Dr. Dorothee Rummel Appointed Junior Professor for »Stadt Raum Entwerfen« (Urban Space Design)

»I am very much looking forward to intensively exploring the terrain of Weimar and its surroundings - which is new to me, at least - together with the students. And it will probably once again be the most distant corners and the peculiar settings that excite me and where I will find myself asking the pressing questions about coexistence in the city and the countryside«, says the new junior professor. 

Dorothee Rummel, born in Munich in 1975, studied architecture with a focus on urban planning at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), the University of California, Berkeley and the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) between 1995 and 2002.

After working at the Munich-based architecture and urban planning office SBS-Planungsgemeinschaft from 2003 to 2007, she founded XOstudio for architecture and urban planning in Munich together with three partners, where she remains active today as a planner and consultant in urban and local development, primarily for cities and municipalities in southern Germany.

In parallel to her work at the Chair of Sustainable Urbanism, she worked as a scientific staff member at the Institute of Energy Efficient and Sustainable Design and Building within the Department of Civil, Geo and Environmental Engineering at the Technical University of Munich from 2016 to 2020 and also as a lecturer of urban design at the Institute of Urban Design and Critical Urban Theory within the Department of Architecture at the Munich University of Applied Sciences from 2018 to 2021. She designed and led seminars, lecture series and design studios on the fundamentals of urban design as well as on methodology and practice of urban observation and exploration. Her research focus was on urban spatial reserves; principles and inclusive models of living together and cohabitation in cities; interdisciplinary teaching and research methods; and the mutual influences of city and psyche.

Dorothee Rummel completed her doctorate at KIT in 2016 as part of the International Doctoral College »Spatial Research Lab« with Prof. Markus Neppl (KIT) and Prof. Dr. Michael Koch (HCU) on the topic »Unbestimmte Räume in Städten: Der Wert des Restraums« (Undetermined Spaces in Cities: The Value of Residual Space). She was a scholarship holder in the Brigitte Schlieben Lange Programme for young female academics with children. Dorothee Rummel has two children.

What does the junior professorship profile mean to you?

The »Stadt Raum Entwerfen« professorship involves observation, research and design in connection with urban and rural spaces. The focus is constantly on how people live together in relation to space, time and environment.

An essential element of the teaching and research of  »Stadt Raum Entwerfen« is the cooperation with adjacent and more distant disciplines. The professorship therefore contributes to the development of future solutions to current transformation processes by increasingly cultivating interdisciplinary cooperation and making relevant topics connectable in collaboration with other disciplines. Urban design and public health, urban space and psyche, city and inclusion as well as public space and environment and society are approached as joint ventures in teaching and research. Interdisciplinarity is crucial for sustainable research; methods of successful interdisciplinary work should be developed as a skill among students; and research and teaching should by no means be treated separately, but should instead benefit from each other.

Particular attention is paid to the supposed sideshows of city and country. Marginal areas, intermediate zones and residual space are seen as important stitches in the urban fabric and are explored in the context of expeditions and urban planning designs.

What do you focus on in your teaching?

My teaching concept for »Stadt Raum Entwerfen« focuses firstly on imparting knowledge, and secondly on imparting the ability to impart knowledge. The teaching curriculum pursues two goals:

On the one hand, it is about imparting and consolidating core knowledge and competences in the fundamentals of the discipline in question - in this case urban design - in German as well as English lectures, exercises and urban design drafts. On the other hand, central to imparting the fundamentals of urban planning is the training of students in Architecture and Urban Studies Bachelor degree programmes - partly through artistic and imaginative principles, partly through context - to become excellent designers oriented towards the well-being and coexistence of people. It is important to convey a clear idea of basic knowledge as well as the latest topics, to exercise and decipher them in real urban space.

For well-founded reactions to more complex urban issues, today’s architects and urban planners also need a repertoire that extends beyond basic knowledge. Innovation, as well as changes to the political landscape or the climate, are transforming the needs of our society and thus also the demands on the spaces in which the people want to live. Living arrangements, types of housing and the functionality of space for the public and mobility must be constantly rethought in the city’s web of interconnectedness. Through experimental formats involving adjacent disciplines, I want to awaken in students the desire to venture into unfamiliar areas of city and countryside, in terms of both design and theory.

What research topics do you have in mind?

The research will continue to be interdisciplinary. Inter- and transdisciplinary network research on the city and the urban living environment is to be expanded and enlarged. Locally and certainly also internationally. Public health and environmental sciences, for example, are interesting partners when it comes to questions such as »Do cities make us sick? How utopian is it to want to design a city that makes us healthy?« or »What are the spatial consequences of fear? For inclusive coexistence, for living on the water, for new perspectives of rural areas, for future models of the city?« 

What expectations do you associate with your appointment to Weimar?

I am very much looking forward to my future of teaching »Stadt Raum Entwerfen« in Weimar! Here at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, people work with a great deal of openness and joy in experimenting - at least that’s my first impression. Which is perfect, because you need both for formats as well as for topics that tackle alternative, exotic aspects of urban design in addition to the core competence. I’m looking forward to cooperating with the other professorships, especially the other faculties at the Bauhaus-Universität, and of course I’m looking forward to working creatively with the students.