Dr. Cathelijne Nuijsink
Dr. Cathelijne Nuijsink
Lecturer at the Department of Architecture
ETH Zürich
Geschichte u.Theorie d. Städtebaus
Additional information
Cathelijne Nuijsink holds a BSc and MSc in Architecture from the Delft University of Technology, an MSc in Architecture from the University of Tokyo, and an MA from the University of Pennsylvania. In 2017, she completed a PhD in East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania, USA with the thesis entitled, What is a House?Architects Redesigning the Domestic Sphere in Contemporary Japan, 1995-2011.
Between 2018-2021, Nuijsink was a Horizon 2020-funded Marie Sklodowska-Curie postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture, where she conducted the research project, Architecture as a Cross-Cultural Exchange: The Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition, 1965-2017 [No. 797002]. Outcomes of the project include the exhibition, Call for Lost Entries: The Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition, 1965-2020, the online archive www.callforlostentries.com, and a monograph provisionally entitled, Another Historiography: The Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition, 1965-2020.
During the academic years 2022–2024 Nuijsink was a Postgraduate Associate in The History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture and Art (HTC) program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), conducting the SNSF-funded research project Unlocking the “Contact Zone”: Toward a New Historiography of Architecture. Nuijsink was recently awarded an SNSF-return grant for the academic year 2024-2025, allowing her to continue developing her MIT-initiated research project at ETH Zurich.
Her current research engages with the development of new historiographic methods that enable histories of architecture in the latter half of the 20th century to be written in a way that is more inclusive, interdisciplinary, and polyvocal. In this capacity, she is leading the Methods research track of the Chair of the History and Theory of Urban Design.
Additional information
Courses
History and Theory of Architecture IX - 1990s Theories that Inspired Architecture (Fall 2024)
History and Theory of Architecture XIII – Seen from the South (Spring 2023)
The City in Theory – Her Agency (Spring 2022)
The City Lived – Unlocking a Multidisciplinary Discourse (Fall 2021)
Fachsemester – Green Commons (Spring 2021)
Fachsemester – Water Commons (Fall 2021)
The City Represented – Visions of Urban Living (Spring 2020)
Summer School – The Architecture Competition as Cross-Cultural “Contact Zone” ( Spring 2019)
Seminar Week – The Commons and the Modern Afropolis: Agadir and Casablanca (Spring 2019)
Research
Unlocking the ‘Contact Zone’: Towards a New Historiography of Architecture- Return Phase
(Swiss National Science Foundation Fellowship)
Unlocking the ‘Contact Zone’: Towards a New Historiography of Architecture
(Swiss National Science Foundation Fellowship)
Architecture as Cross-Cultural Exchange: The Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition 1965-2017
(Horizon 2020 Marie-Sklodowska Curie Fellowship)
Architects Negotiating Domesticity: Cross-Cultural Explorations of “House” and “Home”
(Benjamin Franklin Fellowship)
Selected Publications
Nuijsink, Cathelijne and Annamaria Bonzanigo. “Humanitarian Aid as Global Governance: The Architecture of the Red Cross’s Relief Operations after the 1976 Guatemala Earthquake.” Architectural Theory Review, vol. 27, vol.27, no. 1, 2023.
https://doi.org/10.1080/13264826.2023.2228940
Nuijsink, Cathelijne. “The Contact Zone of Agadir’s Emergency Operations.” Agadir: Building the Modern Afropolis. Eds. Tom Avermaete and Maxime Zaugg. Park Books, 2022. 69–84.
Nuijsink, Cathelijne. “Rem Koolhaas’ House with No Style: The 1992 Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition Forging a ‘Space of Ideas’.” The Hybrid Practitioner: Building, Teaching, Researching Architecture. Eds. Caroline Voet, Eireen Schreurs and Helen Thomas. KU Leuven Press, 2022. 249–60.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv2vt0209.23
Avermaete, Tom, and Cathelijne Nuijsink. “An Architecture Culture of ‘Contact Zones’: Prospects for an Alternative Historiography of Modernism.” Rethinking Global Modernism: Architectural Historiography and the Postcolonial. Eds. Vikramaditya Prakash, Maristella Casciato and Daniel E. Coslett. Routledge, 2022. 103–19.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003120209-9
Nuijsink, Cathelijne. “Negotiating Comfort in the Metropolis: Peter Cook, Toyo Ito and the Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition, 1977 and 1988.” Abe Journal, vol. 10, no. 18, 2021.
http://doi.org/10.4000/abe.10444
Avermaete, Tom, and Cathelijne Nuijsink. “Architectural Contact Zones: Another Way to Write Global Histories of the Post-War Period?” Architectural Theory Review, vol. 25, no. 3, 2021: pp.350–61.
https://doi.org/10.1080/13264826.2021.1939745
Nuijsink, Cathelijne. “Multiple Authorship: The Collaborative Production of Knowledge in the Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition (1965–2020).” Revista de Arquitectura, vol. 23, 2021: pp. 174–89.
https://doi.org/10.15581/014.23.174-189
Nuijsink, Cathelijne, and Momoyo Kaijima. “Timber Behavoriology.” Architectural Theory Review, vol. 25, no. 1–2, 2021: pp. 136–51.
https://doi.org/10.1080/13264826.2021.1971832
Nuijsink, Cathelijne. “From ‘Container’ to ‘Lifestyle:’ Kazuyo Sejima, Sou Fujimoto and the Destruction of the Nuclear Family Box.” Interiors: Design/Architecture/Culture, vol. 11, no. 2/3, 2021: pp. 132–56.
https://doi.org/10.1080/20419112.2021.1943190
Nuijsink, Cathelijne. “A House for Everyone: Challenging the Post-war Myth of ‘The House for the Nuclear Family’ in Japan, 1954–2005.” Activism at Home: Architects Dwelling between Politics, Aesthetics and Resistance. Eds. Isabelle Doucet and Janina Gosseye. Jovis, 2021. 74–85.
https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000520064
Nuijsink, Cathelijne. “An Architects’ Response to Natural Disasters: Shared Living and Bottom-Up Community Building in Japan.” Nordic Journal of Architectural Research, vol. 33, no. 3, 2021: pp. 13–34.
https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/handle/20.500.11850/532919
Co-Chair Conferences
Session Co-Chair (together with Frida Grahn). "Female Agency in Practice: Strategies, Tactics, and Maneuvers," Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) 2025 Atlanta, April 30–May 4, 2025
Session Co-Chair (together with Tom Avermaete). “Forging “Crossed Histories” of Twentieth-Century Architecture and Urban Design,” European Architectural History Network (EAHN) Conference 2024 Athens, 19-23 June 2024.
Session Co-Chair (together with Fatina Abreek-Zubiedat). “Writing Alternative Histories of Disaster Relief: Architecture and Humanitarianism,” Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) 2023 Annual International Conference Montréal, April 12–16, 2023
Exhibitions
Curator/Producer. “Call for Lost Entries: The Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition, 1965-2020,” gta Exhibitions Zürich, 3 November- 10 December 2022.