Staff

Carola Hein is Professor and Head, Chair History of Architecture and Urban Planning at Delft University of Technology. She trained in Hamburg (Diplom‑Ingenieurin) and Brussels (Architecte) and earned her doctorate at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg in 1995. She has published and lectured widely on topics in contemporary and historical architectural and urban planning—notably in Europe and Japan—and has authored several articles and books on capital city issues in Brussels, Strasbourg, Luxembourg, Berlin, and Tokyo. From 1995 to 1999 she was a Visiting Researcher at Tokyo Metropolitan University and Kogakuin University, focusing on the reconstruction of Japanese cities after World War II and the Western influence on Japanese urban planning. Among other major grants, in 2004, she held a grant by the Brussels-Capital Region Government to investigate the urban location and architectural expression of the European capital function. In 2005-06 she has been working with a grant from the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy for research on Regional integration and land policies affecting the future development of Tallinn, Warsaw, and Budapest. In 2007, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship to pursue research on The Global Architecture of Oil.With an Alexander von Humboldt fellowship she investigated large scale urban transformation in Hamburg in international context between 1842 and 2008. Her current interest is the study of international networks and the transmission of architectural and urban ideas along these networks, focusing specifically on port cities and the global architecture of oil.

Carola Hein has authored The Capital of Europe. Architecture and Urban Planning for the European Union (Praeger, 2004), and has edited Port Cities: Dynamic Landscapes and Global Networks London: Rutledge 2011; (with Pierre Laconte (eds,)) Brussels: Perspectives on a European Capital. Brussels: Publication of the Foundation for the Urban Environment, 2007. Bruxelles l’Européene: Capitale de qui? Ville de qui?/ European Brussels. Whose capital? Whose city? Brussels: Cahiers de la Cambre-Architecture n 5, Brussels: La Lettre Volée, 2006; (with Philippe Pelletier (eds.)). Cities, Autonomy and Decentralization in Japan. London: Routledge, 2006/2009: (with Jeffry Diefendorf, and Yorifusa Ishida (eds.)), Rebuilding Urban Japan after 1945. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. She has also published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals, books, and magazines.

Everhard Korthals-Altes has been teaching Art History at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Technology in Delft since 2005. The (international) reception and collecting of Dutch seventeenth- and eighteenth-century painting, and the boundaries between art and architecture (e.g. the representation of architecture in Dutch seventeenth- and eighteenth-century art) are his fields of special interest.

Current research includes the project: The visualization of Architecture and Urbanism in the Arts between 1600 and 1800. Community pride and urban identity culminate in streets, squares and monumental buildings. They act as a dynamic billboard that addresses citizens and visitors alike: they represent what the city (or powerful factions within the citizenry) wishes to represent. These representative qualities are greatly enhanced by the use of the visual arts which depicted the city’s most important public spaces and representative buildings. Similar illustrations often embellished maps of the city. The visual arts condensed the representative qualities of the cityscape as well as providing it with a public not necessarily living in the city - this, obviously, was the case with artistic work which could be reproduced, such as engravings.

Reinout Rutte (Roelofarendsveen 1972) is an urban and architectural historian. He studied history of architecture at the Free University in Amsterdam and historical geography at the University of Amsterdam, where he also finished his PhD thesis Stedenpolitiek en stadsplanning in de Lage Landen (12de-13de eeuw) [Urban politics and city planning in the Low Countries, 12^th-13^th centuries]. He has published and edited several articles and books about the history of the city and urbanism in The Netherlands, and about the making and mapping of the Dutch landscape. After his PhD-research at the University of Amsterdam he worked at the Netherlands Institute for Spatial Research (RPB, The Hague) on the book Tussenland [Shadowland]. Since 2004 he has been an assistant professor at the Chair History of Architecture and Urban Planning at the Faculty of Architecture of the Delft University of Technology. In 2016 he published the Atlas of the Dutch Urban Landscape. A Millennium of Spatial Development.

Tino Mager studied media technology in Leipzig and art history and communication science in Berlin, Barcelona and Tokyo; 2004 graduate engineer (Diplom), 2009 Magister Artium. In 2015 he received his PhD at the Institute for Art and Historical Urban Studies of the TU Berlin with the thesis "Schillernde Unschärfe - der Begriff der Authentizität im architektonische Erbe“. The dissertation was funded by an Elsa Neumann Fellowship and was awarded the interdisciplinary Tiburtius Prize (1st prize) for outstanding dissertations. He completed research stays in Japan and at the University of California, Los Angeles and was a lecturer at the Technical University of Berlin and the ITU Istanbul. Subsequently, scientific assistant at the Chair of History and Theory of Architecture at the TU Dortmund and postdoctoral fellow of the Leibniz Association. Since 2017 he has been a postdoc at the Chair of History of Architecture and Urban Planning at the TU Delft.

Tino's main interests include heritage conservation and cultural heritage theory. In addition, he has published on post-war modernist architecture and its preservation, on Japanese architecture and the transnational education of artists in the 19th century. As part of the ArchiMediaL project, he is working on the development of methods for the use of artificial intelligence in architectural historical research. 

Drs.ir. Charlotte van Wijk (Rotterdam, 1974) is employed at the Chair of History of Architecture & Urban Planning of the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at TU Delft. Her activities include the curatorship of some of the faculty’s teaching collections, among which the Chair Collection is the most prominent. This involvement with collections provided as a central research theme the use of collections in education. Her educational activities include tutoring of thesis papers on various subjects derived from the collections, promoting their use in education and research.

