Team
team - online group photo
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Prof. Dr. Alla Vronskaya
History and Theory of Architecture
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Benjamin Eckel (M.Sc.)
Research Assistant I History and Theory of Architecture
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Constanze Kummer (Dipl.-Ing.)
Research Assistant I History and Theory of Architecture
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Megan Eardley
Temporary Lecturer I History and Theory of Architecture
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Sarah Wheat
Temporary Lecturer and DAAD visiting scholar I History and Theory of Architecture
Fellows
Nikolay Erofeev is an architectural historian whose work focuses on socialist architecture and urban planning. His research looks at mass housing, using it as a lens with which to explore various facets of socialist society – such as architectural aspects of prefabrication systems, the analysis of labor relations, technical assistance projects in the Global South and the late-socialist destinies of avant-garde projects. In his book manuscript, ‘Experiment in concrete: Diversity and Debate in the Design of Soviet Housing, 1955-1990,’ he explores the understudied architectural story of the ‘bureaucratic modernism’ of prefabricated housing. In contrast to a rather simplistic view of standardized housing as an ‘end of architecture’ and a complete takeover of the profession by construction experts, the book reconstructs a vibrant, complex and uneven history, as the housing drive became central for the formation of late-Soviet design culture, construction industry and urban sociology.
Erofeev received his D.Phil (PhD) in History from the University of Oxford in 2020 and his specialist degree in the History of Art from Moscow State University in 2014. Erofeev previously had fellowships at the Department of Urban Studies at the University of Basel and at the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia at New York University. Erofeev also had academic appointments at Manchester Metropolitan University where he taught Master of Architecture dissertations. Erofeev’s fellowship at the University of Kassel is funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Grant. His research was previously also supported by Hill Foundation and the Swiss Government Excellence scholarships, among others. Erofeev published on the history of socialist architecture in edited volumes and peer-review journals.
Publications
N. Erofeev and Ł. Stanek, ‘Concerns of multilateral socialist assistance to Mongolia during the Cold War’ in M. Motylinska, A. Butter, C. Bernhardt (eds.) A. Between Solidarity and Economic Constraints (De Gruyter, 2022) [forthcoming]
N. Erofeev and Ł. Stanek, ‘Integrate, Adapt, Collaborate: Comecon Architecture in Socialist Mongolia’ ABE Journal 19 (2021), DOI: 10.4000/abe.12604
N. Erofeev ‘Review: Moscow Monumental: Soviet Skyscrapers and Urban Life in Stalin's Capital, By Katherine Zubovich’ Social History, 46/3 (2021), p.336-338.
Erofeev, N. ‘Cybernetics & Standardization: Revisiting a Soviet Vision for Better Urbanism’ Strelka MAG (04.10.2021).
N. Erofeev ‘The I-464 Housing Delivery System: technological transfers from France to Moscow, from Moscow to Alma-Ata, from Alma-Ata to Havana’ Project Russia, 96 (2021), p. 239-64.
N. Erofeev 'The I-464 Housing Delivery System: A Tool for Urban Modernisation in the Socialist World and Beyond' Fabrications, 29/2 (2019), doi:10.1080/10331867.2019.1611255
N. Erofeev and M. Sapunova, 'Urban Standard and Norm and Their (Post)-Socialist Transformation', Urban Studies and Practices, 3/4 (2018), pp. 7-11
Student assistants
Elina Amann supports the whole chair through various tasks.
Philip Stöcker supports the work linked to the lecture GdgU (Geschichte der gebauten Umwelt).