Team

Unser Team - Onlinegruppenfoto

Unser Team, oben (v.l.n.r.): Sarah Wheat, Prof. Dr. Alla Vronskaya, Dorothea Blank; Mitte (v.l.n.r.): Constanze Kummer, Benjamin Eckel, Megan Eardley; unten: Fee Huschenbeth.

Sarah Wheat (M.A.)

Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin I Fachgebiet Geschichte und Theorie der Architektur


Biografie  (Sarah Wheat (M.A.))

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 / Gastforscher:innen

Pavel Kuznetsov ist ein Architekturhistoriker, Museologe und Kurator. Er war stellvertretender Direktor des Staatlichen Schusev-Museums für Architektur in Moskau (2010-2022) und Gründungsdirektor des Staatlichen Museums von Konstantin und Victor Melnikov (2014-2022). Er beaufsichtigte die Sammlungen und Archive des Melnikov-Hauses und dessen Umwandlung von einem Privathaus in ein öffentliches Museum. In den Jahren 2017-2019 leitete er die von der Getty Foundation geförderte Untersuchung des Hauses bevor es restauriert wurde. In den Jahren 2022-24 lehrte er an der Accademia di Architettura (Mendrisio, Schweiz) die Geschichte der frühen sowjetischen Moderne. Kuznetsov ist der Autor von The Melnikov House: Icon of the Avant-Garde, Family Home, Architecture Museum (Berlin: DOM, 2017, 2021) und Kurator der Ausstellungen Le Corbusier/Melnikov: rencontre à la villa Savoye (2017, Villa Savoye, Frankreich), Melnikoff/Мельников (2022, Staatliches Schusev-Museum für Architektur, Moskau, Russland), Melnikov: Architect of the Impossible (2023, Accademia di Architettura, Mendrisio) und Soviet architectural avant-garde: utopias, theories and practice (2024, Accademia di Architettura, Mendrisio).

Nikolay Erofeev 

Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow

University of Kassel, Department of Architecture, State planning and Landscape design


I am a historian of Soviet urban development. I am interested in urban history and mass housing, socialist architecture, and planning. In particular, I look at Soviet construction projects and development assistance to the Global South. My forthcoming book ‘Experiments in Concrete: Manufacturing Prefabricated Housing in the Soviet Union’ explores the understudied architectural story of the ‘bureaucratic modernism’ of prefabricated housing. In contrast to a rather simplistic view of standardised housing development as the ‘end’ of architecutre, and a takeover of the profession by construction experts, the book reconstructs a complex and uneven history, as the housing drive became central to the formation of late-Soviet design culture, construction industry and urban sociology.

 

I am currently working on a new project that focuses on urbanisation processes in socialist Mongolia. The project explores how exchanges with the Soviet Union, Eastern European states and China fundamentally reshaped the urban space and daily life in Mongolia. The project establishes a multidisciplinary framework to explore the experiences of local and foreign specialists, workers, and citizens alike, engaged in transnational construction projects. More broadly, the project seeks to provide new understandings about the urbanisation processes in the Global South during the Cold War and sheds light on the complexities and dynamics of transnational cooperation in shaping the built environment.

 

I have received my D.Phil (PhD) in History from the University of Oxford in 2020 and a specialist degree in the History of Art from Moscow State University in 2014. I was a postdoc at Department of Urban Studies at the University of Basel and at the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia at New York University.

 

My fellowship at the University of Kassel has been possible due to the support from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Previously I have benefited from generous scholarships from the Hill Foundation at Oxford and the Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship, among others.

 

Publications

N. Erofeev, ‘Complementary Assistance: Exchanges Between Mongolia, the Soviet Union, China, and Poland during the Cold War.’ Cold War History (forthcoming, 2024).

 

N. Erofeev, ‘Building the Space of Internationalism: Socialist Assistance to Mongolia in the 1950s-70s.’ In Rethinking Socialist Space, edited by Marcus Cola and Paul Betts (London: Palgrave MacMillan, forthcoming, 2024).

 

N. Erofeev, ‘Late-Soviet Collective Housing: Self-Help Construction and Self-Management in Youth Residential Complex Housing Movement’ Journal of Urban History (forthcoming, 2024).

 

N. Erofeev, ‘Shabashniki.’ In Global Encyclopaedia of Informality, Volume 3, edited by Alena Ledeneva (London: UCL Press, 2024).

 

N. Erofeev, ‘“Camus est petit, Rozanov est grand”: Soviet housing production and technological transfer from France.’ in Panel Master: the Raymond Camus Story, edited by Natalia Solopova (Dom Publishers, 2024)

 

N. Erofeev and Ł. Stanek, ‘Integrate, Adapt, Collaborate: Concerns of Comecon’s Technical Assistance to Mongolia During the Cold War.’ In Between Solidarity and Economic Constraints, edited by C. Bernhardt, A.Butter and M. Motylinska, 43-72 (Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2023).
 

N. Erofeev and Ł. Stanek, ‘Integrate, Adapt, Collaborate: Comecon Architecture in Socialist Mongolia’ ABE Journal 19 (2021), DOI: 10.4000/abe.12604
 

N. Erofeev ‘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

 

DPhil Dissertation

Erofeev, Nikolay. "Experiment in the Architecture of Soviet Mass Housing, 1956–1990."D.Phil thesis, Oxford University, History faculty, 2020.

 

Book Reviews

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.

 

Studentische Hilfskräfte

Thilo Schulte übernimmt am Lehrstuhl verschiedene Tätigkeiten.

Philip Stöcker unterstützt am Lehrstuhl die Lehrveranstaltung GdgU (Geschichte der gebauten Umwelt).

Ehemalige Mitarbeiter:innen und Doktorand:innen

Promotion „Annäherungsprozesse an die Innenstadt in der DDR (1949-1990). Zwischen Städtebau, Architektur und Denkmalpflege in Halle (Saale)“ (abgeschlossen 2024)