The Kiln

Kim Förster is an architectural historian, teaching and researching at the University of Manchester as a member of MARG (Manchester Architecture Research Group). Having earned his doctorate in architecture at ETH Zurich in 2011, he was Associate Director of Research at the Canadian Centre for Architecture from 2016 to 2018, where he led the multidisciplinary research project “Architecture and/for the Environment” as part of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s “Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities Initiative.” He taught at ETH’s Institute gta, in the Doctoral Program for the History and Theory of Architecture, and as a visiting professor at EPFL Lausanne. His research and teaching focus on an environmental, energy, and material history, particularly a global history of cement. Förster has published on environmental topics in Architectural Histories, Candide, Werk, Bauen + Wohnen; he contributed to the Routledge Companion to Architecture and Social Engagement (2018), to Überbau: Produktionsverhältnisse der Architektur im Anthropozän (Universitätsverlag TU Berlin, 2021), and to Beyond Concrete (Triest Verlag, 2022). A member of common room, in 2022 300 solarities co-curated “Disquietude: Architecture and Energy in Portugal” and co-edited a book with the same title. Förster edited the “Environmental Histories of Architecture” series for the CCA(Library Stack, 2022–23).