Diego Garcia”. Master’s thesis in Architecture, The University of British Columbia, 2014.

Co-authored publications:

Avermaete, Tom, Nicole de Lalouvière, Hamish Lonergan, Janina Gosseye, and Korinna Zinovia Weber. “The Viral Balcony: Or the Vicissitudes of an Urban Element in Times of Pandemic.” Gta Papers 5, no. Social Distance (2021).

Vogt, Günther and Nicole la Hausse de Lalouvière. “Search and Research: The Mols Landscape in Denmark”. In Your Glacial Expectations, edited by Studio Ólafur Elíasson, 147-170. London : Thames & Hudson, 2017.

Vogt, Günther, Nicola Eiffler, Nicole la Hausse de Lalouvière, Gijs Rijnbeek, and M.K. Smaby. Wunderlust, Wanderkammer. Zürich: Lars Müller Publishers, 2016. la Hausse de Lalouvière, Nicole.

Lalouvière, Nicole de, and Michael Taylor. “Urban Friends in Rural Places”. On Site Review vol. 27: Peripheral Urbanism (2012): 53-55.

Sebastiaan Loosen

Senior lecturer
sebastiaan.loosen@gta.arch.ethz.ch

Sebastiaan Loosen is senior lecturer and postdoctoral researcher at the Chair of the History and Theory of Urban Design. His current research projects focus on the 1960-80s agenda of foreign aid, on the one hand charting the role of architectural schools in developing training programs and research projects, and, on the other hand, outlining the history of the so-called ‘sites-and-services’ approach as a paradigm of urban design. On these topics, he recently co-edited a double theme issue of ABE Journal. Architecture Beyond Europe on ‘Architecture in the Foreign Aid-Funded Knowledge Economy’ (2023).

After obtaining degrees in architectural engineering and in philosophy, he completed his doctoral dissertation, Shaping Social Commitment. Architecture and Intellectuality in the 1970s and ’80s, on the formative years of architectural theory in Belgium, investigating the various vantage points from which ‘the social’ was addressed in architectural thought (KU Leuven, 2019). Key themes that permeate his work are historiographical challenges, social commitment, and the intricacies of a globalizing architectural culture. On these themes, he co-edited for the EAHN’s open access journal Architectural Histories a Special Collection on ‘Marxism and Architectural Theory across the East-West Divide’ as well as an open access volume at Leuven University Press based on the international conference Theory’s History, 196X-199X. Challenges in the Historiography of Architectural Knowledge, held in Brussels, February 2017. Since 2020, he serves on the editorial board of Architectural Histories.

Courses

Research Studio ‘Swiss Coloniality and Its Industrial Architectures’ (Autumn 2023)

Seminar Week ‘Das Neue Frankfurt’ (Autumn 2023)

Diploma Studio ‘To Adapt + Produce’ (Spring 2023, with Chair of Architecture and Housing, Prof. Maria Conen)

Research Studio ‘Zurich’s Land Commons’ (Autumn 2022)

Seminar Course ‘The City Lived: Sites-and-Services’ (Autumn 2022)

Research Studio ‘Zurich’s Material Commons’ (Spring 2022)

Seminar Week ‘Material Circulation and the City’ (Spring 2022)

Selected Publications as Editor

Sebastiaan Loosen, Erik Sigge & Helena Mattsson, “Architecture in the Foreign Aid-Funded Knowledge Economy”, double theme issue of ABE Journal. Architecture Beyond Europe (Part 1, Summer 2023; Part 2, Winter 2023). doi:10.4000/abe.14412, doi:10.4000/abe.15311.

Sebastiaan Loosen, Rajesh Heynickx & Hilde Heynen, The Figure of Knowledge. Conditioning Architectural Theory, 1960s-1990s (Leuven University Press, 2020).
doi:10.11116/9789461663221.

Hilde Heynen & Sebastiaan Loosen, “Marxism and Architectural Theory across the East-West Divide”, Special Collection of Architectural Histories 6-7 (2018-2019).
doi:10.5334/ah.401.

Selected Publications as Author

Sebastiaan Loosen, Viviana d’Auria & Hilde Heynen, “‘The City as a Housing Project’: Training for Human Settlements at the Leuven PGCHS in the 1970s-1980s”, in: Aggregate (ed.), Architecture in Development. Systems and the Emergence of the Global South (New York: Routledge, 2022), pp. 123-140.
doi:10.4324/9781003193654-9.

