Category: chaired by

Elad Horn is  Ph.D. candidate at the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Technion in the Big Data in Architectural Research Lab (BDAR), supervised by Dr. Or Aleksandrowicz. Elad’s research in the fields of History of Architecture and Digital Humanities examines the ways economic and spatial transformations in Tel Aviv-Yafo in the 1980s and 1990s generated new architectural idioms. 

Elad’s latest book, PoMo – Architecture of Privatization (2021), with Dr. Jeremie Hoffmann, documents the evolution of Tel Aviv-Yafo’s architectural landscape in the wake of Israel’s transition towards neoliberalism at the end of the 20th century. 

Alona Nitzan-Shiftan is Associate Professor of history and theory at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, where she heads the Aronson Built Heritage Research Center. She received her PhD from MIT, and leading research institutes such as CASVA, the Getty/ UCLA Program, the Israel Science Foundation, and the Frankel Institute at the University of Michigan, supported her research. Her work on inter- and postwar architectural modernisms, including Erich Mendelsohn, I. M. Pei, “United Jerusalem”, “Whitened Tel Aviv,” critical historiography, and heritage has been widely published. As the head of the Technion’s Architectural Program she led the transition required for implementing a new curriculum of M.Arch studies. She was the president of the European Architectural History Network (EAHN), and co-chaired its conference “Histories in Conflict”. Her awards winning book Seizing Jerusalem: The Architectures of Unilateral Unification will be followed by the Israeli volume of Reaktion’s series Modern Architectures in History.

Dafna Fisher-Gewirtzman is an Assistant Professor (PhD), the Chair of the Architecture program at the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, and a visiting scholar at CUSP-NYU. She serves as Academic Director of the VisLab, the immersive virtual reality visualization laboratory. Her research focus is on the field of visual analysis and simulation and development of novel, automated architecture design tools based on potential residents’ perception of space, directed toward the development of sustainable built environments. In addition, she leads research in the area of adaptive re-use architecture documentation and analysis. Her research is financially supported by the Israel Science Foundation and JOY VENTURES. She is a UNESCO fellowship recipient and a laureate of the prestigious Yanai Prize for Excellence in Academic Education. Her work has been published in leading professional journals and presented in numerous international conferences and universities around the world.

Prof. Florian Urban is Professor of Architectural History and Head of History of Architectural and Urban Studies at the Glasgow School of Art. He was born and raised in Munich, Germany, and holds a Master of Fine Arts from the University of the Arts in Berlin, an MA in Urban Planning from UCLA and a Ph.D. in History and Theory of Architecture from MIT. Before joining the Mackintosh School of Architecture, he taught at the Center for Metropolitan Studies, Berlin Technical University and worked for the German Federal Institute for Research on Construction, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development (BBSR). Since 2009 he has been the Book Reviews Editor-in-Chief for the journal Planning Perspectives. He is the author, among others, of Neohistorical East Berlin: Architecture and Urban Design in the German Democratic Republic 1970–1990 (2009), Tower and Slab: Histories of Global Mass Housing (Routledge, 2012), The New Tenement: Architecture in the Inner City since 1970 (Routledge 2018), and Postmodern Architecture in Socialist Poland: Transformation, Symbolic Form and National Identity (Routledge, 2021).

Prof. Dr. phil. Stephan Trüby (* 1970) is Professor of Architecture and Cultural Theory and Director of the Institute for Principles of Modern Architecture (IGmA) at the University of Stuttgart since April 2018. Previously, Trüby was Visiting Professor of Architecture at the State College of Design in Karlsruhe (2007-09), Head of the postgraduate study program “Scenography/Spatial Design” at the Zurich University of the Arts (2009-14) and Professor of Architecture and Cultural Theory at the Technical University of Munich (2014-18). His publications include Exit-Architecture. Design between War and Peace (2008), The World of Madelon Vriesendorp (2008, with Shumon Basar), Germania, Venezia. The German Entries to the Venice Architecture Biennale since 1991 (2016, with Verena Hartbaum), Absolute Architekturbeginner: Schriften 2004-2014 (2017) and Die Geschichte des Korridors (2018). He is a permanent contributor to the journal ARCH+.

Talia Margalit is an associate professor at the David Azrieli School of Architecture, Tel Aviv University and architect specialized in urban design and urban history. Her research addresses scholarship dealing with the politics of urban design and planning, and she issues questions of citizenship in Israeli cities.