The 'Werner Konrad Marschall and Dr.-Ing Horst Karl Marschall Foundation' – the 'Dr. Marschall Foundation' for short – aims to promote excellence in science and research. The foundation awards the Dr. Marschall Prize once a year for an outstanding dissertation completed at the TUM Department of Architecture. The foundation’s board of directors determines the winner of each year. The prize is endowed with 3000 Euro.
Being experienced architect and an environmental design researcher, this year's prize winner Jonathan Natanian has been exploring the intersection between both disciplines throughout his career.
After his PhD at TUM under the supervision of Prof. Thomas Auer, Jonathan has been recently appointed as an Assistant Professor at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. There, he works at the Environmental performance and Design Lab (EPD lab), which focusses on establishing a bridge between environmental engineering and architectural design in a cross-contextual, multi-scale and cross-disciplinary way.
Since 2014 Jonathan is leading StudioADAPT , a research-based consultancy through which he is exploring the architectural applicability and spatial expression of his research on environmental performance in practice.
From 2017-2021, Jonathan served as research associate at the TUM Chair of Building Technology and Climate Responsive Design where he participated in scientific projects, coordinated and wrote EU research proposals, taught environmentally driven design courses for master’s students and carried out his doctoral research.
Jonathan completed his PhD with the highest distinction (summa cum laude). With his thesis "Beyond Zero Energy Districts", based in the developed methodology and workflow, Jonathan closed a gap in parametric modeling for sustainable urbanism. He could show that it requires a high level of complexity to achieve a holistic view on the relationship between urban morphology and environmental performance. As a by-product he also gave proof how misleading and even dangerous a simplified parametric optimization can become if one does not understand the complexity of relationships.
TUM Department of Architecture congratulates Jonathan Natanian on winning the Dr. Marschall Prize 2021!