Prof. Wiebke Schlüter
Wiebke Schlüter lives and works as a freelance architect in Cologne. Her firm, swstudio, focuses on the transformation of buildings, spaces, and situations in both the private and public sectors. Her work centers on carefully uncovering the potential of existing structures, which is redefined in light of current issues surrounding resource-efficient construction and design.
Her education took her to RWTH Aachen University and Università La Sapienza in Rome. Professional stints at architecture firms in London, Rome, and Cologne broadened her perspective. As a founding member of the DEMO Working Group, she helped shape the collective’s direction for four years before striking out on her own with swstudio. In 2022, she was awarded the Young Artists’ Promotion Prize in the field of architecture for her work; other projects by her firm received the BDA Prize Hamburg and a nomination for the DAM Prize, as well as several competition wins.
Alongside her professional practice, teaching is a central component of her work. She has taught at institutions including KIT Karlsruhe, PBSA Düsseldorf, RWTH Aachen, and HFT Stuttgart, and served as a professor at the International University of Applied Sciences Düsseldorf.
In her teaching, she places particular emphasis on an experimental approach to design and a productive culture of learning from mistakes. Analysis, experimentation, and refinement are regarded as central means of architectural insight. Technical and climatic conditions are integrated into and refined through spatial architectural design; to this end, collaborative work with environmental engineers, artists, scientists, and other architects is an integral part of her practice.
