ORCiD
0000-0002-6873-5922

Clemens Finkelstein is a historian and theorist of the built environment. He is currently:

Postdoctoral Research Associate (Planetary Analogs) & Research Area Coordinator (Laboratories of Dis:connectivity) at the Käte Hamburger Research Centre global dis:connect at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany. In this dual role, he develops a transdisciplinary research agenda on experimental sites, infrastructures, and environments where planetary processes are negotiated through the infrastructures of globalization. Focusing on laboratories as spaces of translation and friction, his work traces how planetary and interplanetary uncertainty is converted into global regimes of knowledge, governance, and design, while also contributing to the centre’s intellectual framework, collaborative formats, and international research networks.

Principal Investigator (with Christopher Williams-Wynn, Free University Berlin) of the research project Exodesign: Prefigurative Practices in the Art and Architecture of Alien Worlds (VolkswagenStiftung - Project No. 0200559-00). Supported through the Volkswagen Foundation’s Aufbruch | Open Up funding line, the project forges new research avenues at the intersection of art, architecture, and the planetary sciences. Exodesign examines how contemporary artistic and architectural practices function as active agents of knowledge production, moving beyond representational roles to intervene directly in scientific inquiry. Focusing on speculative design and artistic research as experimental modes of inquiry, the project analyzes how design practices shape conceptual frameworks, research questions, and experimental protocols under conditions of epistemic uncertainty and radical environmental constraint.

Fellow (Das Junge ZiF) at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF: Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Forschung) at Bielefeld University, Germany.

Affiliated Fellow at the Panel on Planetary Thinking at Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany.

He holds a Ph.D. in the History and Theory of Architecture from Princeton University, where he also received Graduate Certificates in the History of Science and in Media + Modernity. As a Fulbright Scholar at Harvard University, he earned an M.Des. in the History and Philosophy of Design, graduating with a Commendation for Outstanding Achievement. His scholarship has been recognized through fellowships from the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies at the Free University Berlin, and the Center for Advanced Studies Imaginaria of Force at the University of Hamburg. His research has further been supported by grants from the VolkswagenStiftung, the History of Science Society, the Andlinger Center for Energy and Environment, and the Princeton–Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism & the Humanities.

Across research and teaching, his work brings architectural history into sustained dialogue with the planetary sciences, science and technology studies, and the environmental humanities. He has taught at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Princeton University, Harvard University, University of Amsterdam, and Kent State University, where he has developed research-based courses and seminars in architectural history and theory, planetary humanities, and the histories of scientific and environmental knowledge. His broader practice extends into curation and experimental art–science collaboration. The book Planetary Forest (DISTANZ, 2024) documents one such collaboration with bio- and geoscientists in the municipal forest of Frankfurt am Main.

His research has appeared in leading journals and edited volumes, including Magic Architecture (MIT Press, 2025), Sick Architecture (MIT Press, 2025), Architecture in Oceania (1840–1970) (Leuven University Press, 2025), The Sound of Architecture (Leuven University Press, 2022), as well as Architectural Histories, Architectural Theory Review, ARCH+, and Technology & Culture. He is co-author of Our Planetary Condition: Foundations for a Politics with the Earth (MIT Press, forthcoming 2026), and is currently preparing three major book projects: the monograph Architectures of Vibration: Building the Planetary at the Edge of Global Empires, based on his doctoral dissertation; the co-authored volume InfraPlanetary Politics; and the co-edited compendium Roots to Skylines: Hybrid Labor and Planetary Building.

More information can be found at clemensfinkelstein.com.

Ph.D. History and Theory of Architecture (Princeton University, 2024)

M.A. History and Theory of Architecture (Princeton University, 2019)

M.Des. History and Philosophy of Design (Harvard University, 2017)

B.A. Art and Visual History (Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, 2014)

full & current CV upon request.