Team

Prof. Dr. Anna-Maria Meister

Anna-Maria Meister is a historian, theorist and architect working at the intersection of architecture's history with architectural practice and critique on the one hand, and with the histories of science and technology on the other. She received a joint PhD degree in the History and Theory of Architecture and the Council of the Humanities from Princeton University, and holds degrees in architecture from Columbia University, New York, and the TU Munich. She was a fellow at the Max-Planck Institute for History of Science in Berlin with Lorraine Daston, a postdoctoral fellow at the TU Munich, and her work has been supported by grants and fellowships from the Graham Foundation, the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies, DAAD, and Columbia University, among others. Her writing has been published in Harvard Design Magazine, Volume, Uncube, Baumeister, Arch+ and as book chapter in Architecture and the Paradox of Dissidence (Routledge, 2013) and Dust and Data (Spectorbooks 2019/20). The international collaborative project “Radical Pedagogies” that Meister co-curates and co-edits was featured at the Lisbon Triennale 2013 and the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale 2014, where it received a Special Mention from the Jury under Rem Koolhaas; the eponymous book is forthcoming with MIT Press in 2022.

  • Meister, Anna-Maria. “Archives, Bureaucracies, Architecture: Now You See Me, Now You Don't” in Dimensions, issue 1 (Spring 2021).
  • Meister, Anna-Maria. “Ernst Neufert's 'Lebensgestaltungslehre': Formatting Life beyond the Built” in “Learning by the Book” (eds. A. Creager, M. Grote, E. Leong) BJHS Themes 5 (2020): 167–85. more
  • Meister, Anna-Maria. “'Architects and Housewives': Rationalizing Architecture after WWI” in a special issue of Architecture Histories (Journal of the EAHN). Eds. S. Hochhäusl and E. Sassin.
  • Meister, Anna-Maria. “Paper(less) Architecture: Medial and Institutional Superimpositions” in The Architecture Machine. The Role of Computers in Architecture. Edited by Teresa Fankhänel and Andres Lepik (Birkhäuser: 2020).Meister, Anna-Maria. “From Musterhaus to Meisterhäuser: A trajectory of typologies,” in Dust and Data, ed. Ines Weizman. Berlin: Spectorbooks (Forthcoming 2019).
  • Meister, Anna-Maria. “Paper Constructions: Ethics and Aesthetics on Paper” in RadDAR, issue 1 (January 2019).
  • Colomina, Beatriz, Ignacio Gonzalez Galan, Evangelos Kotsioris, Anna-Maria Meister. “Radical Pedagogies: Notes Towards a Taxonomy of Global Experiments” in Building Cultures Valparaiso: Pedagogy, Practice and Poetry at the Valparaiso School of Architecture and Design, eds. Sony Devabhaktuni, Patricia Guaita and Cornelia Tapparelli. London: Routledge Chapman&Hall (2016).
  • Meister, Anna-Maria. “Formatting the Modern Dream” in Harvard Design Magazine issue 43 “Shelf Life” (Fall 2016).
  • Meister, Anna-Maria. “The Radical Pedagogies Project” (co-authored with Beatriz Colomina, Ignacio G. Galán, Evangelos Kotsioris) inVolume n. 45 “Learning” (2015).
  • Colomina, Beatriz, Ignacio Gonzalez Galan, Evangelos Kotsioris, Anna-Maria Meister. “Radical Pedagogies: Educating Change” in Quaderns d'Arquitectura i Urbanisme, Publicació del Col∙legi d'arquitectes de Catalunya, 267 (2015).
  • Meister, Anna-Maria. “Radical Remoteness: The HfG Ulm as Institution of Dissidence,” in Architecture and the Paradox of Dissidence, ed. Ines Weizman. London: Routledge (2013).
  • Meister, Anna-Maria. “Für James Bond reicht's noch (Mendelsohn's Red-Banner Factory in St. Petersburg)” in Baumeister 2 (February 2012).
  • Colomina, Beatriz, Esther Choi, Ignacio Gonzalez Galan, Anna-Maria Meister. “Radical Pedagogies in Architectural Education” in Architectural Review 1388 Volume CCXXXII (October 2012).
  • Meister, Anna-Maria. “Architecture in Uniform.” Review of Architecture in Uniform by Jean-Louis Cohen, in Archplus 204 (October 2011).
  • Meister, Anna-Maria. “The Space Left Behind” in Reception Rooms. Princeton: IHUM (2011).

