Prof. Dr. Cornelia Escher

Media of architecture: architectural design media and forms of representation; exhibition design and exhibition architecture; design and communication processes in architecture, architecture and fine art

Architecture and materiality: social materiality, material practices, architecture and ecology, nature-culture relations, design and new materialism, material experiments, material aesthetics and perception

Architecture and transcultural spaces: European and (post-)colonial architecture, architecture of modernism and postmodernism, spaces, actors, artifacts and images in transnational processes, global, planetary and transcultural

Research projects

currently ongoing // Architecture, Climate and Materiality in Togo and Cameroon around 1900. Individual research project.
Based on the case studies of Togo and Cameroon during the period of German colonization, the project analyzes how architecture changed within intensifying transnational networks around 1900. The project builds on postcolonial and discourse-oriented research on colonial architecture and expands it through a microhistorical and artifact-centered approach. It investigates the practices in which architecture, landscape and visual media are embedded and the configurations of power involved in their emergence and maintenance. As a key contribution to global architectural history, the monographic project uses the examples of Cameroon and Togo to connect the analysis of architecture in the former German colonies with broader research questions concerning architecture in a planetary context.

since 2025 – 2027 // Since 1866. International teaching and research project, Attenrode/ Brussels, BE;KU Leuven, Faculty of Architecture; ENSA Toulouse; Alanus University of Arts and Social Sciences, Alfter; Academy of Fine Arts Vienna; NDRGRND
The project addresses the themes of ecology and architecture and seeks to develop new design and theoretical approaches to ecological architecture, starting from the rural context. It takes place as a series of workshops/summer schools on a farm in Attenrode, Belgium, which actively practices organic farming while also hosting the NDRGRND artist residency program. This offers an opportunity for a distinctive, cooperative and interdisciplinary engagement with the site and its actors. The focus is on existing spaces, practices and the use of materials.

Completed projects (selection)

2019 – 2024 // Lens On! Photography in modern architectural design processes. DFG research network.
Cooperation partners: Freie Universität Berlin; Foto Marburg; Goethe University Frankfurt; LVR Office for the Preservation of Monuments in the Rhineland; University of Basel; University of Siegen; ZHdK Zurich. Funded by the DFG.

2017 – 2024 // Negotiating Ungers, with Lars Fischer (Faculty of Architecture, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven). Research and teaching project.
Cooperation partners: Kunstakademie Düsseldorf; Ungers Archive for Architectural Studies, Cologne; CIVA Brussels; KU Leuven, Faculty of Architecture; Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Saint Etienne.
Funded by the DAAD and the OFAJ.

2018 – 2021 // Encountering the Material. Architecture and Sociology, with Nina Tessa Zahner (Sociology, Kunstakademie Düsseldorf). Interdisciplinary research project.

2016 – 2018 // Cultural brokers and materiality, with Benjamin Walton, Faculty of Music, University of Cambridge. Subproject within the research project ‘Cultural Brokers and their Networks: 1700 to the Present’.
Cooperation partners: University of Konstanz and University of Cambridge.
Funded by the DAAD-University of Cambridge Research Hub for German Studies and the Internationalization Fund of the University of Konstanz.

2015 – 2019 // The Making of Music Venues: Inquiries into Global Urban History, with Martin Rempe, History, University of Konstanz.
Interdisciplinary research project. Panel at the ENIUGH Conference, Budapest, special section in the ‘Journal of Urban History’.
Cooperation partners: University of Konstanz.

2009 – 2014 // Designing the Future. Architectural concepts of GEAM (Groupe d’Études d’Architecture mobile) 1958-1963. Dissertation, ETH Zurich.

Curated exhibitions (selection)

28 February – 7 April 2023 // Negotiating Ungers. The construction of Communities, ENSA St. Etienne
www.st-etienne.archi.fr

23 November 2021 – 13 February 2022 // Negotiating Ungers. The materiality of the social, curated with Lars Fischer, CIVA Brussels
www. civa.brussels

11 September 2019 – 21 June 2020 // Homo faber: un recit. L’oeuvre de Günter Günschel, solo exhibition as part of the 2e Biennale d’Architecture d’Orleans, FRAC Centre –Val de Loire
www.youtube.com

5 July – 22 September 2019 // Negotiating Ungers. The aesthetics of sustainability, curated with Lars Fischer, CIVA Brussels
www.civa.brussels

28 February 2013 –  18 April 2013 // Atelier Bow-Wow, curated with Laurent Stalder and Megumi Komura, gta exhibitions, at ETH Zurich, Zentrum, Main Hall

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4060-5752

Monographs and edited volumes

Begegnung mit dem Materiellen. Perspektiven aus Architekturgeschichte und Soziologie, ed. with Nina Tessa Zahner, Bielefeld: transcript 2021.

