people

Dr. Sigrid de Jong (co-leader) is a senior researcher and lecturer in the history and theory of architecture at the chair of Prof. Dr. Maarten Delbeke, in the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta) of ETH Zurich. Sigrid holds a PhD in architectural history and theory from Leiden University (2010), and a Master in architectural history from the University of Amsterdam. She has worked as a curator at the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi, now New Institute) in Rotterdam, and as an architectural historian at the architectural office Van Hoogevest Architecten. At Leiden University she was a senior researcher and lecturer in architectural history and theory, conducting a postdoctoral research project (2010-2015) on primitivism and architectural theory (1750-1850) in the context of Maarten Delbeke’s project ‘The Quest for the Legitimacy of Architecture in Europe, 1750-1850’. From 2016 to 2019 she conducted her research project titled ‘Experience and Design: The Emergence of Architectural Experience in Paris and London, 1750-1815’, funded by the talent scheme of NWO (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research). At the National Museum of Antiquities (RMO) in Leiden she curated the exhibition Experiencing Paestum (2019). In 2019-2020 she was awarded a Senior Fellowship from the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London. She is also a recipient of grants from the INHA/Fondation de France, the Paul Mellon Centre and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, and was awarded the Research Prize of the Erasmus Prize Foundation for an exceptional PhD dissertation in the humanities and social sciences (2012). Her research and teaching focuses on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century architecture and architectural theory, with a special interest in the human responses to buildings and the city, in the public realm, in discourse and design. She is co-leader of the SNSF-funded project ‘Building Identity: Character in Architectural Debate and Design, 1750-1850’, in the frame of which she researches on character and personhood, focusing on female agency in architecture.

Prof. Dr. Maarten Delbeke (co-leader) holds the Chair of the History and Theory of Architecture at the Department of Architecture at ETH Zurich. He studied architecture at the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture at Ghent University, where he obtained his PhD in 2001. After having been awarded the Scott Opler Fellowship in Architectural History (Worcester College, Oxford), he became a post-doctoral fellow with the Flemish Fund for Scientific Research (F.W.O.). In 2005 he started teaching at the Universities of Ghent and Leiden. At Leiden he led the research project “The Quest for the Legitimacy of Architecture 1750–1850“, funded by a VIDI-grant from the Dutch Science Foundation (N.W.O.). In 2014 he became full professor in the field of architectural history and theory at Ghent University. He joined ETH Zurich in 2016. Maarten Delbeke has published widely on the history and theory of baroque architecture and art in Rome, France and the Southern Netherlands; theoretical questions in 18th- and 19th-century European architecture; and the reception of early modern architecture in the 20th century. He is also active as an architecture critic. As the founding editor-in-chief of “Architectural Histories”, the online open-access journal of the European Architectural History Network (EAHN), he seeks to explore digital methods in the research and dissemination of architectural history. Maarten Delbeke was a member of the Belgian Historical Institute in Rome, and is on the executive board of SARI (Swiss Art Research Infrastructure), a PI in the HERA-programme “The past in print. Architecture, print culture, and the uses of history in modern Europe“ (PriArc), and an international core scholar of the Danish National Research Foundation Centre for Privacy Studies (PRIVACY).

Dr. Nikos Magouliotis is a postdoctoral researcher and architectural historian at the Chair of Prof. Dr. Maarten Delbeke, in the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta) of ETH Zurich. Nikos obtained his doctoral degree from the ETH in 2022; prior to that, he studied architecture and architectural history in Athens (NTUA) and Oslo (AHO). His doctoral dissertation was titled Forlorn Folklore: Discovering and debating the vernacular architecture of Greece, from the Ottoman era to the Greek nation-state, and was part of the HERA research program “Printing the Past. Architecture, Print Culture, and Uses of the Past in Modern Europe (PriArc)”. The dissertation focused on the vernacular architecture of Ottoman-era Greece and the different meanings ascribed to it by Western travellers and local authors. Nikos’ current research – in the context of the SNSF-funded project “Building Identity: Character in Architectural Debate and Design, 1750-1850”, led by Sigrid de Jong and Maarten Delbeke – focuses on Swiss vernacular architecture. The research juxtaposes the ways in which urban intellectuals idealized the chalet as a symbol of rusticity and national identity, with the the actual lives, customs and beliefs of the peasants that built and inhabited such constructions.

Dominik Müller is an architect and PhD candidate in the Chair of Prof. Dr. Maarten Delbeke, ETH Zurich in the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta). After graduating from the University of the Arts in Berlin, Dominik worked for several architecture offices in Berlin and Zurich. In 2022, he graduated from the MAS program at the gta with the thesis The World in Ornaments: Friedrich Hessemer’s Imaginary Egypt, 1800-1860. Currently, he is working in the framework of the SNSF-funded research project “Building Identity: Character in Architectural Debate and Design, 1750-1850”, where he interrogates the French, English and German reception of the architectural syncretism in medieval Sicily; its character, historiography and sensemaking between national identity and Orientalised alterity.