UTSA’s College of Architecture presents first-ever guest lecturer from China, Erhard An-He Kinzelbach
By Nicole Chavez

Knowspace founder Erhard An-He Kinzelbach, a licensed architect in Austria and Germany who is currently a professor at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, will present the fourth and final installment of the UTSA College of Architecture’s Fall Lecture Series. Associated with the rising generation of Asian architects who have been trained in the West, Kinzelbach operates internationally and will be the COA's first-ever guest lecturer from China. His lecture, “Differentiation and Repetition—Recent Projects,” will be held at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 30 in the Aula Canaria, Buena Vista Bldg. #1.328, on the UTSA Downtown Campus.

Kinzelbach studied architecture and urbanism at top schools, attending Darmstadt University of Technology in Germany, ETH Zurich in Switzerland, and Columbia University in New York. He received a Dipl.-Ing. in Architecture and Urbanism with distinction from TU Darmstadt and a Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia, where he graduated with honors. After earning his degree at Columbia, Kinzelbach worked on the Bundle Tower project (New World Trade Center, New York) as a Project Designer for Foreign Office Architects, then became a Project Architect for the Office for Metropolitan Architecture’s New York office.

In 2004, Kinzelbach founded Knowspace Architecture + Cities. A New York-based studio for practice and research on architecture and cities, Knowspace understands its role as that of a moderator and organizer of the complex interactions between cultural, political, economic, and material forces and the multiple agents that determine a project. In this sense, the studio acts more as competent trans-disciplinary generalists than as narrowly specialized experts. Kinzelbach also served as an Assistant Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in the Institute for Art and Architecture from 2004 to 2008 before joining the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou in 2010.

A globally practicing architect who has strong ties to the modern architectural culture in influential eastern cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, Kinzelbach’s substantial professional work has often focused on societal and cultural issues. He served as the Director of the China Academy of Art’s research team for Sustainable Neighborhoods, a recent global project in which BMW i (BMW’s new, all-electric sub-brand) and Wallpaper magazine explored how design and technology will keep the megacities of the future moving. BMW i and Wallpaper provided funding to six universities in major international cities, asking student teams to envision the future of mass transit and the urban streetscape which it will serve. Kinzelbach also has experience working on elderly housing projects in Austria. In the fall of 2010 he was a speaker at the New Aging Conference, hosted by the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design, where he presented his innovative architectural solutions for the rapidly growing over-65 population