Kai Gutschow

Kai Gutschow is a historian of modern architecture and theory at Carnegie Mellon’s School of Architecture. Since 2021 he has served as Associate Head for Design Ethics, working on issues of social justice in all parts of the school’s curriculum, research, and community. He led the effort to restart CMU’s accredited Master of Architecture (M.Arch) program from 2015-21. He teaches a variety of lecture courses and seminars on modern architecture and theory, and formerly taught and coordinated 1st and 2nd-year studios. Gutschow has a PhD from Columbia University, an M.Arch from U.C. Berkeley, and a B.A. from Swarthmore College.

Gutschow’s primary field of research has been the complex and controversial history of modern German architectural culture, especially the role that architectural criticism, theory, and media culture played in influencing professional and cultural developments. He has finished a book manuscript titled “Inventing Expressionism: Art, Criticism, and the Rise of Modern Architecture,” an intellectual history of the origins of Expressionism in German architecture from 1905-1925. It argues that Expressionist architecture arose not primarily out of a revolutionary political moment that followed World War I in Berlin, as is often maintained, but rather out of a widespread and continuous evolution of ideas on the role of “expression” in modern architecture from the late nineteenth century to the mid-1920s. He is also working on an edited volume of essays discussing the rich history and impact of expressive and expressionist sensibilities in architectural history. In addition to his book projects, he has lectured on and published refereed journal articles and book chapters on a variety of related topics, including the work of the German architectural critic Adolf Behne, on Bruno Taut’s iconoclastic “Glashaus” as “Installation Art,” on the East African colonial architecture of the German modernist Ernst May, on the modernity of the conservative critic Paul Schultze-Naumburg, and on the German patriotism and Jewish heritage of the German critic Walter Curt Behrendt. His most recent project is a larger history of postwar architecture in Pittsburgh.

Gutschow has combined this original historical research with a leadership role in promoting the importance of history, theory, and research in the design programs at CMU.