N. (Nikos) Katsikis

N. (Nikos) Katsikis

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Biography

I am a Tenure Track Assistant Professor in the Urbanism Department, section of Urban Design. I hold a Doctoral degree from Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and degrees in Architecture and Spatial Design with highest distinction from the National Technical University of Athens.

My work lies at the intersection of urbanization theory, design, and geospatial analysis and my research seeks to contribute to a geographical understanding of the socio-metabolic relations between cities and their “operational landscapes:” non-city landscapes of primary production, circulation and waste disposal that support urban life. Before joining TU Delft, I was Postdoctoral researcher at the University of Luxembourg, where I worked on the establishment of a new Master program on Architecture, European Urbanization and Globalization; and Research Tutor at the Royal College of Arts, in London, where I helped develop a new program on Environmental Architecture with an emphasis of post-fossil extraction zones in South America. At Harvard GSD was also on the editorial board of the journal New Geographies, co-editor of New Geographies 06: Grounding Metabolism (Harvard University Press, 2014), and have served as Instructor in Urban Planning and Design.

My research ecosystem includes close collaborations with ETH-Zurich Future Cities Laboratory and with Urban Theory Lab, University of Chicago, where I work on long term projects investigating the historical and contemporary geographies of primary production with an emphasis on the food-energy nexus, and the social construction of geospatial knowledge on urbanization. My recent work includes contributions in Architectural Design (AD), Technospheres, Harvard Design Magazine, New Geographies and MONU; book chapters in Implosions / Explosions: Towards a Study of Planetary Urbanization (ed. Neil Brenner); Doing Global Urban Research (ed. Michael Hoyler); The Horizontal Metropolis (ed. Paola Vigano); the edited volume (with Joan Busquets) Manhattan: Grid for Ordering an Island, Positions on Emancipation (with Florian Hertweck); and the forthcoming book with N. Brenner, Is the world urban? Towards a Critique of Geospatial Ideology. Some of my work can be found on my personal website, Terra Urbis.

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