Philip Ursprung
Philip Ursprung is Professor for the History of Art and Architecture at the Department of Architecture of ETH Zurich and Head of the Institute of the History and Theory of Architecture. He served as Dean of the Department from 2017 to 2019. After studying in Geneva, Vienna, and Berlin, he earned his PhD in art history at FU Berlin. Active as a historian, critic, and curator, he has taught at the University of Zurich, HdK Berlin, Columbia University, Cornell University, Barcelona Institute of Architecture, and TU Vienna. He was principal investigator at the Future Cities Laboratory of the Singapore-ETH Center in Singapore.
Ursprung has edited Herzog & de Meuron: Natural History (Montreal CCA, Baden: Lars Müller, 2002) and Caruso St John: Almost Everything (Barcelona: Poligrafa, 2008), and co-edited Gordon Matta-Clark: An Archival Sourcebook (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2022). He is the author of Allan Kaprow, Robert Smithson, and the Limits to Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), Brechas y conexiones: Ensayos sobre arquitectura, arte y economia (Barcelona: Puente Editores, 2016), Der Wert der Oberfläche (Zurich: gta Verlag, 2017; English Values and Surfaces: Art, Economy, Architecture, Zurich: gta Verlag, 2025), Representation of Labor / Performative Historiography (Santiago de Chile: ARC, 2018), Joseph Beuys: Kunst Kapital Revolution (Munich: Beck, 2021), and Architektur der Gegenwart: 1970 bis heute (Munich: Beck, 2025).
In 2023, he represented Switzerland with Karin Sander at the 18th Venice Architecture Biennale with the exhibition Neighbors.
