Anna Heringer: Architecture Is a Tool to Improve Lives

FXFOWLE Lecture for Sustainability, Urbanism, and Design

For Anna Heringer (born in 1977), architecture is a tool to improve lives. As an architect and honorary professor of the UNESCO Chair of Earthen Architecture, Building Cultures, and Sustainable Development, she is focusing on the use of natural building materials. She has been actively involved in development cooperation in Bangladesh since 1997. Her diploma work at the Modern Education and Training Institute in Rudrapur, Bangladesh, was completed in 2005 and won the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2007. Over the years, Heringer has completed additional projects in Asia, Africa, and Europe. She lectures worldwide and has been a visiting professor at various universities, including Stuttgart, Linz, Vienna, ETH Zürich, and TU Munich. She has received numerous honors, including the renowned Loeb Fellowship at Harvard GSD, the Architectural Review Emerging Architecture Awards in 2006 and 2008, the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture, and a RIBA International Fellowship. Her work was widely published and exhibited at MoMA in New York City, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and at the Venice Biennale, among other places. In 2013, with Andres Lepik and Hubert Klumpner, she initiated the Laufen Manifesto, where practitioners and academics from around the world contributed to defining guidelines for a humane design culture.