Architecturewriter

On Tuesday, November 3rd I will join the RCC students and staff for their Tuesday Discussion to talk about the Landshuter Bauminitiative. Date: 3 November 2026, 4:30 pm - 5:45 pm Location: Rachel Carson Center, fourth floor, Conference Room, Leopoldstr. 11a, 80802 Munich, Germany The Landshuter Bauminitiative (LBI) is a grassroots initiative focused on the urban ecology of Landshut in Lower Bavaria. Active since 2014, they focus on the role of trees in climate-proofing the city. The members are urbanists, landscape architects, professional consultants, and speakers of neighborhood groups. The LBI partners with municipal authorities to jointly fund urban greening measures. The Tuesday Discussions are free and open to the public. Link: https://www.sprachlit.lmu.de/carsoncenter/en/events-and-news/event/tuesday-discussion-with-mark-kammerbauer-landshuter-bauminitative-19f8b76e.html

Resilience: Did you ever use the word and wonder what it actually means? Truth is, it means many things to many different people. Personally? Stress is all around us and it is worthwhile to ask, if I change something, will stress go away? Think of the variables, the things you can adapt to let the stress pass, and keep the invariables. Socially? It means engaging with the people affected by stress in order to figure out a consensus on which variables can be adapted and which can't, in a manner that integrates different perspectives. For planners, I looked at the term, its various meanings, and its interrelations with other key planning topics, sustainability and vulnerability. The essay was published five years ago; I need to translate it for upcoming talks, and I need to amend it (with insights from the Memorandum Urbane Resilienz and related policy documents). Until then, here is the preprint of the version published by Topos in 2021. Planners aim at making cities and their popul...

One might think that settling wherever one desires corresponds to the American dream of shaping one’s own destiny. Tragically, this dream is fragmented by the structural inequality that pervades US society, resulting in unequal opportunity and uneven development. This becomes a matter of life and death in a disaster and shapes who can respond and recover and who can’t. The 2020 California wildfires are a case in point, compounded by the coronavirus pandemic. How did institutional modernization within a postmodern urbanized region facilitate this disaster, and what can be done to remedy such a perfect storm? Wildfires rage in California and its neighboring states time and again. Since climate change contributes to an increase in the frequency and intensity of these wildfires, more communities are impacted in heavier ways and more firefighters need to be on duty for longer periods of time across ever greater stretches of land on fire. The people of the American West deal with massive dis...

Here's a double German and English post on participatory housing projects and two publications I authored that recently came out. Zeitgenössischer und gemeinnütziger Wohnungsbau – partizipativ geplant, individuell angeeignet, architektonisch angemessen – verspricht mehr als nur Raum. Ihre prozesshafte Entstehung bietet Beständigkeit. In einer Welt, in der Anonymität und Wandel zum Risiko werden, können sich Bewohner auf diese Weise Orte aneignen, die als fester Bezugspunkt dienen – unverwechselbar, verlässlich, bezahlbar. Oft sind sie Zentren sozialen und nachbarschaftlichen Lebens. "Arbeitersiedlungen – eine Antwort auf die Wohnungskrise?" ist erschienen in urban.matters 05/2025, herausgegeben von Alexander Gutzmer für Ehret + Klein. Inhalt: Sie funktionieren wie Kleinstädte, sind aber letztlich künstlich konzipierte Räume: die Arbeitersiedlungen, in denen große Unternehmen lange ihre Arbeitenden unterbrachten. Interessant – aber auch ein Modell für die Zukunft? Arbeit...

Critical Void encapsulates everything the Nexialist Organization set out to do: create projects at the intersection of architecture, music, and visual design through shared creative methods and theoretical inquiry.  A site-specific audio analysis and performance, Critical Void examined the planning crisis of Munich’s MaximiliansForum through sound, dialogue, and documentation. Critical Void performance, MaximiliansForum München. Photos: Andreas Graf  Critical Void is an analytical audio work based on an urban study of Munich’s MaximiliansForum and its complex planning history. Developed by Z’EV and Mark Kammerbauer, the project combined interviews, archival research, and live performance into a sonic investigation of urban transformation. The MaximiliansForum, located beneath the intersection of Maximilianstraße and Altstadtring, was originally conceived as a traffic tunnel but repurposed as a pedestrian underpass and later as an art space. Its ambiguous spat...