Negotiating Ungers, ed. with common room, Brussels: common books 2020-2024.
Vol. 1: The aesthetics of sustainability. The solar house, 2020.
Vol. 2: The Oberhausen Institute and the materiality of the social, 2022.
Vol. 3: The Self-help housing system and the construction of communities, 2024.

Zukunft entwerfen: Architektonische Konzepte des GEAM (Groupe d’Études d’Architecture Mobile) 1958–1963, Zurich: gta Verlag 2017.

Also dissertation, nominated for the ETH Medal 2014; shortlisted for the Theodor Fischer Prize.

Reviews: Ulrich Brinkman, in: Bauwelt 22 (2018);
Ralf Liptau, in: artHist.net
Viktoriya Yeretska, Baunetz

Atelier Bow-Wow. A primer, with Laurent Stalder, Megumi Komura, Meruro Washida, Cologne: Walther König 2013.

Awards: The Most Beautiful Swiss Books 2013; shortlisted for the DAM Architectural Book Award 2013.

Articles (selection)

Photography, architecture and colonial urban space: Enquiries into the mediatic power of the Bell palace in Douala, in: ABE Journal 27, (2026) (peer review, accepted).

Architecture’s multiple agencies. Open forms and transient materiality in architectural projects circa 1960, in: Pippo Ciorra und Maddalena Scimemi (Hg.), Restless Architecture. Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Florence 2024, pp. 74–85.

Photographic approaches to a colonial building site: ethnography, architecture and the agency of the artifact, in: Christa Kamleithner und Özge Sezer (Hg.), Architectures of Colonialism. Constructed histories, conflicting memories, Basel/ Berlin, 2024, pp. 45-57, online: doi.org.

Snapshots from the colonial construction site. An approach to the power of ethnographic visual discourses, in: Tobias Becker et al. (eds.), Der konstruierende Blick. Fotografisches Entwerfen in der Architektur, Berlin: Schlaufen Verlag, 2023, pp. 79-92.

Sailing with the wind? Architecture education at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf 1919-33, Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Press, 2023, online: 10.11588/artdok.00008769.

Ecological aesthetics and architectural autonomy. Oswald Mathias Ungers’ designs for solar housing, with Lars Fischer, in: OASE Journal for Architecture 112 (2022), pp. 59–73.

Materiality, design and communal life. The Oberhausen Institute as social project, with Lars Fischer, in: Negotiating Ungers Vol. 2: The Oberhausen Institute and the materiality of the social, Brussels: common books, 2022, pp. 12-85, online: 10.11588/artdok.00008080.

Becoming an architect. Learning to design in the field of art/ Diventare architetto o architetta. Imparare a progettare in campo artistico, in: Peter Assmann et al. (eds.), werden, Munich: Hirmer 2022, 176–183.

Introduction. Encountering the Material in architectural history and sociology, with Nina Tessa Zahner, in: Cornelia Escher, Nina Tessa Zahner (eds.), Begegnung mit dem Materiellen. Perspektiven aus Architekturgeschichte und Soziologie, Bielefeld: transcript 2021, pp. 9–27.

“Confrontation with audience participation”. The exhibition MAN transFORMS (1976) and the materiality of postmodernism, in: Cornelia Escher, Nina Tessa Zahner (eds.), Begegnung mit dem Materiellen. Perspektiven aus Architekturgeschichte und Soziologie, Bielefeld: transcript 2021, pp. 109–128.

Performing Tropicality. The Tropicana Cabaret in Havana, in: Journal of Urban History 47, 5 (2021), pp. 980–996, online (2019), doi.org.

The making of music venues. Inquiries into global urban history, with Martin Rempe, in: Journal of Urban History 47,5 (2021), pp. 955–962, online (2019), doi.org.

Introduction. The aesthetics of sustainability and the Solar house, with Lars Fischer, in: Cornelia Escher und common room (Hg.), Negotiating Ungers, Vol. 1: The aesthetics of sustainability. The solar house, Brussels: common books 2020, pp. 13–40, online (2021): doi.org.

Prospective images. GEAM’s projects of a mobile utopia, in: Journal of Architecture 25, 4 (2020), pp. 378–395, doi.org.

GEAM and ZERO. Spaces between architecture and art, in: Tiziana Caianiello und Barbara Könches (Hg.), Between the viewer and the work. Encounters in space: essays on ZERO art, Heidelberg 2019, pp. 69–81, doi.org.

Homo faber: un recit. L’œuvre de Günter Günschel/ Homo faber: a narrative. The work of Günter Günschel, in: Abdelkader Damani und Luca Galofaro (Hg.), Nos années de solitude, Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes 2019, pp. 280–302.

Model – Experiment – Environment, in: Georg Vrachliotis (ed.), Denken in Modellen/ Thinking by modelling, Leipzig: Spector Books 2017, pp. 53–60.

Revisiting Görlitzer Park: Material practices and the postmodern landscape, with Kim Förster, in: Landscript 5, 2017, pp. 154–173.

