Education
PH. D., Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich
Diploma (M. ARCH.), ETH Zurich
Pre-Diploma (B. SC.), ETH Zurich
Profile
Reto Geiser is an architect and scholar with a focus in modern architecture and the contemporary architectural and urban discourse. He is currently the Wortham Assistant Professor at the Rice School of Architecture. He studied architecture at ETH Zurich and Columbia University in New York, and holds a PhD from ETH Zurich with a thesis investigating aspects of cultural transfer and transatlantic exchange in the work of Sigfried Giedion. He taught as the 2003–2004 William Muschenheim Fellow at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan, and most recently as a lecturer in architectural criticism at the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta) at ETH Zurich. In 2007 he was appointed as Marshall McLuhan Fellow to the University of Toronto.
A founding principal of the collaborative design practice MG&Co., he is developing spatial strategies in a range of scales from the book to the house, exploring the boundaries of design and research with a special focus on the intersections and overlaps between architecture, installation, textiles and typography. His curatorial works include the exhibition "Explorations: Teaching, Design, Research," Switzerland’s official contribution to the 11th Venice Architecture Biennale.
In 2005 Geiser established Standpunkte, a platform for promoting dialogue and critical exchange among emerging voices in architecture and its related fields. He serves on the advisory boards of the Depart Foundation in Rome, and the Lucius & Annemarie Burckhardt Stiftung in Basel, and is a committee member of the European Architectural History Network (EAHN). His writings have been published in anthologies and such publications as Abitare, Future Anterior, and Hunch. He is the editor of award-winning Explorations in Architecture (Birkhäuser, 2008), and the series editor of Standpunkte Magazine, and Standpunkte Dokumente.