Urban Evolution was a key performance that materialized the ethos of the Nexialist Organization as a transdisciplinary platform connecting architecture, music, and visual design through shared creative methods and theoretical inquiry. A public-space performance in Weimar, Urban Evolution visualized cycles of construction and destruction to explore the city as a living, self-transforming system. Cities embody the continuous processes of building, destruction, and renewal — processes triggered by crisis, politics, or market forces. Urban Evolution sought to make these transformations visible and experiential through a live performance on the Theaterplatz in Weimar, Germany. Developed within a research project at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, the work reimagined urban history as a performative cycle of creation, collapse, and rebirth. Temporary structures made of wooden frames and cardboard (3.5 × 3.5 × 7 feet) were moved by individual performers across the square. As they...

On 29 August 2005 Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana. The storm caused catastrophic flooding in New Orleans as the flood protection system failed. Nearly all residents evacuated, not all returned. The recovery was complicated by disparate planning attempts. In 2019 TOPOS published my series on snapshots of the city, slightly edited for this presentation.        Lower Ninth Ward floodwall. Kammerbauer, 2017 New Orleans, the „Crescent City“, the „Sliver by the River“: on August 29th Hurricane Katrina triggered a catastrophic disaster in the city, followed by a dysfunctional response and a flawed recovery. Before Katrina, New Orleans was already scarred by racial inequality and social vulnerability that can be retraced within the urban fabric, indicating who lives in which neighborhood and why. The flood evacuation and resulting nationwide diaspora led to a dramatic decline in the number of residents. Eventually the city reached 90 percent of its pre-Katrin...

Katrina at 20: The failure of initiative in Katrina's wake was also due to the dysfunctional response on the part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Today, there is even talk of dismantling FEMA completely. The performance of the agency is related to the performance of responsible actors. Under James Lee Witt, FEMA performed exceptionally well, under Michael D. Brown, the agency failed abysmally. This is why research is important: it can analyze and reflect on the institution's activity in disaster management. An international comparison offers further context. I compared the US, Australia, Germany, and the Philippines and their institutions and recovery plans for a publication of the German Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning (BBSR). On 29 August 2005 Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana. The storm caused catastrophic flooding in New Orleans as the flood protection system failed. Nearly all residents evacuated, not all returned. The rec...

Katrina at 20: Evacuation is a common strategy to protect populations from the impact of disasters. This was also true in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. The big problem was that evacuation was contingent on car ownership, leading to highly stressful post-landfall search-and-rescue and evacuation procedures. And while many long-term evacuees eventually found a new home and a new job in cities they were displaced to, Houston being the most significant destination, the process raises serious planning questions. In particular, vulnerable New Orleanians were left with little to no choice regarding their displacement. Is it possible to "design" such a process, by giving people a choice which way forward they prefer once they have been evacuated to safe havens in the surrounding region? My contribution on "Schismourbanism as Design" was published in Yana Milev's extensive edited volume "Design Anthropology". On 29 August 2005 Hurricane Katrina made lan...

Katrina at 20: For German architecture magazine BAUWELT, I reviewed the situation in New Orleans ten years after the storm. Despite the difficult recovery, the hurricane inspired new approaches to environmentally sound urban planning ("Dutch Dialogs") and corresponding water-sensitive planning projects in the city (the Urban Water Plan and the Mirabeau Water Gardens). Figurehead of these initiatives is the office of Waggonner & Ball Architects. I had the opportunity to speak with David Waggonner in person and remotely on the firm's inspiring projects aimed at living with, and not against the water. On 29 August 2005 Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana. The storm caused catastrophic flooding in New Orleans as the flood protection system failed. Nearly all residents evacuated, not all returned. The recovery was complicated by disparate planning attempts.

Katrina at 20: On 29 August 2005 Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana. The storm caused catastrophic flooding in New Orleans as the flood protection system failed. Nearly all residents evacuated, not all returned. The recovery was complicated by disparate planning attempts. For an edition of PLANERIN focused on resilience and crisis, I compared the displacement of New Orleanians to Houston to the displacement of Ukrainians from R*ssian-occupied territories to Kharkiv. Actors in Houston and Kharkiv proactively planned for vulnerable displaced individuals and families. In the first case, vacant housing was made available despite the objections of FEMA (the US Federal Emergency Management Agency) against transfering evacuees from shelters to available apartments. In the second case, GIZ (the German Agency for International Cooperation) and the Kharkiv municipality cooperated in the provision of temporary housing clusters complete with social services.