Ole W. Fischer

Dr. Ole W. Fischer studied architecture at the Bauhaus University Weimar and the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zurich from 1995 to 2001. Between 2002–08 he taught at the Institute of History and Theory of Architecture (gta) of ETH Zurich, where he also obtained his PhD. In his doctoral thesis, he analyzed the programmatic transcription of central motives and concepts of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche into theory and work of the Flemish artist and architect Henry van de Velde. Parallel, as a licensed architect and urban designer in Zurich, he worked in interdisciplinary project teams, where his architectural and urban design projects won several prizes and honorable mentions. In summer 2004 and 2005 he was a research fellow of Klassik Stiftung Weimar, Germany; in spring 2005 a visiting PhD fellow at Harvard GSD, Cambridge, MA; and in 2008–09 an artist fellow in residence of Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany. In spring 2009, he returned as postdoc research fellow to the Harvard GSD to work on the history of critical theory in architecture. In fall 2009, he served as visiting adjunct professor for history and theory of architecture at RISD Providence, RI; in spring 2010 as visiting assistant professor at the HTC program of MIT School of Architecture + Planning, Cambridge, MA. In 2009, he was selected as co-curator & general commissioner of the German pavilion at the Biennale di Venezia 2010 themed “Sehnsucht”. In summer 2010 he was appointed as assistant professor for history, theory & criticism of architecture at the School of Architecture at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, where he continues to serve as associate professor since summer 2017. In summer 2015 he was appointed as visiting professor for architectural theory at the department of architecture at the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien). In spring 2018 he spent his sabbatical as visiting researcher at Professur Architeturtheorie, Institut für Architetur, TU Berlin, at Professur Architekturgeschichte, Kunsthistorisches Institut, FU Berlin, and as Nietzsche fellow in residence at the Kolleg Friedrich Nietzsche in Weimar. In addition, he has been serving as design critic at ETH Zurich, EPF Lausanne, Harvard GSD, Yale, MIT, RISD, Columbia, Cooper Union, Princeton, TU Berlin, TU Wien, Akademie der bildenden Künste Vienna, etc.

Dr. Fischer lectured and published internationally on contemporary questions of the history, theory, and criticism of architecture, amongst others in Archithese, Werk, Journal of Society of Architectural Historians JSAH, MIT Thresholds, Archplus, AnArchitektur, Graz Architecture Magazine GAM, Umeni/Art, Beyond, West 86th, Framework and log. He contributed chapters to various books, such as The Humanities in Architectural Design (London: Routledge, 2010) and The Handbook of Architectural Theory (London: Sage, 2012) and The Other Architect (Montréal: CCA/Spector, 2015). He co-edited Precisions – Architecture between Sciences and the Arts (Berlin: Jovis, 2008), the catalogue Sehnsucht – The Book of Architectural Longings (Vienna: Springer, 2010), and the SoA journal Dialectic II: Architecture between Boom and Bust (University of Utah Press, 2014), as well as since 2012 co-editor of the peer-reviewed international critical journal Dialectic with support of the Graham Foundation, Chicago, Il. He is the author of Nietzsches Schatten (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 2012).