about
meet our team and collaborators...
About Us
The Curatorial Research Collective (CRC) is an interdisciplinary research and design group that critically engages with the theories and practices of architecture culture, questioning their multiple discourses and broader societal frameworks. While our collective research endeavour is varied—ranging from exhibitions and archives to the digital and physical space of institutions, from biennials to themed environments, we operate with the conviction that thinking is collective, and that the culture of what is curatorial is in permanent flux. Embedded within the chair of Architecture History and Theory at the Department of the Built Environment at TU Eindhoven, the CRC is directed by dr. Sergio M. Figueiredo and supported by Prof. Emeritus Bernard Colenbrander.
Enacting both practical and theoretical approaches through research, exhibitions, and public programs since 2016, the CRC’s research projects have been presented, among others, at the Dutch Design Week, CASA Vertigo at TU/e, Shunck, the VAI/deSingel, Het Nieuwe Instituut, and the Spitzer School of Architecture at CUNY.
Our Team
Sergio M. Figueiredo
director
Sergio M. Figueiredo is an author, curator and architect. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Architecture History and Theory at TU Eindhoven. Previously, as a Fulbright scholar, he completed a doctoral dissertation at UCLA in Los Angeles, where he also collaborated with CityLAB, UCLA’s urban think tank, and was a founding member of the curatorial group Hi-C. He has curated several architecture exhibitions, including more recently Eindhoven Eight (2016) and CampusPlan (2017). He has also contributed to many publications, from Places and ARQ, to DomusWeb and Volume, as well as guest-editing OASE 99. His first book, The NAi Effect: Creating Architecture Culture, was published in 2016 by nai010.
Bernard Colenbrander
Emeritus doctoral advisor
Bernard Colenbrander is Professor of Architecture History and Theory at TU Eindhoven. In the 1980s and 90s, he worked for the Nederlands Architectuurinstituut (NAi), eventually as head-curator. His publications include Stijl: Norm en Handschrift in de Nederlandse Architectuur (1993), Reference: OMA, The Sublime Start of an Architectural Generation (1995), De Verstrooide Stad (1999, dissertation), Frans van Gool: Leven en Werk (2005), Limes Atlas (2005, in collaboration with MUST) and De Kroon: Een Europese Wolkenkrabber (2012, in collaboration with Christian Rapp). Most recently he published Nederlandse Kunst in de Wereld (2015, in collaboration with Ton Bevers, Johan Heilbron and Nico Wilterdink) and David Chipperfield: The Embedded Nomad (2016, in collaboration with Christian Rapp).
Ali T. As’ad
doctoral researcher
Ali T. As’ad is a researcher and architect whose work seeks to interrogate the cognitive role and linguistic agency of architecture; shifting its determination from within the affirmative realm of the built project and communicating it as a system beyond physical construct. He has collaborated within a number of academic, arts, and architecture practices and institutions across Egypt, India, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, the U.K., and the U.S.; and has had his work featured at the World Architecture Festival in Singapore, the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Chicago Athenaeum, and the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism 2017 and 2019.
Emilie Banville
Doctoral Researcher
Emilie Banville is a Montreal-based architect currently pursuing a double doctorate in Museology at the Université du Québec à Montréal and in Architectural History and Theory at TU Eindhoven. Her research focuses on archival practices that challenge knowledge production in the curatorial field of architecture. She is a member of the transdisciplinary research unit CELAT – Cultures, Arts, Societies at UQAM, where she also is a research assistant for the Heritage Institute. Emilie is also coordinator for the peer-reviewed magazine Muséologies: Les cahiers d’études supérieures, and secretary of the board of directors of Portrait Sonore, a non-profit cultural organization that produces immersive podcast documentaries about Canadian cities and their urban fabric. She previously worked as an architect at Provencher Roy and atelier Luc Laporte from 2010 to 2016. Afterwards, she completed a second master’s in Museology in 2018, following an internship at the Flanders Architecture Institute (VAI).
