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Niklas Maak is the Arts Editor of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and an architecture theoretician working in Berlin. Since 2002, he has pursued parallel careers as a writer, educator, newspaper editor, architect, and visiting professor. Niklas studied Art History, Philosophy and Architecture in Hamburg, Germany and Paris, France. He completed a Maîtrise in 1996, studying with Jacques Derrida, on the question of the threshold, and his PhD on the work of Le Corbusier and Paul Valery in 1998, with Martin Warnke at Hamburg University. Since then, he has undertaken continuous research on the history of mass housing, and models to re-engage with communal dwelling and collective housing. He was a visiting professor for the history and theory of architecture at Städel Schule, Frankfurt, and has taught and lectured at the Universities of Basel, Berlin and Buenos Aires. He currently teaches at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. In 2013, he co-designed and programmed, together with A77 and Pedro Gadanho of New York’s MoMA, an experimental, temporary, minimal collective dwelling structure, the Colony at MoMA PS1, in Queens. In 2014, he worked with Rem Koolhaas’ Biennial team as a consultant, and contributor. For his essays, Niklas has been awarded the George F. Kennan Prize (2009), the prestigious Henri Nannen Prize in Germany (2012) and the COR Prize for architectural critique (2014). His most recent publications include Le Corbusier: the Architect on the Beach, and Wohnkomplex, an investigation of the effects of fundamental techno- logical, demographic and societal changes on housing, and The Living Complex, which researches concepts for a post-familial collective architecture.
Updated November 2017