Team

team - online group photo

our team: up (f.l.t.r.): Sarah Wheat, Prof. Dr. Alla Vronskaya, Dorothea Blank; middle (f.l.t.r.): Constanze Kummer, Benjamin Eckel, Megan Eardley; down: Fee Huschenbeth.

Sarah Wheat

Temporary Lecturer and DAAD visiting scholar I History and Theory of Architecture


Biografie  (Sarah Wheat)

Sarah Wheat ist derzeit Gastdozentin für Architekturgeschichte an der Universität Kassel. Ihre Forschung konzentriert sich auf interkulturelle Interaktionen in Architektur und Design im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Ihre Forschung beinhaltet Fragestellungen des Feminismus, des Orientalismus, der Globalisierung der “Moderne”, der Diaspora deutschsprachiger Architekten vor und während des Zweiten Weltkriegs in Gebieten außerhalb der USA sowie des Zusammenspiels vom wissenschaftlichen und spirituellen Verständnis der architektonischen Moderne. Sie erlangte ihren M.A. im Fachbereich “Modern and Contemporary Art History” vom The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) im Jahr 2016 mit ihrer Thesis zum Thema “The Architect as Nomad: Bruno Taut’s Architekturlehre (1938)”. Sarah ist Doktorandin im Fachbereich Kunstgeschichte an der University of Michigan, ihre Dissertation setzt sich mit Orientalismus und Feminismus innerhalb der Architektur- und Designgeschichte in den USA, in der Türkei und in Deutschland um 1900 auseinander.

Sie hat bei “Kulturprojekte Berlin” und der Terra Foundation for American Art in Chicago gearbeitet. Zu ihren Veröffentlichungen gehört ein Kapitel in Expanding Dialogues of Diaspora: Manifestations of Middle Eastern Architecture in the Americas für die Reihe Critical Studies in the Architecture of the Middle East der Intellect/ University of Chicago Press (erscheint 2021). Zu den jüngsten Tagungsbeiträgen gehören “The Turkish Style Cosey Corner: Islamic Objects and Spaces in the American Parlor, 1885-1910” und “The Architectural Document: the Hudson Motor Car Company Factory Portfolio and the Albert Kahn Associates Archive.” Sie ist Empfängerin des Rackham Humanities Fellowship (2020/21) und des Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies Fellowship (2019).

Sarah Wheat is currently a visiting scholar in the History of Architecture at Kassel University. Her research interests highlight cross-cultural interactions in architecture and design during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This includes issues of feminism, Orientalism, the globalization of “modernism,” the diaspora of German speaking architects before and during WWII to areas outside of the United States, and the interplay of scientific and spiritual understandings of architectural modernisms. She received her M.A. in Modern and Contemporary Art History from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2016 where her thesis was titled “The Architect as Nomad: Bruno Taut’s Architekturlehre (1938).” Now a PhD candidate within the History of Art department at the University of Michigan, Sarah’s dissertation work is concerned with the intersection of Orientalism and international feminism within histories of architecture and design in the United States, Turkey, and Germany around 1900.

She has worked at Kulturprojekte Berlin and the Terra Foundation for American Art in Chicago. Her publications include a chapter in Expanding Dialogues of Diaspora: Manifestations of Middle Eastern Architecture in the Americas for the Intellect/University of Chicago Press’ Critical Studies in the Architecture of the Middle East series (forthcoming 2021). Recent conference presentations include “The Turkish Style Cosey Corner: Islamic Objects and Spaces in the American Parlor, 1885-1910” and “The Architectural Document: the Hudson Motor Car Company Factory Portfolio and the Albert Kahn Associates Archive.” She is a recipient of the Rackham Humanities Fellowship (2020/21) and the Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies Fellowship (2019).

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 project "Second World-Second Sex" and the project-related website "Women Building Socialism".

Antonia Heesen supports the entire department through various assignments.

Andreas Panagiotopoulos supports the Office for International Affairs.

Philip Stöcker supports the work linked to the lecture GdgU (Geschichte der gebauten Umwelt).