Baerbel Mueller & Juergen Strohmayer

9TH NOVEMBER 2021

Baerbel Mueller is an architect and researcher based in Austria and Ghana. She is Associate Professor at the Institute of Architecture (IoA) at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, and head of [applied] Foreign Affairs, a lab which investigates spatial, environmental and cultural phenomena in rural and urban Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. She is founder of nav_s baerbel mueller [navigations in the field of architecture and urban research within diverse cultural contexts], which has focused on projects located on the African continent since 2002. Her work comprises architecture, urban research, installations, scenography, and curatorial projects, and has been widely shown; e.g. at the Venice Architecture Biennale, Marrakech Biennial, the Architekturmuseum Pinakothek Munich, AzW, and the Vienna Biennale. She was awarded the Austrian Ars Docendi State Award for excellence in teaching (2015), edited [applied] Foreign Affairs - investigation spatial phenomena in rural and urban Sub-Saharan Africa (Birkhäuser, 2017) and Structures of Displacement (Birkhäuser, 2020), co-designed Nubuke Extended, in Accra (2019), and co-curated Ecologies & Politics of the Living (Vienna Biennale 2021). She is co-editor of forA on the urban (2021-). From October 2021 onward she is appointed dean of the IoA.

Juergen Strohmayer is an architect based in Accra, Ghana, and Vienna, Austria. His work is informed by practice, research, and teaching, conducted in collaborative settings. After working with architectural offices in London, Los Angeles, Vienna, and Abidjan, Strohmayer is developing his independent practice. He recently completed the widely-published project Nubuke Extended, an art gallery and campus in Accra in collaboration with nav_s baerbel mueller. Strohmayer lectured at the Ethiopian Institute for Architecture, Building Construction, and City Development (EiABC) and the University of Applied Arts Vienna, where he graduated in 2015. He has exhibited at Acadia in LA (2014), Goethe Institut Addis Ababa (2016), and the Marrakech Biennale (2016). He is a recipient of the Tische Scholarship and Austrian state grants. In 2019 he co-edited the publication [a]FA East Legon Past Forward.