EINGELADENE VORTRÄGE | INVITED LECTURES

  • “Processing Models, Modelling Processes.” Invited Talk at the Symposium Digital.Visual.Material., Carnegie Mellon University, May 2021.
  • “Of Volunteers, Vereine and Housewives: The Makers of Modern German Architecture.” Invited Lecture, ETH Zurich, April 2021.
  • “Gleichheit, Gemeinnützigkeit, Globaler Export: Das DIN Institut in der modernen Architektur.” Invited Lecture, ETH Zurich, March 2021.
  • “Architecture from the Karteikasten: Ernst Neufert's Total Systems of Order.” Invited Lecture, Center for Critical Studies in Architecture (CCSA), German Architecture Museum (DAM) Frankfurt, January 2020.
  • “Radical Pedagogies.” Invited Lecture at the Symposiums Architectures of Education at Nottingham Contemporary, November 2019.
  • “Scripting, Norming, Regulating: A Proto-Algorithmic Architecture History?” Invited lecture in the Research Seminar 1955-1961 Design and Languagues, Ecole Nationale Superiereure Paris-Saclay, Paris, May 2019.
  • “Radical Pedagogies: Radicalism versus Institutionality.” Invited lecture in the Testing University, HafenCity University Hamburg, January 2019.
  • Invited respondent for Lecture by Georg Vrachliotis in Media+Modernity Lecture Series, Princeton University, September 2018.
  • “Norm as Technology: The Systematization of Values in German Design.” Invited Panelist at the Symposium Parity Talks at the ETH Zurich, April 2018.
  • “Norm: Die Geschichte einer deutschen Tugend.” Invited Panelist at the Symposium “Pfusch” organized by Modern Talking e.V., München, February 2015.
  • “What can Schools Do?” Invited panelist at the Symposium Who Builds the City?, Ryerson University, Toronto, November 2014.
  • “On Architecture's Agency.” Invited lecture with Andrés Jaque, Archplus Berlin, September 2014.
  • “Formatting Modern Man: From Octametric System to Lebensgestaltungslehre.” Invited lecture at the symposium Neufert in Weimar, Bauhaus University Weimar, April 2014.
  • “Reconstruction and Repetition: The Difference of the Same (The Meisterhäuser in Dessau).” Invited seminar presentation, Bauhaus University, Weimar, April 2013.
  • “Radical Pedagogies. A Collaborative Project.” Invited lecture with B. Colomina and I. G. Galan, Architectural Association, London, April 2013.

KONFERENZBEITRÄGE | CONFERENCE PANELS AND PAPERS

  • “'From Slightly Above and Mostly Frontal': The Perspective of the Child in Ulm ca 1953.” Paper at the Meeting of the European Architectural Historian Network (EAHN), Glasgow, June 2020. more
  • “Paper(less) Architecture.” Paper at the symposium Vectors, Pixels, Algorithms, Architekturmuseum TU München, organized by Teresa Fankhänel, October 2019.
  • Meister, Anna-Maria. “'Architects and Housewives'.” Paper at the annual conference of the Society of Architecture Historians (SAH), Providence, April 2019.
  • Meister, Anna-Maria. “Timing Knowledge.” Panel-chair and respondent at the annual meeting of the History of Science Society (HSS) in Seattle, November 2018.
  • Meister, Anna-Maria. “Formatting Modern Man on Paper: Ernst Neufert’s Lehren.” Paper at the conference Learning by the Book. Princeton, June 2018.
  • Meister, Anna-Maria. “Models of Destruction.” Paper at the annual conference of the Society of Architecture Historians (SAH), Glasgow, April 2017.
  • Meister, Anna-Maria. “Ulm circa 1954: Finding the Right Maßstab for the Good Object.” Paper at the 13th International Bauhaus-Colloquium Dust and Data, Weimar, October 2016.
  • Meister, Anna-Maria. “Coded Architecture: The Paradox of Control.” Panel-chair at the annual conference of the Society of Architecture Historians (SAH), Pasadena, April 2016.
  • Meister, Anna-Maria. “Scalelessness ca. 1953: The Reconstruction of Order,” Media+Modernity Doctoral Colloquium, Princeton University, March 2016.
  • Meister, Anna-Maria. “Probing Technique: Building Research in Architecture’s Modernity.” Panel-chair, Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), Seattle, March 2016.
  • Meister, Anna-Maria. “Scripting a Safe, New World: the DIN Norm in Modern Architecture” (Accepted paper). Society of Architecture Historians (SAH), Chicago, April 2015.
  • Meister, Anna-Maria. “The Bureaucratic Avant-Garde: Norm-Making as Architectural Value Production.” Meeting of the European Architectural Historian Network (EAHN), Turin, June 2014.
  • Meister, Anna-Maria. “Formats of Desire: The Normenwerk of the DIN as Total System.” Paper at the 12th International Bauhaus-Colloquium Henry van de Velde and the Total Work of Art, Bauhaus University, Weimar April 2013.
  • Meister, Anna-Maria. “Radical Remoteness: The HfG Ulm as Institution of Dissidence.” Paper at the 9th AHRA Conference Architecture and the Paradox of Dissidenc, London, November 2012.
  • “Workflow.” Workshop led at the Max-Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, November 2017.
  • “From Personal Archive to Publication.” Workshop (co-organized with Sietske Fransen) at the Max-Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, June 2015.
  • Student Representative for the PhD Program, School of Architecture, Princeton University, 2011-2014.
  • Trust Us, Annual IHUM Symposium (co-organized), Princeton University, Fall 2014.
  • Rationalism and Rationality Between Technocracy and Poetics, Dialogues on European Cultural Studies (co-organized), Princeton University, Spring 2014.
  • Participant in the Third Annual Princeton-Weimar Summer School for Media Studies Thresholds, Bauhaus University Weimar, 2013.
  • Co-organizer, (Re-)Defining the Human: Modern Media & Subjectivity, Dialogues on European Cultural Studies (co-organized), Princeton University, Fall 2013.
  • Conversations on the Public, PhD Colloquium Series (co-organized), Princeton University, 2011-2012
  • “Radical Pedagogies. Action-Reaction-Interaction.” Installation at the 14th Architecture Biennale di Venezia Fundamentals (co-curated with B. Colomina, B. Eversole, E. Kotsioris, I. G. Galán, F. Vannucchi), Venice, May-November 2014.
  • “Radical Pedagogies. A (provisional) Cartography.” Installation at the 3rd Lisbon Architecture Close, Closer (co-curated with B. Colomina, I. G. Galán and E. Kotsioris), Lisbon, September 2013.
  • “The Secret Life of Plants.” Exhibition (co-curated with A. Acciavatti and J. Dolven) at Princeton University, 2013.
  • “Thesis Matter(s).” Exhibition and Media Installation (co-curated with Ignacio G. Galan, B. Eversole, F. Vannucchi), Princeton University, 2012.