Galo Canizares
Doctoral Researcher
Galo Canizares is a designer, writer, and educator currently researching the sociotechnical networks of relations between design’s softwarization and the architectural imagination. He was the recipient of the 2016-17 LeFevre ’29 Emerging Practitioner Fellowship, and in 2018 was awarded the Christos Yessios Visiting Professorship at The Ohio State University. His writings have been published in various journals and he is the author of Digital Fabrications: Designer Stories for a Software-Based Planet, a collection of essays on software and design published by Applied Research & Design. His collaborative architectural practice, office ca, won the 2018 Ragdale Ring competition. He is currently an assistant professor of architecture at the University of Kentucky College of Design, where he directs the Critical Software Lab.
Catja Edens
doctoral researcher
Catja Edens is an architectural historian based in Rotterdam. She teaches Architectural History at Delft Technical University and the ArtEZ Academy for Architecture, as well as writing and applied research at the Academy for Architecture in Rotterdam (RAvB) where she is also a member of the Educational Committee. From 2018 to 2021 she has been a research fellow at the Future Urban Regions (FUR) collective. Also she is a board member of the EFL foundation that supports academic research and special projects in the field of urban planning and landscape architecture. Edens works as a writer, researcher, moderator and teacher, collaborating with architectural offices, young design talent, cultural institutions, universities and ministries. She has published many articles and books – recently focusing on the topic of women in architectural history.
Anna-Viktoria Eschbach
doctoral researcher
Anna-Viktoria Eschbach is a German-Hungarian curator and writer who has been active in China for almost a decade, developing projects that stimulate dialogue and experimentation between creative disciplines and cultures. She has been working on projects for documenta fifteen, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Artspace Sydney, CAFAM Beijing, and the Ludwig Museum Budapest. From 2014 – 2020 she built up the curatorial office and residency program, I: project space, in Beijing around topics of urbanization, gender concepts in the Asia Pacific, independent space practice, new media, and digital art. From 2015 to 2022, she was working on the long-term curatorial research platform Beijing22, documenting Greater Beijing’s urban transformation. As part of the Swiss Chinese publishing house tria, she has published numerous books around art, theory, urban development, and China. Anna has received grants from Getty Foundation, Deutsche Bank, and Forum Scientiarum, and has had residencies at Artspace, Sydney and nBK, Berlin.
Michael Forero
doctoral researcher
Michael Andrés Forero Parra is a Colombian architect and museologist. Before joining the CRC as a Guest PhD-student, he previously completed a Bachelor of Architecture with a Minor of Fine Arts at Universidad de los Andes and a Master of Arts, with Merit, in Art Museum and Gallery Studies at the University of Leicester. Michael was the project manager for the Museum of Memory in Bogota and the co-founder of Museo Q. Recently, he published in OASE 99 and Museum Activism. Michael has received grants from the Getty Foundation, the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Tate Modern, the Smithsonian NMAAHC, amongst others.
Jorn Konijn
doctoral researcher
Jorn Konijn is an architecture & design curator and writer based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He curated several exhibitions, such as Unsolicited Architecture for the International Architecture Biennale of Sao Paulo 2011, the award-winning Housing with a Mission exhibition for the Urbanism & Architecture Bi-City Biennale of Hong Kong and Shenzhen 2011. In 2013 he was curator for the overall Urbanism & Architecture Bi-City Biennale of Hong Kong and Shenzhen 2013. In 2015, he was appointed as curator of the 5th Brazilian Design Biennial. He remained working in Brazil as curator for the official Dutch cultural program during the Olympic Games Rio de Janeiro 2016, a month long multi-disciplinary exchange project entitled Hobra. Currently, he is a curator at the Dutch Design Foundation in Eindhoven.
Simon Rabyniuk
doctoral researcher
Simon Rabyniuk is an architectural researcher and designer based in Toronto. He currently serves as a lecturer at Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. His research and teaching develop historical and theoretical perspectives about technology and urbanization. From 2010-2015 he was principal at the research, art, and design studio Department of Unusual Certainties, where he actively exhibited, published, and developed innovative public engagement events. His individual and collaborative work has been exhibited across Canada, as well as at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2012), Shenzhen Biennale (2014), and the Seoul Biennale (2018). He holds a professional graduate degree in Architecture from the University of Toronto (2019) where he was the recipient of multiple awards.
