Madeleine Kessler (MEng.(hons) AADipl. ARB RIBA) is an architect, curator and urban designer dedicated to designing joyful people-centred places. She is a founding Director at Unscene Architecture, Madeleine Kessler Architecture and co-curator of The Garden of Privatised Delights, the British Pavilion at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale. Her practice explores architecture as a conversation about the city at every scale, with a particular focus on cultural infrastructure and public space, placing community, craft and placemaking at the heart of design. Projects include Hidden Half World at the Oslo Architecture Triennale; Gingerbread City; Nature’s Architects; and Forestation, a strategic proposal to rewild existing railway stations across the UK.

As Wüstenrot Stiftung Visiting Professor at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Madeleine leads the masters studio “Filling the Void: the death and life of the great European high street”. The studio explores performance-led design as an opportunity to test and re-imagine our town and city centres so that they can become places for everyone. It looks at the role of the architect as someone who is both a designer and facilitator of events and conversations that can bring communities and stakeholders together to understand what a place can become.
 

www.madeleinekessler.com

Madeleine Kessler was one of four guest professors of the Wüstenrot Foundation who will complement the courses of the Master's degree programme in Architecture for one semester each from the winter semester 2021/22 to the summer semester 2023 with relevant and responsible contributions to the major social challenges for building in the present and the future.