Kristin Feireiss
Kristin Feireiss (*1942) of Berlin, Germany, is an architecture curator, writer, and editor. She studied art history and philosophy at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt. In 1980, she founded (with Helga Retzer, † 1984) the independent Aedes Architecture Forum in Berlin as the first private architecture gallery in Europe. Since 1994 she has led this international platform in partnership with Hans-Jürgen Commerell and presented over 350 exhibitions and accompanying catalogues. Together with Commerell she also initiated the ANCB The Aedes Metropolitan Laboratory in 2009, which was awarded the German Innovation Prize in 2010 for innovative, progressive and cosmopolitan work.
About Aedes
The Location
The Aedes Team
Aedes in the Press
The Protagonists
Aedes Broschure (PDF, 2MB)
Feireiss' work deepens understanding of international architecture and urban development including the cultural, social and economic factors involved. Commissioned by the cities of Berlin and Paris she developed in 1989 the internationally successfully urban design exhibition Paris - Architecture and Utopia. As director of the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi) from 1996 to 2001, she brought greater attention to the transformative processes affecting cities and has carried out groundbreaking research in this area.
Distinctions
Feireiss received the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal
Republic of Germany in 2001 for her international engagement with
architecture.
She was commissioner of the Dutch Pavilion at the
Architecture Biennale in Venice in 1996 and 2000;
and a 2012 member of
the International Jury for the Architecture Biennale in Venice.
Together
with Hans-Jürgen Commerell she developed the Zumtobel Group Award:
Innovation for Sustainability and Humanity in the Built Environment in
2006 that she curates until this day.
She received an honorary doctorate
from the Wilhelmina University Braunschweig,
and was appointed as a
member of the European Cultural Parliament in 2007.
Kristin Feireiss was
further honored in 2013 with the Knight in the Order of the Netherlands
Lion for her special achievements in the cultural field of architecture
and her lifetime service.
In 2016 she was awarded as Honorary Fellow of
the Royal Institute of British Architects
and received the Austrian
Honorary Cross for Science and Culture.
Between 2013 and 2017 she has been a member
of the jury of the Pritzker Architecture Prize and since
2017
Honorary Member of the Architecture Association of Germany, BDA, Berlin.
2018 she became Member of the Advisory
Board of Berlin International University of Applied Science as well as
Member of the Board of
Trustees of the” Stiftung Exilmuseum Berlin”
In 2019 she was a jury member of the Russian Biennale of
Young Architects, Kazan
Publications
Feireiss has edited numerous price-winning monographs and thematic
volumes on international architecture and urban context. Central to her
work is the relationship between men and architecture as well as the
city as a social space and the creative potential of the informal.
The
publication accompanying the exhibition of the same name Blank.
Architecture, Apartheid and After (1998) at the NAi offered as one of
the first a fundamental research on architecture and urbanism in South
Africa.
The exhibition and publication Japan: Towards Totalscape (2001)
provided an extensive analysis of contemporary architecture, urban-and
landscape design in Japan.
With the book Informal City: Caracas
Case (2005) Feireiss opened up the discussion on modes of urban
informality in Europe.
Her recent books include Transforming Cities.
Urban Interventions in Public Space (2015), which pursues the question
of how individual projects not only stand out within the complexity of
urban structures but can also bring about long-lasting change.
As well
as Architecture in Times of Need (2009), which highlights innovative,
sustainable, affordable housing to redevelop New Orleans' Lower Ninth
Ward, after Hurricane Katrina.
Feireiss also co-edited two volumes of
Architecture of Change: Sustainability and Humanity in the Built
Environment (2008 & 2009). These books feature outstanding
sustainable architecture and social initiatives and underscores how
architects must address issues of sustainability and social justice in
public buildings, housing and city planning.
She furthermore published
her family history in German language entitled Wie ein Haus aus Karten.
Die Neckermanns. Meine Familiengeschichte (2012).