Alankrita Sarkar is currently pursuing her Ph.D. journey at TU Delft within the Department of Architecture, History of Architecture and Urban Planning, under the guidance of Prof. Carola Hein. The research is also associated with Institute of Social Studies at Erasmus University and supported by Resilient Delta and the Deltametropolis Association. Her research positions deltas among the most resource rich and environmentally dynamic ecosystems. The transnational delta between Rotterdam and Antwerp, characterised by extensive ecological and economic history stands as a compelling example. The research explores the changing relationships over history between the sea and land, humans and non-human, environmental, social and economy. Aiming towards strengthening the transnational estuarine landscape values, whilst enhancing the interplay between nature-port-city-society through co-design processes between formal and informal planning procedures.

Apart from her role at TU Delft, Alankrita serves as a Research Program Coordinator at Deltametropolis Association. She has been working with the Association since last 6 years and have been leading international/European projects and programs. Her role is to bridges the gap between research and practice, positioning the Netherlands in the European planning and emphasising cross-border thematic development focused on transitions and climate urgencies. Her interest lies in understanding the spatial design and planning systems in relation with governance, contributing to the advancement of spatial planning and design in delta territories. She has been committed for knowledge exchange and capacity building in the Netherlands, Eurodelta and Europe, learning from international networks about climate actions, planning strategies, and cross-sectoral and cross-border cooperation.

Shaping of urban imagery in Tehran through architectural and urban competitions based on government decisions before and after the revolution of 1979.

City imagery of many urban cities is connected to the architectural competitions, which have been held during different political systems. The focus of this research is the city of Tehran, the Iranian capital, wherein the impact of the government’s decisions for the city imagery of Tehran is visible on many architectural elements. This research is a compilation of various methods that examines the role and value of the architectural and urban competitions throughout the history of modernization in Tehran comparing the two periods of before and after the 1979 revolution.  This research will demonstrate the effect of political changes on the urban design and the urban imagery in Tehran.

Research Methodology:  The methodology of the thesis will be as follows:

1. Investigating the two case studies of competitions during the Pahlavi dynasty (Last kingdom in Iran,  1925-1979):
   1. Azadi Tower- an open competition; 1971
   2. Abbas Abbad Tehran City Center, Kahn’s and Tange’s project – a closed competition;  1950s - 70's
2. Investigating the two case studies of replacements for UI by new methodology of competitions during Islamic republic era (after the 1979 revolution);
   1.  Milad Tower- a closed competition; 1999-2008
   2. Abassabad City Center – several small competitions; 1980’s and 90s
3. Comparison of the two eras (before and after 1979 revolution) and the effect of political changes on the urban design and the urban imagery in Tehran.

In the last 50 years, the discovered oil flow in China shaped the built environment (urban form and architecture) and lifestyle. Compared to other countries the Chinese petroleum landscape is particular, due to its political and historical issues. Before 1988, the entire Chinese petroleum industry was organized by the central government, the Petroleum Ministry, and local oil committee. Oilfields were discovered and petroleum chemical industries were launched according to the Zeitgeist: striving for national oil independence. In 1988, the Petroleum Ministry was reorganized by the China National Petroleum Corporation, China National Offshore Oil Corporation, and China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation. Chinese petroleumscapes were partly reshaped by market influence. Now, the central government and the major three corporations intertwined together to push the development of oil industry and influence the petroleumscape.

Firstly, this research explores the evolution of the physical presences of Chinese petroleumscapes from the following viewpoints: in which manner the Chinese petroleumscape evolved by the government intersecting oil industry, to which extent the Soviet urban planning ideas influenced the Chinese petroluemscape in 1960s, and how the petroleumscape transformed after the reorganization of the administrations. In the past 50 years, numerous physical presences of oil were constructed, such as oil industrial facilities including refinery factories, oil tanks, pipelines, etc; oil headquarters, research centres, industrial ancillary facilities including hospitals, museums, and open spaces etc; and retail facility-gas stations. These facilities were planned in the cluster around the oilfields or oil-ports for easy management and efficient work. This study argues the clusters as Petropolis, because they share the regional oil infrastructures and facilities even human resources. Before 1988 the settlements of the Petropolis shifted according to the national policies. After the reorganization of oil administration, the settlements were influenced by the national policies and market.

Secondly, this research examines the transformation of mental presences of Chinese petroleumscapes from the following aspects: to which extent the Chinese petroleum mental presence was organized, how the shift of administration influenced the mental presence, and what were the changes in lifestyle. In the 1960s and 1970s, the mental presence of the Chinese petroleumscape was mainly imaginative, to promote Daqing as a study model for all Chinese industrial cities and evoke national striving for industrial development. Central government and local committees commissioned numerous artists to create paintings and photographs with the images of dedicated oil worker models or the panorama of the oil industry. These images were drawn on the walls, cited in books, and even printed on the daily commodities. After the reorganization, the mental presence tended to become more similar to other countries. The three major corporations are presented on signboards, TV shows, etc.

Planning historians explore urban structures, cultural historians study the actuality of oil, and historians of the built environment examine the regional oil influence and oil's physical presence. This research will explore these views in context.