ŁUKASZ STANEK is Lecturer at the Manchester Architecture Research Center, University of Manchester. He graduated in architecture and philosophy after studies in Kraków, Weimar, Münster, and Zurich. After his doctorate at the Delft University of Technology, he received fellowships at the Institut d’Urbanisme de Paris, the Jan van Eyck Academie (Maastricht), the Canadian Center for Architecture (Montreal), and the Center for Advanced Studies in Visual Arts (CASVA), National Gallery in Washington D.C., where he was the 2011-2013 A. W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow. Stanek authored Henri Lefebvre on Space: Architecture, Urban Research, and the Production of Theory (University of Minnesota Press, 2011) and he is currently editing Lefebvre’s unpublished book about architecture, Vers une architecture de la jouissance (1973). Stanek’s second field of research is the transfer of architecture from socialist countries to Africa and the Middle East during the Cold War. On this topic, he curated two exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. He also published “Miastoprojekt Goes Abroad. Transfer of Architectural Labor from Socialist Poland to Iraq (1958-1989)” in The Journal of Architecture (17:3, 2012) and the book Postmodernism Is Almost All Right. Polish Architecture After Socialist Globalization (Fundacja Bęc-Zmiana Warsaw, 2012). Stanek taught at Harvard University Graduate School of Design and at the ETH Zurich where he was junior faculty.
STEFAN RETTICH is architect in Leipzig and Hamburg. Since 1999 he pursues with Antje Heuer and Bert Hafermalz the platform KARO* for communication, architecture and spatial tactics. He is co-founder of the architecture group L21 and has lectured at various universities. 2005-2006 he was visiting professor for city renewal and city reconstruction at the University of Kassel. 2007-2011 he was teaching at the Bauhaus Kolleg in Dessau. Since 2011 he is Professor for theory and design at the School of Architecture Bremen. 2009 he has been appointed as member of the German Academy of Town- and Countryplanning (DASL) and 2010 as member of the Saxon Academy of the Arts. With KARO* he was invited to various international exhibitions, among others to the XI. as well as to the XII. architecture biennale in Venice and has been awarded with the European Price for Urban Public Space in 2010, the Brit Insurance Design Award in 2011 and was shortlisted for the Mies van der Rohe Award in 2011.
ANNE HAILA is Professor of Urban Studies at the University of Helsinki, Finland. She teaches urban studies, urban theory, comparative urban research and urban development. In recent years she has focussed on property rights, property markets and the role of state intervention in regulating property market. Cases of her research have been particularly Singapore (where she taught urban economics for two years at the National University of Singapore), Finland, China and Hong Kong. Her publications include ‘The market as the new emperor’ (IJURR, 2007) and two now-classic papers ‘Land as a financial asset’ (Antipode, 1988) and ‘Four types of investment in land and property’ (IJURR, 1991).