volker m. welter, professor

specialization
Californian architecture history and theory; history and theory of European architecture, especially of Great Britain and Germany, from the 19th century onwards; urbanism and the debate about the modern city since the 19th century; historiography of modern architecture; history and theory of sustainable architecture.

email
welter@arthistory.ucsb.edu

office
Ellison Hall 2714

office hours
Mondays 3:30-4:40 & Tuesdays 10:00-11:00

Ph.D. University of Edinburgh

Volker M. Welter studied architecture at the Technische Universität Berlin and received his Ph.D. in history of architecture from the University of Edinburgh. He has worked as architectural historian in Berlin, in Scotland (University of Edinburgh and Strathclyde University, Glasgow), and in England (University of Reading). 1998-2000 Recipient of a Senior Research Grant, Getty Grant Program, Los Angeles. During the Academic Year 2007-8, he received a senior fellowship of the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. During summer 2009, he was a Visiting Scholar at the Centre Canadien d'Architecture, Montreal.

His research focuses on Western, in particular Californian, British, and German, architecture and urbanism from the late 19th century onwards, especially the interactions between architectural, philosophical, and sociological thought. The critique of Modernism in architecture and urbanism, in particular narratives that are critical of Enlightenment and Modernity, are another area of his scholarly interest. Moreover, his teaching and research are shaped by his interest in the aesthetics of architecture, especially in relation to theories about both aesthetic and perception.

Following on from his widely reviewed book Biopolis-Patrick Geddes and the City of Life (Cambridge, Ma., 2002, reprint 2003), he continues publishing on Patrick Geddes, for example, 'The 1925 Master Plan for Tel-Aviv by Patrick Geddes', Israel Studies (2009) and Patrick Geddes – von der Biologie zum Städtebau (Hamburg, 2011). He also publishes on mid-20th century urbanism, for example, "From Locus Genii to Heart of the City-Embracing the Spirit of the City," in The Spirit of the City in Modernity (London, 2003); "In-Between Space and Society-On some British Roots of Team 10's Urban Thought in the 1950s," in Team 10, 1951-81: In Search of a Utopia of the Present (Rotterdam, 2005), and "Everywhere at any Time-Post-World War Two Genealogies of the Modern City," in The Man-Made Future: Planning, Education and Design in the mid-twentieth Century (London, 2007). Among his more recent publications are "Ernst L Freud-Domestic Architect," in Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies (London, 2005), "Museum Architecture," in Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science (2010), and "The Limits of Community--The Possibilities of Society: On Modern Architecture in Weimar German," Oxford Art Journal (2010). Ernst L. Freud, Architect: The Case of the Modern Bourgeois Home, his latest book on the architect son of Sigmund Freud, was published in 2011. He is new research and book project is a study of the patronage of modern mid-twentieth century domestic architecture in the US.

Complete list of publications

undergraduate courses

Introduction to Architecture and Environment
Revival Styles in Southern Californian Architecture
Modern Architecture in Southern California, 1890s to the present
Frank Lloyd Wright
Modern Architecture in Early Twentieth-Century Europe
From Modernism to Post-Modernism in late Twentieth-Century Architecture
Sustainable Architecture: History and Aesthetics
State Street Santa Barbara (undergraduate seminar)
Campus Architecture (undergraduate seminar)
Santa Barbara Architects (undergraduate seminar)
Palm Springs Modern (undergraduate seminar)
Readings in the Historiography of 20th-Century Western Architecture (undergraduate seminar)
Reading Twentieth-Century Modern Architecture (undergraduate seminar)

graduate seminars

2003   Gazing at the (Urban) Environment
2004   Organic, Biological, and Natural Metaphors in Architecture
2005   History and Theory of Conservation and Restoration in Architecture
2005   Expressionism in German Architecture
2007   The Architecture of Museums and Painting Galleries
2008   Reading of Space and Spatiality: Aesthetics, Gestaltpsychology, Sociology, Phenomenology, Art History, Theory of Architecture
2009   Domesticity and Interiority in the 19th and 20th Century
2011   After Modernism: The Emergence of Post-Modernism in Architecture