Markus Miessen: Agonistic Assemblies –– On the Spatial Politics of Horizontality

Markus Miessen is an architect and writer, director of Studio Miessen, and in 2021 was appointed Professor of Urban Regeneration at the University of Luxembourg, where he holds the Chair of the City of Esch. Miessen has previously taught at the Architectural Association, London, the Berlage Institute Rotterdam, has been a Harvard GSD Fellow, and has held professorships at Städelschule, Frankfurt, and the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. He received his PhD from the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, London, supervised by Eyal Weizman. The initiator of the Participation tetralogy, his work revolves around questions of critical spatial practice, institution building, and spatial politics. As a spatial consultant, he currently works with The Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism. He previously worked with the European Commission, non-governmental organisations, the Republic of Slovenia during their presidency of the EU council, as well as numerous cultural and art institutions worldwide.

Amongst many other books and writings, Miessen is the author of The Nightmare of Participation and Crossbenching: Towards Participation as Critical Spatial Practice. He has edited volumes such as Para-Platforms: on the spatial politics of right-wing populism, and The Archive as a Productive Space of Conflict. Together with Nikolaus Hirsch, he is the editor of the book series Critical Spatial Practice. Miessen’s new book Agonistic Assemblies (On the Spatial Politics of Horizontality) will be published by Sternberg Press in December 2023.