Markus Breitschmid is an American architectural theoretician, architect, and the author of several books on contemporary architecture and philosophical aesthetics. His most highly regarded books are Der bauende Geist. Friedrich Nietzsche und die Architektur (2001), The Significance of the Idea (2008, first print), and Non-Referential Architecture (2018, first edition). His writings have been translated into Chinese, English, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Spanish. Breitschmid has been invited to contribute to the Venice Biennale of Architecture, the Architecture Biennale of Chicago, the Salone Internationale del Mobile di Milano in Milan, and the Triennale of Architecture in Lisbon. His work has been exhibited at the Galerie d'Architecture in Paris and the Royal Institute of British Architects in London.
Biography Breitschmid was born in Lucerne, Switzerland on April 20, 1966. He emigrated to the United States in 1992. Breitschmid holds citizenships in the United States and Switzerland. Breitschmid holds a military as well as a civil education. He completed his training as a Mechanized Artillery Officer in the rank of a First Lieutenant in the Swiss Armed Forces in 1988. Breitschmid received his architectural education in Switzerland, the United States, and Germany. He is a registered architect in Switzerland. He received his Philosophiae Doctor (Ph.D.) in engineering science from the Technische Universität Berlin, where he was the first doctoral student of the eminent architectural theoretician Fritz Neumeyer. Breitschmid's doctoral dissertation was reviewed by prominent architecture historian Wolfgang Pehnt in the leading German daily newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Breitschmid operates Markus Breitschmid Architecture LLC in Virginia. Breitschmid has been a professor of architecture at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) since 2004. He has held a visiting professorship at the Universidad de Piura (UDEP), located in Piura and Lima, Peru from 2020 to 2022. Previously, among other academic appointments, he was the "2003 Visiting Historian for the History of Architecture and Urbanism" at Cornell University and taught at the University of North Carolina and the Catholic University of America. In 2016, Breitschmid was appointed to the diploma commission of the Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio. He has been a visiting lecturer and critic at many universities, museums, and professional associations in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Breitschmid was awarded the American Institute of Architects Henry Adams Gold Medal in 1994 as a top graduate student. In 2000, Breitschmid was a junior faculty research fellow at the John Paul Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California. Breitschmid received a publication grant from the Graham Foundation for the Advances Studies of the Fine Arts in Chicago in 2007. In 2015, the Colegio de Arquitectos del Perú awarded Breitschmid with its honorary medal for his contributions to the subject of Modernismo Suizo in Lima in 2015. Breitschmid's research and publications has been supported by the public Swiss governmental grant agency Pro Helvetia multiple times. Breitschmid was awarded the inaugural Jacob A. Lutz III Presidential Award for Eminent Scholars for long-term, substantive contributions to research and creative scholarship in the field of art and design in 2024.
Writings on architecture Breitschmid's writing concerns the aesthetic mentality of modernism and contemporary architecture. Among other subjects, Breitschmid has written books on the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's thoughts on building, contemporary Swiss architecture such as the work of Pritzker-Prize laureates Herzog & de Meuron, Mario Botta, Christ & Gantenbein, as well as several important essay on the work of Bruno Taut, on Tectonics in Architecture, and on Theories of Interpretation. Between 2006 and 2020, Breitschmid wrote numerous books, essays, interviews, and other texts on the work of architect Valerio Olgiati.
Friedrich Nietzsche and Architecture Breitschmid entered the arena of the international discourse on architecture by means of his doctoral dissertation Der Baugedanke bei Friedrich Nietzsche at the Technische Universität Berlin in 1999; it was subsequently published as a German-language book titled Der bauende Geist. Friedrich Nietzsche und die Architektur (The Building Spirit. Friedrich Nietzsche and Architecture). Together with books on Nietzsche by Fritz Neumeyer and Tilmann Buddensieg, Der bauende Geist became the foundation for scholarship on the subject of Nietzsche and architecture. Der bauende Geist was included in Hanno-Walter Kruft's A History of Architectural Theory from Vitruvius to the Present for the revised 2013 edition. Breitschmid has repeatedly pointed out during lectures that his work on Nietzsche's ideas on building served as the foundation of his book on Non-Referential Architecture.
The Significance of the Idea In her 2012 book Forms of Practice, the Romanian-British architecture historian Irina Davidovici argues that Breitschmid's thesis of The Significance of the Idea – the title of one of Breitschmid's books – is pertinent for all of the contemporary architecture of “post-enlightenment culture.”
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