Prof. i.V. Wolfgang Rossbauer
Wolfgang Rossbauer (b. 1978) is an architect and professor. Starting in the winter semester of 2026, he will serve as an adjunct professor at KIT in the Department of Urbanism and Housing. His work focuses on the physical conditions of architecture and the question of how construction and operation affect the culture of use and, consequently, communal life.
After earning his diploma in architecture from ETH Zurich in 2005, Wolfgang Rossbauer founded his own firm in 2009. He has been teaching at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts since 2013; in 2019, he was a visiting professor at the Technical University of Munich. He views his teaching as a space where practical knowledge is generated through experimental practice. Using the “Research–Design–Build” format, he develops projects based on the investigation of materials and processes and tests them in built experiments: In Tanzania (2019–2022), he collaborated with students and architects Annika Seifert and Gunter Klix to build a Montessori school, around which a circular water supply system was developed and implemented. Through the “Circular Time Lab,” he is investigating the temporal dimension of circular timber construction over multiple cycles using real structures in the city of Lucerne. This approach is currently being continued in collaboration with the Technical University of Munich (TU Munich) as part of the “Building with Excavated Material” project.
His architectural practice is also characterized by structural experiments. In this work, Rossbauer explores how the material and climatic conditions of a site can give rise to structural principles and, from there, to architecture. At the ETH House of Science in Bamiyan (Afghanistan, 2007), the solidity of local mud bricks gave rise to a building with distinct climate zones. The “Balcony and Urban Greenery” project in Zurich (Switzerland, 2025) uses reused steel components for a green structure that cools an urban heat hotspot. In the “Hallertauer Haus” in Siegenburg (Germany, 2025), Rossbauer explores the use of mineral excavated material in vaulted structures, thereby demonstrating the direct structural application of a material that is typically treated as waste.
In 2013, he was awarded the Swiss Art Award for Architecture for his gravity-based structure “Equilibrium.”
“In teaching, I’m not interested in the vision of a successful future, but in the path to get there.”