Nested utopias: GEAM’s large-scale designs, in: Karl Kegler, Akos Moravanszky (eds.), Re-scaling the environment: New landscapes of design, 1960–1980, Basel: Birkhäuser 2016, pp. 81–95.

Between CIAM and Team 10: The “East” and the Peripheries of CIAM, in: Lukasz Stanek (ed.), Team 10 East. Revisionist architecture in real existing modernism, Warszawa: Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw 2014, pp. 101–107 (online 2015: nbn-resolving.de).

Le GEAM, Michel Ragon et la culture de l’architecture visionnaire en France, in: Richard Leeman, Hélène Jannière (Hg.), Michel Ragon, critique d’art et d’architecture, Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes 2013, pp. 203–220.

Günther Feuerstein, in: Marie-Ange Brayer (ed.), Architectures expérimentales 1950–2012. Collection du FRAC Centre, Orléans: Editions Hyx 2013, pp. 250–252.

“I was Dr. Tent”. Frei Otto on adaptability, ecology, and economy in building. Interview on 22 October 2012 in Warmbronn, with Kim Förster, in: ARCH+ – magazine for architecture and urban design 210 (2013), pp. 72–80.

The mega-structuralism of the Groupe d’Etude d’Architecture Mobile, in: Tomáš Valena, Georg Vrachliotis, Tom Avermaete (eds.), Structuralism in architecture and urbanism reloaded, Munich: Axel Menges 2011, pp. 214–221.

Günter Günschel, la rigueur de l’imaginaire, in: AMC 201 (2010), pp. 99–104.

Genealogy of critique: ‘Anarchism’, ‘Marxism’, ‘Architectural history’, ‘Avant-garde’, ‘Critical theory’, in: ARCH+ – magazine for architecture and urban design 200 (2010), pp. 32–39; 70/71.

Josef Kaiser, Hans Gericke und Peter Schweizer: Central Domed Hall, in: Carsten Krohn (ed.), Das ungebaute Berlin, Berlin: DOM publishers 2010, pp. 173–175.

Alan Boutwell. From the modular housing system to the Continuous City/ From the modular housing system to the Continuous City, in: Sabrina van der Ley, Markus Richter (eds.), Megastructure Reloaded. Visionäre Stadtentwürfe der Sechzigerjahre reflektiert von zeitgenössischen Künstlern, Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz 2008, pp. 153–168.

Reviews, conference reports and encyclopedia articles (selection)

Post-Colonial Material Ecologies: A workshop in Cameroon, with Lars Fischer, BauNetz, 23 June 2025, baunetz-campus.de (11 July 2025).

Andrea Urlberger, La Formation en architecture à l’École des beaux-arts de Düsseldorf, en Allemagne. Interview with Cornelia Escher, 7 March 2024, urbaine et paysagère 21, Les Cahiers de la recherche architecturale urbaine et paysagère 22 (2024)  doi.org.

O.M. Ungers’ Solar House, results of a summer seminar in Cologne, with Lars Fischer, in: Baunetz, 17 August 2018. baunetz.de.

Artifact and spatial image. A retrospective on the exhibition MANtransFORMS, in: Arch+ News, 5 December 2016, archplus.net.

Anna-Lülja Praun, in: Andreas Beyer, Bénédicte Savoy, Wolf Tegethoff (eds.), Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon. Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Vol. 96, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017, pp. 491–492.

Helga Plumb, in: Andreas Beyer, Bénédicte Savoy, Wolf Tegethoff (eds.), Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon. Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Vol. 96, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017, p. 160.

Valerio Olgiati, in: Andreas Beyer, Bénédicte Savoy, Wolf Tegethoff (eds.), Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon. Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, Vol. 93, Berlin: De Gruyter 2016, pp. 305–306.

Urban planning from below? Otto Neurath falters, in: Bauwelt 18 (2012), p. 42.

Turning point(s) in building. From serial to digital architecture, in: ARCH+ – magazine for architecture and urban design 189/199 (2010), p. 4.

Journal issues edited

Trajectoires 10 (2016): Excès et sobriété. Construire, pratiquer et représenter la mesure et la démesure/ Excess and renunciation. Construction, practice and representation of measure and excess, with Anne Seitz, et al.

Trajectoires 9 (2015): Mensonge et manipulation/ Lies and manipulation, with Anne Seitz, et al.

Trajectoires 8 (2014): Figures d’autorité/ Figures of authority, with Martin Baloge, et al.

ARCH+ – magazine for architecture and urban design 204 (2011): Crisis of representation, with Nikolaus Kuhnert, Anh-Linh Ngo.

ARCH+ – magazine for architecture and urban design 200 (2010): Critique, with Nikolaus Kuhnert, Anh-Linh Ngo, Nicole Opel.

ARCH+ – magazine for architecture and urban design 199 (2010): House of the Future. IBA Hamburg, with Nikolaus Kuhnert, Anh-Linh Ngo, Anna Birkefeld, Nicole Opel.