Sebastiaan Loosen, “The Challenge of the Poetic: Criticism in Search of the Real – with a Debt to bOb Van Reeth, 1975-1985”, CLARA Architecture/Recherche, no. 7: Critique architecturale et débat public, ed. by Hélène Jannière & Paolo Scrivano (2020), pp. 106-121.
doi:10.3917/clara.007.0106.

Sebastiaan Loosen, “Troubled Dialogues: Intellectuality at a Crossroads at the Carrefour de l’Europe in Brussels”, in: Loosen, Heynickx & Heynen (eds.), The Figure of Knowledge (2020, op. cit.), pp. 127-142.
doi:10.2307/j.ctv16x2c28.8.

Łukasz Stanek, interviewed by Hilde Heynen & Sebastiaan Loosen, “Cold War History beyond the Cold War Discourse: A Conversation with Łukasz Stanek”, Architectural Histories 7 (2019), art. 19, pp. 1-10.
doi:10.5334/ah.435.

Sebastiaan Loosen & Hilde Heynen, “Secularized Engagement in Architecture: Sieg Vlaeminck’s Plea for Woonecologie in 1970s Flanders”, International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity 6 (2018), pp. 1-37.
doi:10.18352/hcm.516.

Sebastiaan Loosen, “‘Le monopole du passéisme’: A Left-Historicist Critique of Late Capitalism in Brussels”, in: Ákos Moravánszky et al. (eds.), East West Central: Re-Building Europe, 1950-1990, vol. 3: Moravánszky & Torsten Lange (eds.), Re-framing Identities: Architecture’s Turn to History, 1970-1990 (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2016), pp. 261-274.
doi:10.1515/9783035608151-017.

Cathelijne Nuijsink

Senior lecturer
cathelijne.nuijsink@gta.arch.ethz.ch

Cathelijne Nuijsink holds a BSc and MSc in Architecture from the Delft University of Technology, an MSc in Architecture from the University of Tokyo, and an MA from the University of Pennsylvania. In 2017, she completed a PhD in East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania, USA with the thesis entitled, What is a House? Architects Redesigning the Domestic Sphere in Contemporary Japan, 1995-2011.

Between 2018-2021, Nuijsink was a Horizon 2020-funded Marie Sklodowska-Curie postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture, where she conducted the research project, Architecture as a Cross-Cultural Exchange: The Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition, 1965-2017 [No. 797002]. Outcomes of the project include the exhibition, Call for Lost Entries: The Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition, 1965-2020, the online archive www.callforlostentries.com, and a monograph provisionally entitled, Another Historiography: The Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition, 1965-2020.

During the academic years 2022–2024 Nuijsink was a Postgraduate Associate in The History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture and Art (HTC) program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), conducting the SNSF-funded research project Unlocking the “Contact Zone”: Toward a New Historiography of Architecture. Nuijsink was recently awarded an SNSF-return grant for the academic year 2024-2025, allowing her to continue developing her MIT-initiated research project at ETH Zurich.

Her current research engages with the development of new historiographic methods that enable histories of architecture in the latter half of the 20th century to be written in a way that is more inclusive, interdisciplinary, and polyvocal. In this capacity, she is leading the Methods research track of the Chair of the History and Theory of Urban Design.

Courses

History and Theory of Architecture IX – 1990s Theories that Inspired Architecture (Fall 2024)
History and Theory of Architecture XIII – Seen from the South (Spring 2023)
The City in Theory – Her Agency (Spring 2022)
The City Lived – Unlocking a Multidisciplinary Discourse (Fall 2021)
Fachsemester – Green Commons (Spring 2021)
Fachsemester – Water Commons (Fall 2021)
The City Represented – Visions of Urban Living (Spring 2020)
Summer School – The Architecture Competition as Cross-Cultural “Contact Zone” ( Spring 2019)
Seminar Week – The Commons and the Modern Afropolis: Agadir and Casablanca (Spring 2019)

Research 

Unlocking the ‘Contact Zone’: Towards a New Historiography of Architecture– Return Phase
(Swiss National Science Foundation Fellowship)

Unlocking the ‘Contact Zone’: Towards a New Historiography of Architecture
(Swiss National Science Foundation Fellowship)

Architecture as Cross-Cultural Exchange: The Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition 1965-2017
(Horizon 2020 Marie-Sklodowska Curie Fellowship)

Architects Negotiating Domesticity: Cross-Cultural Explorations of “House” and “Home”
(Benjamin Franklin Fellowship)

Selected Publications

Nuijsink, Cathelijne and Annamaria Bonzanigo. “Humanitarian Aid as Global Governance: The Architecture of the Red Cross’s Relief Operations after the 1976 Guatemala Earthquake.” Architectural Theory Review, vol. 27, vol.27, no. 1, 2023.
https://doi.org/10.1080/13264826.2023.2228940

Nuijsink, Cathelijne. “The Contact Zone of Agadir’s Emergency Operations.” Agadir: Building the Modern Afropolis. Eds. Tom Avermaete and Maxime Zaugg. Park Books, 2022. 69–84.

