„Architecture and building culture, their research and mediation are in a state of flux. My discipline, architectural history and theory, offers an enormous variety of methods and topics, building on a body of knowledge since antiquity. At the moment we see a questioning not only of this knowledge, but also a challenging of its teaching by students and faculty alike. Gender Parity, diversity and interdisciplinarity, climate change and resource conservation, interrogations of hierarchies and mental health are questions that not only students and teaching assistants are concerned with. I see myself as part of these interrogations and try to contribute to positive change.“
Dr. Regine Hess, Senior researcher at the Chair of Construction Heritage and Preservation (Prof. Dr. Silke Langenberg, Institute of Preservation and Construction History (IDB) and Institute of Technology in Architecture (ITA), ETH Zurich
Research Interests
Architecture History and Theory 18th to 21st Century, Exhibition and Museum Studies, Global Architecture History, Methodoloy
Journal Editor
Member of the editorial board of kritische berichte, Journal for Art History and Cultural Studies, responsible for the annual architecture issue
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Professional Biography
After professional activity, Regine took up the study of Art History and Medieval and Modern History at Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, with a focus on architecture history and monument preservation. As a fellow of DFG Graduate colloquium Psychic Energies of Fine Arts and supported by a scholarship of Evangelisches Studienwerk, her PhD thesis was supervised by Prof. Dr. Klaus Herding and Prof. Dr. Christian Freigang (2005–2009). There, Regine dealt with the creation of emotions in theory and practice of European architecture from the 18th century up to today. The Central Institute of Art History at Munich awarded her PhD thesis with the Theodor Fischer Award.
Subsequently to her training as a museum curator at Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe (2008–2010), Regine worked at the Architecture Museum of TUM at Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (2011–2015). She started her teaching in 2009 at the Architecture Department of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and has teached since at Technical University of Munich (TUM), Tel Aviv University, University of Kassel and teaches now at ETH Zürich. 2016 she received a scholarship from German Research Community (DFG) for her research project Cell of the Future. Building Exhibitions in Germany and was senior researcher at the Chair of Architecture History and Curatorial Practice (Prof. Dr. Andres Lepik) at TUM (2016–2021). In 2018, she received the Azrieli Architectural Archive Fellowship from Tel Aviv Museum of Art and spent several months in Israel researching on Post-war architecture and landscape design. Regine is currently a habilitation candidate of the Department of Architecture of TUM. The resulting monograph on building exhibitions will be published in 2023 (the publisher is not yet determined).
Networks
She is part of the network D‑A-CH: Reframing Nachkriegsarchitektur in Österreich – Deutschland – Schweiz. Here, the researchers represent significant architecture archives such as the Austrian Museum of Architecture (Architekturzentrum Wien), the Architecture Museum of TUM at Munich, the gta Archives at ETHZ and the Südwestdeutsches Archiv für Architektur und Ingenieurbau at Karlsruhe (SAAI). Together with Yael Allweil (Haifa), she edited Housing Regimes – New Approaches to a State-Citizen-Relation (2020). In 2021 she published the bilingual, peer-reviewed issue Rassismus in der Architektur/Racism in Architecture in collaboration with Monika Platzer (Vienna) and Christian Fuhrmeister (Munich). The publication Staatsbauschule München. Architektur, Konstruktion und Ausbildungstradition was published together with Silke Langenberg and Karl R. Kegler (Munich) in February 2022, on the 200th anniversary of one of the oldest schools of architecture in the German-speaking world. The article volume From Conventional to Experimental – Mass Housing and Prefabrication, together with Inbal Ben-Asher Gitler (Beer Sheba), Yael Allweil and Tzafrir Fainholtz (Jerusalem) was accepted for publication by Leuven University Press in November 2021 and will be published in January 2014.
Regine has published conference proceedings such as the bilingual volume Architektur und Akteure. Praxis und Öffentlichkeit in der Nachkriegsgesellschaft (2018). She contributed to Arch+, Kunstchronik, Forum Stadt, Jahrbuch der Fakultät für Architektur der TUM, Kunst und Politik.Jahrbuch der Guernica-Gesellschaft, sehepunkte, Kunstgeschichte online – Open Peer Reviewed Journal, Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon (AKL), and Jahrbuch immersiver Medien.
Next to her contribution to several major art and architecture exhibitions between 2009 and 2013, Regine has curated Bauen und Zeigen. Aus Geschichte und Gegenwart der Kunsthalle at Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe in 2014 and Paul Schneider-Esleben. Architekt at Architecture museum of TUM at Pinakothek der Moderne in 2015, accompanied by exhibition catalogues. Regine is a successful found-raiser, both for scientific research and for exhibitions.
Membership
2021 – EAHN – European Architectural History Network
2019 – Ulmer Verein, Verband für Kunst- und Kulturwissenschaften
2016 – SAH – Society of Architectural Historians
2013 – Verband Deutscher Kunsthistoriker
2006 – Alumna Evangelisches Studienwerk Villigst
2016 – 2020 ICOM Deutschland – International Council of Museums
2009 – 2020 Guernica-Gesellschaft, Karlsruhe
Honours
Theodor Fischer Award, Award for Early Career Research in the History of Architecture from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-first Century, 2010
Central Institute of Art History – Theodor Fischer Award