Cassim Shepard
doctoral researcher
Cassim Shepard is an urbanist based in New York City. His video work has been exhibited at venues including the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Museum of the City of New York, the United Nations, the Pavillon de l’Arsenale (Paris), the African Centre for Cities (Cape Town), and the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. His writing on cities has appeared in Next City, Places, Domus, Public Culture, Strangers Guide, and others. He was the founding editor-in-chief of Urban Omnibus, an online publication of The Architectural League of New York, and he has taught urbanism at Columbia University, the London School of Economics, and the University of Illinois at Chicago. His first book, Citymakers: The Culture and Craft of Practical Urbanism, was published by Monacelli Press in 2017.
Britte Sloothaak
doctoral researcher
Britte Sloothaak is an art historian and curator and holds a position as Curator of Contemporary Art and Public Programs at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. She is responsible for the museum’s autonomous lecture series and curates shows. She has a background in art sociology (Erasmus University of Rotterdam), contemporary art (VU University Amsterdam) and museum curating (VU and University of Amsterdam). In Rotterdam she produced shows at the Netherlands Architecture Institute and the International Architecture Biennale. Her research focuses on transhistorical and translocal relationships in museum histories, with a special interest in the history between Indonesia and the Netherlands in relation to the Stedelijk Museum (Tempo Doeloe? Kunstenaars, guerillastrijders en spijbelaars, 2018).
Saskia van Stein
doctoral researcher
Saskia van Stein is an independent curator, moderator, and as educator she’s the Head of The Critical Inquiry Lab at The Design Academy in Eindhoven. She was Director at Bureau Europa, platform for architecture and design, in Maastricht (2013–2019). Van Stein worked as a curator at the Netherlands Architecture Institute (now Het Nieuwe Instituut) in Rotterdam (2003–2012). Over the course of her career she has curated over seventy exhibitions, while also contributing to numerous panel discussions and symposia further engaging with the development of cultural discourse and its production. She’s a board member of multiple advisory committees, involved in several juries and advisory bodies, chair of the board of The Independent School for the City and in the supervisory board of the architectural journal OASE.
Justin Agyin
associate Researcher
Justin Agyin graduated cum laude from Eindhoven University of Technology in 2019 and has been one of the founding members of the CRC team since late 2016. He is currently involved in the project Eindhoven School Revisited. Concurrently, he is a teacher for Second Year Design Studios at TU/e’s Department of the Built Environment and has previously collaborated with the department’s exhibition committee CASA Vertigo as well as with Eindhoven based public art gallery Onomatopee, where he co-curated and produced several exhibitions. In addition, he has been a Commissioner of Public Relations as board member of AnArchi, a student-association for Architecture, where he co-organized the lecture series Making Architecture. Furthermore, he has been editor-in-chief for the built environment magazine Chepos and for the architecture journal Archiprint.
Vincent van Spaendonk
Curatorial Assistant
Vincent van Spaendonk (1998) is a Master student of Architecture at the Eindhoven University of Technology and is curatorial assistant at the Curatorial Research Collective since late 2020. He is currently involved in the design and curation of a retrospective exhibition dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the department’s exhibition program CASA Vertigo. In addition to his work at the CRC, Vincent is currently a writer and editor for the faculty’s architecture journal Archiprint.
Past Collaborators
Farah Abdullaa
Evelien Abels
Sahin Akyol
Lennart Arpots
Marijn Bax
Matteo Basso
Celine Böhmer
Judith de Blok
Lars Breukelaar
Romano Bruining
Kapilan Chandranesan
Hagar El Frargy
Jerin Emmen
Richard Frankhuizen
Nina van Geffen
Rim Gelissen
Adam Gill
Giulia Giust
Philip Groeneveld
Daniëlle Grolleman
Ryuki Han
Jelle Heersink
Thomas Hoeven
Hratc Hovanisian
Lennart Jacobs
Sem Joosten
Hanna Jurkowska
Robin Kaijser
Mark Kanters
Paul Kersten
Arghavan Khaefi
Victoria Klug
Boris Koselka
Christian Lang
Paul Lerooy
Stefanie Li
Shilong Liang
Sona Minarechova
Warhel Mohammed
Owais Mohaqeq
Gulce Onganer
Giulia Romanin
Tom Schoonwater
Agnieszka Schulte-Ladbeck
Noah Shirley
Dario Sposini
Merijn Sprangers
Thijs van Tetering
Renée Thierij
Luuk Thijssen
Mitchell Walda
Nick van de Werdt