Dr Günter Gassner

Trosolwg

I am a Lecturer in Urban Design interested in a critical understanding of cities, space and architecture. My research is at the intersection of urban design and critical theory. Using a range of different methods (socio-spatial mapping, participant observation, interviews, discourse analysis, etc.) I explore relationships between aesthetics and politics, history and power, and urban visions and visualisations. I also investigate the political agency of architects, urban designers, and other design-related professionals in contemporary urbanisation processes. My work contributes to the fields of Radical and Urban Geography and combines empirical analyses with detailed discussions of theoretical concepts. I engage with the work of theorists who are commonly associated with the Frankfurt School including Benjamin, Adorno and Horkheimer and, more recently, with the work of Nietzsche, Foucault, Arendt, Rancière and Deleuze and Guattari. I currently work on a research monograph with the preliminary title ‘Ruined Skylines’. In this book I take issue with the widespread idea that commercial skyscrapers ruin historic skylines and show that this idea assumes an element of integrity that is ideological and which itself must be ruined. My aim is to 'politicise' the visual in order to open up a critical debate about the commodification and financialisation of the contemporary city.

I joined the School of Geography and Planning in September 2016 and previously taught at the University of the Arts London, Central Saint Martins and in the Sociology Department at the London School of Economics (LSE). I obtained a PhD from the LSE on the topic of Formalised Vision in the City and hold a Master in Architecture from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. I practiced as an architect in Vienna, Barcelona and in London for Foreign Office Architects (FOA) where I was project architect and leader of the office-internal high-rise unit. I worked on a comparative analysis of public spaces in London, Paris and Barcelona (sponsored by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates) and on a research project with Richard Sennett.