Contact
Leopoldstr. 11a, 4. OG, 421
80802 Munich
Room:
428
Email:
kim.forster@manchester.ac.uk
Website:
Personal Website
Kim Förster is an architectural historian, a senior lecturer in architectural studies at the Manchester School of Architecture, and member of the Manchester Architecture Research Group (MARG). Having a background in English and American studies, geography, and pedgagogy, he previously, from 2016 to 2018, was associate director of research at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montréal. His work focuses on knowledge and cultural production, as well as institutional and environmental history, with particular attention to issues of building transition in terms of the social metabolism, practices and policies of energy and material flows, and ways that they are debated and mediated. He is the author of Building Institution: The Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, New York 1967–1985 (transcript, 2024) and “Undisciplined Knowing: Writing Architectural History Through the Environment,” which appeared in Environmental Histories of Architecture (Canadian Centre for Architecture, 2022), a series of essays edited by Förster. His current research project investigates a global history of cement.
Selected Publications:
- “From ‘White Coal’ to Energy Futures: The Palimpsest of Swiss Energy Landscapes.” ISUP Papers, no. 1b (2025). https://www.isuppapers.ch/articles/from-white-coal-to-energy-futures-the-palimpsest-of-swiss-energy-landscapes.
- “A Gray Castle.” e-flux (2023). https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/accumulation/576407/a-gray-castle/.
- “The Kiln.” In Solarities: Elemental Encounters and Refractions, edited by Cymene Howe, Jeff Diamanti, and Amelia Moore. Punctum Books, 2023. https://doi.org/10.53288/0404.1.00.
- “Undisciplined Knowing: Writing Architectural History Through the Environment.” In Environmental Histories of Architecture, edited by Kim Förster. Canadian Centre for Architecture, 2022.
- “Triangular Stories: Cement as Cheap Commodity, Critical Building Material, and a Seemingly Harmless Climate Killer.” In Beyond Concrete: Strategies for a Post-Fossil Baukultur, edited by Annette Helle and Barbara Lenherr. Triest Verlag, 2022.