Image: Ruby Richter, Helena Bänsch & Laura Waterstradt: "Digital Map, Manheim-Alt" (Working Title, Work in Progress, Seminar: Performing Landscapes, C.Condorelli/H.König, WiSe 2025/26).
GUEST LECTURE BY PHILIP URSPRUNG Erdgeschichten/Earth Histories: Robert Smithson
THURSDAY, 15 January 2026 18:00, HfG Karlsruhe, Lichtbrücke
Moderation: Prof. Dr. Nina Zschocke und Hanne König
Philip Ursprung (https://ursprung.arch.ethz.ch/) studied art history, history and German language and literature in Geneva, Vienna and Berlin and received his doctorate from the Free University of Berlin in 1993 and his habilitation from ETH Zurich in 1999. He has taught at the HdK Berlin, Columbia University New York, Cornell University, the Barcelona Institute of Architecture and the Universities of Geneva and Basel. From 2005-2011 he was Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of Zurich. Since 2011, he has been Professor of Art and Architectural History at ETH Zurich. 2017-2019 he was Head of the Department of Architecture. Since 2024, he has been Head of the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture.
Philip Ursprung is editor of Herzog & de Meuron: Natural History (2002), co-editor of Gordon Matta- Clark: An Archival Sourcebook (2022). He is author of Robert Smithson, Allan Kaprow, and the Limits to Art (2013), Die Kunst der Gegenwart: 1960 bis heute (2010), Der Wert der Oberfläche: Essays zu Kunst, Architektur und Ökonomie (2017), Joseph Beuys: Kunst, Kapital, Revolution (2021)and Die Architektur der Gegenwart: 1970 bis heute (2025). In 2017, he was awarded the Prix Meret Oppenheim by the Federal Office of Culture. In 2023, together with Karin Sander, he represented Switzerland with the exhibition Neighbors at the 18th Venice Architecture Biennale.
This lecture takes place in the context of the seminar ‚Performing Landscapes‘.