Nuijsink, Cathelijne. “Rem Koolhaas’ House with No Style: The 1992 Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition Forging a ‘Space of Ideas’.” The Hybrid Practitioner: Building, Teaching, Researching Architecture. Eds. Caroline Voet, Eireen Schreurs and Helen Thomas. KU Leuven Press, 2022. 249–60.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv2vt0209.23

Avermaete, Tom, and Cathelijne Nuijsink. “An Architecture Culture of ‘Contact Zones’: Prospects for an Alternative Historiography of Modernism.” Rethinking Global Modernism: Architectural Historiography and the Postcolonial. Eds. Vikramaditya Prakash, Maristella Casciato and Daniel E. Coslett. Routledge, 2022. 103–19.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003120209-9

Nuijsink, Cathelijne. “Negotiating Comfort in the Metropolis: Peter Cook, Toyo Ito and the Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition, 1977 and 1988.” Abe Journal, vol. 10, no. 18, 2021.
http://doi.org/10.4000/abe.10444

Avermaete, Tom, and Cathelijne Nuijsink. “Architectural Contact Zones: Another Way to Write Global Histories of the Post-War Period?” Architectural Theory Review, vol. 25, no. 3, 2021: pp.350–61.
https://doi.org/10.1080/13264826.2021.1939745

Nuijsink, Cathelijne. “Multiple Authorship: The Collaborative Production of Knowledge in the Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition (1965–2020).” Revista de Arquitectura, vol. 23, 2021: pp. 174–89.
https://doi.org/10.15581/014.23.174-189

Nuijsink, Cathelijne, and Momoyo Kaijima. “Timber Behavoriology.” Architectural Theory Review, vol. 25, no. 1–2, 2021: pp. 136–51.
https://doi.org/10.1080/13264826.2021.1971832

Nuijsink, Cathelijne. “From ‘Container’ to ‘Lifestyle:’ Kazuyo Sejima, Sou Fujimoto and the Destruction of the Nuclear Family Box.” Interiors: Design/Architecture/Culture, vol. 11, no. 2/3, 2021: pp. 132–56.
https://doi.org/10.1080/20419112.2021.1943190

Nuijsink, Cathelijne. “A House for Everyone: Challenging the Post-war Myth of ‘The House for the Nuclear Family’ in Japan, 1954–2005.” Activism at Home: Architects Dwelling between Politics, Aesthetics and Resistance. Eds. Isabelle Doucet and Janina Gosseye. Jovis, 2021. 74–85.
https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000520064

Nuijsink, Cathelijne. “An Architects’ Response to Natural Disasters: Shared Living and Bottom-Up Community Building in Japan.” Nordic Journal of Architectural Research, vol. 33, no. 3, 2021: pp. 13–34.
https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/handle/20.500.11850/532919

Co-Chair Conferences 

Session Co-Chair (together with Frida Grahn). “Female Agency in Practice: Strategies, Tactics, and Maneuvers,” Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) 2025 Atlanta, April 30–May 4, 2025

Session Co-Chair (together with Tom Avermaete). “Forging “Crossed Histories” of Twentieth-Century Architecture and Urban Design,” European Architectural History Network (EAHN) Conference 2024 Athens, 19-23 June 2024.

Session Co-Chair (together with Fatina Abreek-Zubiedat). “Writing Alternative Histories of Disaster Relief: Architecture and Humanitarianism,” Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) 2023 Annual International Conference Montréal, April 12–16, 2023

Exhibitions

Curator/Producer. “Call for Lost Entries: The Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition, 1965-2020,” gta Exhibitions Zürich, 3 November- 10 December 2022.

Maryia Rusak

Postdoc
rusak@arch.ethz.ch

Maryia Rusak is an ETH Postdoctoral Fellow (2022-24) at the Chair of the History and Theory of Urban Design, gta, ETH Zurich, led by Prof. Dr. Tom Avermaete. Maryia’s postdoctoral project investigates Nordic architecture of foreign aid in postcolonial Africa, focusing on the pragmatic economic rationale behind architectural production. 

