Ben van Berkel

Ben van Berkel studied architecture at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and at the Architectural Association in London, receiving the AA Diploma with Honours in 1987. His first projects were built almost immediately after founding Van Berkel & Bos Architectuur Bureau. Among the buildings of this first period are Karbouw, the Remu electricity station, and Villa Wilbrink. Being elected to design the Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam (1996) profoundly affected his understanding of the role of the architect today and constituted the foundation of his collaborative approach to practicing, leading to the foundation of UNStudio in 1999. Recent projects, which reflect his long-standing interest in the integration of construction and architecture, are: the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart and Arnhem Central.

Johan Bettum

Johan Bettum is a professor of architecture and the program director of the Städelschule Architecture Class. He is responsible for the development of the program's academic content and agenda. In addition, he has taught and lectured, amongst other places, at the AA, UCLA, the Berlage Institute, Innsbruck University, the EPFL in Lausanne and Oslo School of Architecture. Bettum studied at the Architectural Association (AA) after gaining a Bachelor of Arts with a major in biology from Princeton University. His main interests reside in the intersection between materials, geometry and advanced digital modelling. From 1998 to 2002, Bettum was a research fellow at the Oslo School of Architecture and headed a nationally funded research project on polymer composite materials in architecture. Furthermore, until 2000 he led the OCEAN group in Oslo whose work on polymer composites and advanced digital modelling greatly influenced the projects of OCEAN during this period. Bettum has a PhD in fibre-reinforced material systems entitled The Material Geometry of Fibre-Reinforced Polymer Matrix Composites and Architectural Tectonics. His practice, Archi|Globe, focuses on architecture within the context of research and experiments. Bettum edited the exhibition catalogue The Pavilion: Pleasure and Polemics in Architecture. He has written for a number of prominent publications while his work is repeatedly published in Graz Architecture Magazine, Domus and Architecture Design (AD) to name but a few.

Daniel Birnbaum

Daniel Birnbaum is professor of art theory, the dean of the Städelschule, and director of Portikus, the art gallery. He teaches philosophy seminars in the school. Over the last few years, Birnbaum has emerged as one of the most influential people on the international arts scene. He was co-curator of 50th Venice Biennale and the first Moscow Biennale, autumn of 2004. He is regular contributor to Art Forum and as well as Domus Magazine. Daniel Birnbaum has a Ph.D in philosophy (1997) on the topic: "The Hospitality of Presence: Problems of Otherness in Husserl’s Phenomenology." Before coming to the Städelschule in 2001, he taught in Stockholm, wrote on various topics in art and curated numerous exhibitions. He is currently on the board of the Astrup Fearnley Museum in Oslo.

Mark Wigley

Mark Wigley is a renowned architectural theorist. He is professor of architecture and the dean of the faculty of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University in New York. Wigley studies architecture at the University of Auckland in New Zealand where he received his Ph.D in 1987. In 1989, he had a resident fellowship at the Chicago Institute for Architecture and Urbanism. He has won several awards, among them the Triennial Award for Architectural Criticism in 1990 and the Graham Foundation Grant in 1997. In 1988 Mark Wigley co-edited with Philip Johnson the exhibition and publication Deconstructivist Architecture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. This may be seen to be the first of his many influential, international pieces of work, to which also belongs a series of books, including Constant’s New Babylon: The Hyper-Architecture of Desire (010 Publishers, 1998), White Walls, Designer Dresses: The Fashioning of Modern Architecture (MIT Press, 1995) and Architecture of Deconstruction: Derrida's Haunt (MIT Press, 1993). Wigley is a frequent lecturer and guest at various events and institutions throughout the world. For a number of years, Mark Wigley has been a guest-professor in the Städelschule, teaching architectural theory.

Beatriz Colomina

Beatriz Colomina is an architectural theorist and associate professor in the School of Architecture at Princeton University. She has written extensively on questions of architecture and the modern institutions of representation, particularly the printed media, photography, advertising, film and TV. Among her books are Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media (1994), which was awarded the 1995 International Book Award by the American Institute of Architects; Sexuality and Space (editor, 1992), awarded the 1993 AIA International Book Award; and Architecture Production (editor, 1988). Her most recent books are Doble exposición: Arquitectura a través del arte (Double Exposure: Architecture through Art) (Madrid: Akal, 2006), and Domesticity at War (Barcelona: ACTAR and MIT Press, 2007). She has been on the editorial boards of Assemblage, Daidalos, and Grey Room. Colomina is the Founding Director of the Program in Media and Modernity at Princeton University. She has lectured at various institutions and events throughout the world and is the recipient of several prestigious grants and fellowships, including the Chicago Institute for Architecture, SOM Foundation, Graham Foundation, Fondation Le Corbusier, and the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts in Washington.

Lars Nixdorff

Lars Nixdorff is currently a Guest Professor at the Städelschule Architecture Class. He graduated from the University Of Applied Sciences, Frankfurt in 2003 with a diploma in Architecture and obtained a Post-Graduate Diploma in Advanced Architectural Design from Städelschule Architecture Class in 2005. Before establishing his architecture practice, RNA, in 2009 in Frankfurt, Nixdorff worked for UNStudio on several projects including the MOMEMA, Dubai and New Theatre for Spijkenisse, The Netherlands. His main interests lie in conceptual, geometrical understanding of spatial qualities and their digital translation.

Parnian Tabib

Parnian Tabib is a research fellow at SAC. Her main responsibilities involve generating research projects, on a national and a European level, for the Architecture Class. In 2008, she graduated from The Glasgow School of Art with a PhD in design. Her doctoral research investigated the connection between love and intellect, in order to see whether there is any evidence to support the hypothesis that sexual passion has the potential to influence creative development. Tabib also works freelance for Laurence King Publishers in London on a series of Interior Architecture books while having supervised a number of PhD students.

Oliver Tessmann

Oliver Tessmann is currently working with the engineering office Bollinger + Grohmann in Frankfurt at the interface between architecture and engineering. He is teaching at the Städelschule Architecture Class (SAC) in Frankfurt. After graduating in 2001 at the University in Kassel he was working with Coop Himmelb(l)au in Mexico and Vienna and Bernhard Franken in Frankfurt. In 2008 Oliver Tessmann received a doctoral degree after four years of research in the field of "Collaborative Design Procedures for Architects and Engineers" at the University of Kassel. The research sought for novel strategies to use structural analysis as a design driver in architecture by establishing digital interfaces between the disciplines. His work has been published and exhibited in Europe, Asia and the US.

Agnes Weilandt

Agnes Weilandt is teaching at the Städelschule Architecture Class (SAC) in Frankfurt.

Anton M. Savov

Anton M. Savov is a research fellow at the Städelschule Architecture Class. His main interest lies in the exploration of architectural space through research in ecological and environmental systems as well as the impact of social networks on the content of architectural programme. He is currently working on his doctoral thesis on computational strategies for architectural design. In the recent project “Keep Something For a Rainy Day” with artist Att Poomtangon at the Venice Art Biennale 2009, Savov was able to fuse his interests in order to offer new, unique and imaginative micro-environments for the experience and exhilaration of the participating visitors.