Institute

Giuliana Fronte studied architecture and urban planning at the University of Stuttgart with stays in Rotterdam and Venice (IUAV). She graduated with a Masterthesis focused on the privatization of wastewater infrastructure and the transformation of cities toward more resilient structures from an aesthetic, ecological, and socio-political point of view. Since 2024 she has been teaching and researching as an academic associate at the Institute for Principles of Modern Architecture and Design (IGmA) and is planning for Studio Urban Strategies. In her work, she pursues a cross-scale and -media approach to engage with and design spaces and their transformation processes. Her fields of interest comprise of the socio-political dimension of architecture, urbanism and remembrance culture in the public space. With her research on the rubble mountain Birkenkopf in Stuttgart she made an important contribution to the City Encyclopedia by the City Archive. Together with the Coordination Office for Memory Culture, she is also involved in various mediation formats and a contemporary concept of remembrance for the site.

In her doctoral project, she focuses on the spatial implications of freedom based on liberal architecture and urban planning discourses and investigates libertarian spatial productions.

Dr. phil. Verena Hartbaum is research associate at the Institute for for Principles of Modern Architecture (Design and Theory) at the University of Stuttgart. She received her M.A. in Architecture and Urban Research from the program a42.org of the Nuremberg Academy of Fine Arts. She has been teaching at the University of Applied Sciences in Karlsruhe and at TU Berlin and published, among others, on the topic of retrospective architecture. Between 2014 and 2018 she was research associate at the Chair of Architecture and Cultural Theory at TU Munich. In her doctoral thesis she analized architecture between conflict regulation and consensus politics by using the example of the Berlin Republic.

Andrea Irion studied architecture and urban planning at the University of Stuttgart, complemented by a stay abroad in Rotterdam. At the Institute for Principles of Modern Architecture and Design (IGmA), she teaches and deals with spatial staging and the interactions between scenery, architecture and urban space. She is particularly interested in the design of leisure and adventure architecture and its influence on urban space. In her projects, she also deals with the interface between the real and digital worlds and the associated possibilities of designing space in a new way.

In addition to her academic work, Andrea Irion works freelance for various architecture firms, agencies and production companies. During her studies, she already gained practical experience in renowned architecture firms and as an assistant production designer for film productions. Her work has won several awards, been featured in specialist publications and presented in exhibitions and at international conferences.

Mira Anneli Naß studied art history, literature and theatre studies in Munich and Florence, as well as theory and history of photography at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen. In 2025, she completed her doctorate there with a dissertation on operative images in the field of art as a critique of surveillance after 9/11.

From 2019 to 2024, she was a research associate in the Department of Art Studies and Aesthetic Theory at the University of Bremen. She subsequently worked as a research associate in the project Antisemitism at documenta fifteen and in the Art World, led by Prof. Dr. Julia Bernstein, within the research area Societal Legacy of National Socialism at the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences.

In November and December 2025, she was a Minerva Visiting Fellow at the European Forum of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. Since February 2026, she has been a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Principles of Modern Architecture (Design and Theory) at the University of Stuttgart. There, her research includes Virtual Contact Zones: Artistic Strategies of Global Commemoration (AT) and, within the framework of the project Antisemitism in the Cultural Field, work on antisemitism in art and art history.

Her research focuses on the art and image history of modernity since 1800, particularly photography and time-based media; the aesthetics, history, and theory of operative imagery; political iconography; debates on memory culture; art-activist monument design; antisemitism (research) in art and art history; (queer-)feminist art theory; and the interrelations between art, war, architecture, industry, and fashion.

Mira Anneli Naß is a founding member and spokesperson (together with Christina Brinkmann) of the working group Art and Antisemitism within the Ulmer Verein – Verband für Kunst- und Kulturwissenschaften e.V. She also works as an art critic (Camera Austria, taz, among others) and was awarded the C/O Berlin Talent Award Theory in 2019.

Prof. Dr. phil. Stephan Trüby (* 1970) is Professor of Architecture and Cultural Theory and Director of the Institute for Principles of Modern Architecture (IGmA) at the University of Stuttgart. Previously, Trüby was Visiting Professor of Temporary Architecture at the State College of Design in Karlsruhe (2007-09), Head of the postgraduate study program "Scenography/Spatial Design" at the Zurich University of the Arts (2009-14), Lecturer at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and Professor of Architecture and Cultural Theory at the Technical University of Munich (2014-18). His publications include Exit-Architecture. Design between War and Peace (2008), The World of Madelon Vriesendorp (2008, with Shumon Basar), Germania, Venezia. The German Entries to the Venice Architecture Biennale since 1991 (2016, with Verena Hartbaum), Absolute Architekturbeginner: Essays 2004-2014 (2017), History of the Corridor (2018) and Right-wing Spaces. Political Essays and Conversations (2020).

He is IBA-Representative of the University of Stuttgart.