Prior to joining gta, Maryia has completed her PhD at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design (2022) under the supervision of Prof. Mari Hvattum. Her doctoral dissertation examined the prolific building output of Moelven Brug—a Norwegian timber prefabrication company that, between 1955 and 1973, built schools, large housing developments and public buildings across the country. During her PhD, Maryia has been a research fellow at the Bauhaus Global Modernism Lab in Dessau (2020) and co-taught AHO Master’s studio course on urban densification strategies (2021). In her research, Maryia is particularly interested in histories of everyday objects, webs of bureaucratic institutions, obscure intricacies of architectural production and, in general, how things are made. 

Maryia holds a MArch in Sustainable Urban Planning and Design from KTH, Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden and a BA (magna cum laude) from Princeton University, USA. She has also worked for SWECO Architects on large urban design and infrastructural projects in Sweden and abroad.

Selected Publications

“Norwegian Experiments in Timber: Mass Housing of Moelven Brug,” From Conventional to Experimental—Mass Housing and Prefabrication, KU Leuven University Press (forthcoming January 2024).

“When Flexibility Became Mainstream: Norwegian Housing in the Age of Change,” Special issue of the Journal of Architecture, “Infinite Flex: Techniques and Technologies of Flexibility in Architectural Production” (forthcoming 2024). 

“Factory-Made: The Everyday Architecture of Moelven Brug,” PhD Dissertation, The Oslo School of Architecture and Design, 2022. 

“Narratives of Timber in 1960s Norwegian Prefabricated Architecture,” Architectural Theory Review, 25:1-2: 81-98.
DOI:10.1080/13264826.2021.1963297

“Wooden churches, managers and Fulbright scholars: Glued laminated timber in 1950’s Norway” in Mascarenhas-Mateus, J., Pires, A.P., Caiado, M.M., & Veiga, I. (Eds.). History of Construction Cultures: Proceedings of the 7th International Congress on Construction History (7ICCH 2021), July 12-16, 2021, Lisbon, Portugal (1st ed.). CRC Press, 735-742.
DOI:10.1201/9781003173434

Book chapter “A Building Manual” in Concrete for the Other Half? Leipzig: Spector Books, 51-64.  

“Japanese Temporariness in Norwegian Systems Architecture” in Tostões, A. and Yamana, Y. (Eds.) Inheritable Resilience: Sharing Values of Global Modernities. Proceedings of the The 16^th International conference proceedings (DOCOMOMO 2020+1), August 29-September 2 2021, Tokyo, Japan (1st ed), vol.2: 168-173. 

Recent Conferences 

Panel Chair “Large Construction Companies in a Global Context” with Davide Spina (ETH Zurich), at the American Society of Architecture Historians (SAH) 75^th Annual International Conference, Pittsburgh, USA, 27 April-1 May 2022. 

“Wholesale Modularity of Moelven Brug,” at the 7th International Conference of European Architectural History Network (EAHN), Madrid, Spain, 15-18 June 2022. 

“Fractured Archives of the Ordinary,” 8^th Forum of Architectural Studies, Berlin, Germany, 9-11 March 2021. 

“From Workers to Operators: Labour of Moelven Brug,” Construction History Annual Conference, Cambridge, United Kingdom, 27-29 August 2021. 

Exhibitions

“Marginalia,” exhibition dedicated to methods of research, The Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Oslo, Norway, 15-30 August 2022.

“Concrete for The Other Half?”, Bauhaus, Dessau, Germany, 1 December 2020—10 June 2021.

Meitar Tewel

Doctoral Candidate tewel@arch.ethz.ch

Meitar Tewel is a gta Doctoral Fellow at the Chair of the History and Theory of Urban Design, and a Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv Europe Doctoral Fellow (2024-2027). After completing her Master’s in Architecture from Delft University of Technology in 2023, she worked as an independent designer, curator, researcher and educator in the Netherlands and Germany. Her Master’s thesis work, ‘Neualtland’, was presented in a solo exhibition in Frankfurt am Main in April 2023 and is now part of Frankfurt’s Jewish Museum collection. Her doctoral research, under Prof. Dr. Tom Avermaete (ETH Zürich) and Prof. Dr. Janina Gosseye’s (TU Delft) supervision, concerns buildings and urban fabrics built on former Jewish sites in post-World War II Germany. Combining conventional and experimental modes of knowledge production, the project explores the potential of architectural practice to reclaim overlooked histories.