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Biography
Dr Katharina Borsi is Associate Professor at the University of Nottingham and the Deputy Director of Research Excellence of the Faculty of Engineering.
Katharina worked in architectural practice in Berlin and London. She taught in the Architectural Association Histories and Theories Programme and the Mackintosh School of Architecture before joining the Department at Nottingham. She has led the MArch Architecture (ARB/RIBA Part 2) and was instrumental in setting up a new Part 2 programme focussing on collaborative research with practice.
She holds appointments as External Examiner for the MPhil in Architecture and Urban Design (Projective Cities) Programme, Architectural Association; the MArch Architecture at Leeds Beckett University and the BArch Architecture at Sheffield Hallam University.
Katharina Borsi is part of the Architecture, Culture & Tectonics Research group.
Expertise Summary
Katharina's research and teaching focuses on urbanism and the history and theory of housing. She has published extensively in these areas, including The Berlin Tenement and the City (Routledge 2023), Housing and the City (Routledge 2022), Housing, Inhabitation and the City (Special Edition of the Journal Architecture and Culture No 10.3/ 2022) and Architectural Type and the Discourse of Urbanism (Special Edition Journal of Architecture 23:7-8 2018).
She is a frequent author, editor and reviewer in the Journal of Architecture and Architecture and Culture.
Katharina's has also been involved in EU and Innovate UK funded research projects on sustainable and resilient cities and sustainable community energy networks with case studies in Nottingham. Her expertise also includes urban design consultancies.
Teaching Summary
Katharina teaches architecture and urbanism, theory and design studio.
Research Summary
Katharina research focuses on the intersection between housing, domesticity, and the urban; the agency of architecture in urban transformation; and live/work, learning and innovation environments.… read more
Current Research
Katharina research focuses on the intersection between housing, domesticity, and the urban; the agency of architecture in urban transformation; and live/work, learning and innovation environments. She has lectured and published extensively on the history and theory of housing and urbanism in Berlin. She is also involved in EU and Innovate UK funded research projects on sustainable and resilient cities, and undertakes design research and urban design consultancies.
Past Research
Housing and the City
Housing and the City, edited by Katharina Boris, Didem Ekici, Jonathan Hale and Nick Haynes was published in June 2022. The book brings together essays from the Housing and the City conference ACT hosted in November 2020, iin which scholars from across the world to reflected on the historical and theoretical genealogy of question: what does it mean to be at home in the city in the twenty-first century, in an age of evolving social and work patterns, increased geographical mobility and climate concern? The conference attracted 125 speakers and 230 delegates, making it one of the largest of its kind; and saw contributions from over 20 different countries, delivering an unprecedented international reach.
For more information please follow this link:
https://www.routledge.com/Housing-and-the-City/Borsi-Ekici-Hale-Haynes/p/book/9781032156583
Housing and the City explores housing histories, theories, and projects in diverse geographies. It presents a geographically dispersed history of the twentieth-century modern housing project and its social diagram, juxtaposed with case studies from the past and the present that suggest that we can live and work differently.
While the contributions are diverse in their theoretical approach and geographical situation, their juxtaposition yields transversal connections in the conception of the home and the city and highlights the diversity of architectural solutions in the formation of housing and its communities. The collection also reveals architecture's contribution to the construction of the self and communities, the individual and the collective-as both urban spatial entities and socio-political concepts.
Housing and the City provides essential reading for students, academics, and practitioners interested in the history, theory, or current design of housing. At a time when cities are witnessing new ways of working, changing social demographics, increased geographical mobility, and mass migrations, as well as the pervasive threat of the climate crisis-all trends exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic-Housing and the City presents a historical and theoretical reflection on the question: what does it mean to be at home in the city in the twenty-first century?
She was the co-editor of the Journal of Architecture Special Edition Architectural Type and the Discourse of Urbanism (2018).
In 2018, Katharina held a research and teaching fellowship at the Chair for Architectural Theory, TU Berlin.
In 2017, she organised the symposium Building Knowledge Neighbourhoods, in collaboration with the AA, TU Berlin Chair Architectural Theory and Chair Urban Design. The symposium brought together academics and practitioners from Nottingham, Berlin and London to discuss new approaches to the design, planning, and servicing of crossover living and working environments; their range and programmatic diversity; their morphologies and densities as well as their relationship to mobility and a broader set of urban resources.