New to Department!

Oliver Elser, curator at the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt am Main since 2007, is filling the professorship for architectural theory in the summer semester of 2021.
Oliver ElserKirsten Bucher

Oliver Elser studied architecture at the TU Berlin (Dipl.-Ing.) and then worked in Vienna as an architecture critic, curator and journalist as well as a research assistant at the TU Graz. In the winter semester 2012/13 he represented the professorship for scenography at the University of Applied Sciences Mainz. In 2016 he was curator of "Making Heimat", the German Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale. In 2019, he was an M+ / Design Trust Research Fellow in Hong Kong.
He is co-founder of CCSA (Center for Critical Studies in Architecture), a cooperation of DAM, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main and Technical University Darmstadt. http://criticalarchitecture.org/

Exhibitions as curator at the Deutsches Architekturmuseum

2020
Böhm 100: The Concrete Dome of Nevige (with Miriam Kremser)

2019
Max Bächer. 50 Meter Archive (in cooperation with the CCSA)

2017
SOS Brutalism - Save the Concrete Monsters (in cooperation with the Wüstenrot Foundation)

2016
Making Heimat. Germany, Arrival Country: German Pavilion at the 15th Architecture Biennale in Venice (with Peter Cachola Schmal and Anna Scheuermann)

2014
Mission: Postmodern. Heinrich Klotz and the Wunderkammer DAM

2012
The Architectural Model: Tool, Fetish, Little Utopia

2009
For example Schelling: Postwar Modernism between Demolition and Preservation (with Inge Wolf)

2008
Simon Ungers: Heavy Metal



Teaching concept

In the lecture on architectural theory in the summer semester 2021, the basic knowledge of architectural theory will be presented and discussed on the basis of conflict situations. In this way, the relevant counter-positions to each position will also be dealt with. In this way, patterns become recognizable, classic courses of discussion emerge, and unresolved disputes come to light. Most of these conflict topics have not been settled, but continue to determine architectural design and the relationship between architecture and society to this day.

German Museum of Architecture
https://www.dam-online.de/

SOS Brutalism
https://www.sosbrutalism.org



Photo: Kirstin Bucher