Publication

CONTRIBUTORS

Sandra Bartoli
is a professor in the architecture department at the Munich University of Applied Sciences. From 2017 to 2018 she was Endowed Professor for Visionary Forms of Cities at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and Visiting Professor at the Master’s Program of Architecture & Urban Studies at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Nuremberg from 2015 to 2017. She studied Architecture at Università Iuav di Venezia and Landscape Architecture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In 2006 she founded the practice Büros für Konstruktivismus in Berlin together with Silvan Linden. She is editor of Tiergarten: Landscape of Transgression
(2019, with Jörg Stollmann), and Licht Luft Scheiße: Archaeologies of Sustainability (2020, with Silvan Linden and Florian Wüst).

Luca Capuano
has conducted numerous research projects for museums, foundations, and public institutions using techniques of art and photography. In his artistic practice, he explores contemporary space, collective history, and memory by constantly observing and experimenting with systems of representation. He teaches photography at various institutions, including ISIA in Urbino, the Accademia di Belle Arti in Perugia, and the Abadir Accademia di Design e Comunicazione Visiva in Catania.

Giulia Fiocca
is an architect, independent researcher, activist, and member of Stalker since 2007. She teaches in the master’s program in Environmental Humanities at Roma Tre University, and Public Art at NABA in Rome. Together with Lorenzo Romito she cofounded PrimaveraRomana (Rome 2009–13), a social engagement project for bottomup urban transformation, the Stalker Walking School (2012), the School of Nomadic Urbanism (since 2017), and NoWorking in Rome (since 2016).

Silvio Galeano
is a communication expert who uses storytelling to inspire transformation and drive social change. He began as a journalist reporting on Rome’s outskirts, uncovering stories from the margins. Through the School of Nomadic Urbanism with Stalker, he deepened his interest in underground spaces and their historical, social, and symbolic significance. 

Federica Giardini
is a Full Professor of Political Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, Communication, and Performing Arts at Roma Tre University. She is the Director of the Master’s Program in Gender Studies and cofounder of the Master’s in Environmental Humanities. Her research focuses on gender, social movements, and political topology, and she has led several research programs on violence in urban spaces and human–nonhuman relations. Her publications include I nomi della crisi: Antropologia e politica (2018), which explores the intersection of anthropology and politics.

Armando Gnisci
was an Italian scholar specializing in comparative literature and postcolonial studies. He was associate professor at La Sapienza University of Rome from 1983 to 2010. Gnisci introduced the concept of “Italian Migration and Globalization Literature” and authored over 30 books, including Noialtri europei (Bulzoni, 1991) and Il rovescio del gioco (Carucci, 1992). His research focused on decolonization, transculturation, and migration. He joined the Academia Europ.a in 2012, and his works have been translated worldwide.

Lisz Hirn
studied humanities in Graz, Paris, Vienna, and Kathmandu. Her work focuses on political philosophy,philosophical anthropology, and philosophical practice. Since 2014, she has been teaching Philosophical Practice at the University of Vienna, and since autumn 2020, she has been a lecturer at the Institute of Architecture and Design at the Vienna Technical University (Research Unit of Housing and Design). She was a fellow at the Hanover Institute for Philosophical Research (FIPH) and Residency Awardee at the renowned Adishakti Laboratory for Arts Research in Tamil Nadu. Her most important publications include Der überschätzte Mensch (2023), Macht Politik böse? (2022), Wer braucht Superhelden (2020), and Geht’s noch! Warum die konservative Wende für Frauen gefährlich ist (2019).

Alessandro Imbriaco
explores contemporary social and political themes through a multidisciplinary approach, blending personal research and collective projects. His work ranges from documentary photography (Corpi di reato, Un posto dove stare) to community archive research. In addition to his position as Artistic Director of Archivio Atena and professor at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome, he has curated #scenedaunpatrimonio for the Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione (ICCD) of the Italian Ministry of Culture and won awards like the World Press Photo Award (2010) and the European Publishers Award (2012). His works are in the collections of MAXXI, FOAM, and ICCD. His latest book is La teoria del vuoto (Witty Books).

Veronica Kaup-Hasler
has been Executive City Councillor for Cultural Affairs and Science in Vienna and a member of the Vienna State Government since May 2018. Before entering politics, Kaup-Hasler worked as a curator, dramaturge, and cultural manager for over twenty years. She was the artistic director of the steirischer herbst art festival in Graz (2006–17), artistic director of the Festival Theaterformen in Hanover and Braunschweig (2001–04), and festival dramaturge for both Wiener Festwochen (1995–2000) and Theater Basel (1993–95).

Michael Klein
works at the intersection of architecture, theory, history, and art, currently at the Research Unit of Housing and Design at TU Wien, for dérive – Zeitschrift für Stadtforschung, and for ÖGFA – Austrian Society for Architecture. He is the coauthor of, among others, The Design of Scarcity (2014, with Jon Goodbun, Andreas Rumpfhuber, and Jeremy Till), Modelling Vienna: Real Fictions in Social Housing (2015, with Andreas Rumpfhuber), and coeditor of the volume Building Critique: Architecture and Its Discontents (2019, with Gabu Heindl and Christina Linortner). He collaborates with Sasha Pirker on film projects.

