Cary Siress

Architecture & Urban Design Professor / Senior Design Researcher @gravity Gmbh

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Originally from the USA, I am an architect and urban designer who has worked in Europe and Asia at various universities and research institutions. I completed my Masters Degree in architecture and urban design at Columbia University in New York in 1990 and my PhD in architecture and urban theory at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH) in 2006. I was a tenured faculty member at the University of Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture from 2006-2011. I was also Excellence Initiative Guest Professor at the Technical University of Munich in 2012 and taught the urban design research studio entitled “Hard Plan – Soft City” that investigated discrepancies between the ‘city as designed’ and the ‘city as used’. I was Guest Professor at the University of Nanjing School of Architecture and Urban Planning in Nanjing, China and conducted urban research studios and urban development seminars for international graduate students. The work pertains to devising robust and resilient development models for the metro-peripheral region of Nanjing in place of generic master plan schemes (“A Thousand and One Peripheries of China,” in progress). As an educator and researcher at ETH Zurich, my work has been focused on how cities are reformatted to become more responsive to the economic imperatives of world integrated capitalism. My co-authored book on capitalist-led planetary urbanization entitled ”Mirroring Effects: Tales of Territory” was published in January 2019. Another of my co-authored books, “Terrestrial Tales: 100+ Takes on Earth,” was published in October 2019. As Senior Research Fellow at ETH Zurich and Future Cities Laboratory Global in Singapore, I have conducted research on Chinese-sponsored infrastructure development in Eastern Africa, focusing on the impact of large-scale transnational development projects as key drivers of rapid urbanization throughout the Sub-Saharan region. The objective of this multi-disciplinary research was to devise future-viable design strategies for maki