Armin Linke
is an artist working with photography and film by setting up processes that question the medium, its technologies, narrative structures, and complicities within wider sociopolitical structures. His exhibiting practice sets up performative scripts in which different voices and methods come together. Linke’s work has been exhibited worldwide. He is currently a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich (AdBK) and a guest professor at ISIA in Urbino.

Anh-Linh Ngo
is an architectural theorist, curator, and editorinchief of ARCH+. He regularly curates exhibitions and research projects with ARCH+, including projekt bauhaus (2015–19), Cohabitation (2021), and The Great Repair (2023–24). From 2010 to 2016, he was a member of the art advisory council at the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (ifa), for which he developed and cocurated the traveling exhibitions An Atlas of Commoning (2018) and PostOil City (2009). He is currently a member of the board of trustees of IBA 2027 StadtRegion Stuttgart, the board of trustees of Akademie Schloss Solitude, and the Goethe Institut’s advisory council. He was a cocurator of the German Pavilion at the 18th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2023. Ngo has been a member of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin since 2021, and became its Vice President in 2024.

Maik Novotny
studied architecture in Stuttgart and Delft and writes as an architecture journalist for Der Standard, Falter, and numerous specialized media in Vienna. He is coeditor of several books. He teaches at the Vienna Technical University and worked on a research project in London in 2017 as a fellow of the Richard Rogers Fellowship of the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Since 2017, he has hosted the talk show Club Architektur at Architekturzentrum Wien (Az W). He has been Chairman of the Board of the Austrian Society for Architecture (ÖGFA) since 2022.

Rossella Marchini
is an architect, author, and editor based in Rome. Her essays on urban transformation and housing rights have appeared in il Manifesto and Alfabeta 2, among others. Together with Antonello Sotgia, she published Roma alla conquista del West: Dalla fornace al mattone finanziario (DeriveApprodi, 2017). Together with Sarah Gainsforth, Barbara Brollo, and Alessandro Barile, she published Dopo la Gentrificazione (DeriveApprodi, 2023). Marchini also contributed to a series of investigative reports on housing aired by the Italian national broadcaster RAI and is an editor for the online magazine DINAMOpress.

Michael Obrist
is one of the five founding partners of feld72 Architekten in Vienna. Since 2018, he has been Professor of Housing and Design at TU Wien and Head of its Housing and Design Research Department. He made a central contribution to the creation of the interdisciplinary Center for New Social Housing, which was jointly initiated by TU Wien and the 2022 Vienna International Building Exhibition. The work of feld72 in the areas of housing, educational, and office buildings as well as urbanism has received numerous awards and has been presented at several biennials worldwide. He is cocurator of the Austrian contribution at the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale 2025.

Zara Pfeifer
lives in Vienna and Berlin. She studied architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and photography at the Friedl Kubelka School for Artistic Photography Vienna. She works as a freelance artist and is a lecturer in architectural photography at TU Wien. She has recently been awarded with the MAK Schindler Grant in Los Angeles for 2025–26.

Sabine Pollak
is professor for space&designstrategies at the University of Arts Linz and runs the architecture firm Köb&Pollak Architektur in Vienna together with Roland Köb. She works theoretically (books, essays, an ongoing urbanism blog in Der Standard); teaches experimental architecture, the history of housing, and architectural theory; and researches the topics of housing and feminism and community and urbanism while working with her office as an expert for communal housing in Vienna. Residential buildings by Köb&Pollak Architektur, such as the ro*sa Donaustadt women’s housing project, have been exhibited, published, and awarded numerous prizes. Pollak is cocurator of the Austrian contribution at the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale 2025.

Christoph Reinprecht
is a sociologist, professor at the University of Vienna, and Associate Researcher at the Centre dela Recherche sur l’Habitat in Paris. He is interested in the transformation of the social, with an emphasis on migration, urban life, and housing. His empirical research deals with various aspects of social inequality and situations of social vulnerability in different urban contexts as they relate to migration and exile. His most recent book, The Social Dimension of Social Housing, which he coedited with Simon Güntner, Juma Hauser, and Judith M. Lehner, was published in 2023.

Lorenzo Romito
is an artist, architect, and curator and cofounded Stalker in 1995. Since 2022, he has been a lecturer in space&designstrategies at the University of Arts Linz, has taught Public Art together with Giulia Fiocca at NABA in Rome since 2020, and is a lecturer for the Stalker module in the Environmental Humanities master’s program at Roma Tre University since 2016. As Visiting Professor, he occupied the Francesco De Sanctis Chair for Italian literature and culture at ETH Zurich in spring 2024. In 2000–01 he was awarded the Prix de Rome in Architecture at the French Academy, Villa Medici, in Rome. With Stalker, he has participated in various art and architecture events worldwide, and was awarded the Curry Stone Prize for Social Design in 2016. He is cocurator of the Austrian contribution at the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale 2025.

Philip Ursprung
is an art historian specializing in late20th and early 21st century European and North American art and architecture. His research and teaching focus on the interrelation between architecture and art in a political and economic framework. Working as a historian, critic, and curator, Ursprung has taught at the University of Zurich, Hochschule der Künste Berlin, Columbia University, and the Barcelona Institute of Architecture. He is a professor of History of Art and Architecture at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, where he was dean of the Architecture Department from 2017 to 2019, and where he has been directing the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta) since 2024. Together with Karin Sander, he conceived the exhibition Neighbours in the Swiss Pavilion at the 18th Venice Architecture Biennale.