Chair of Sustainable Urbanism
Dr.-Ing. (TUM) DipArch (UEL)
Research Associate, Architect and Urbanist
Room 2237
Arcisstrasse 21
D-80333 Munich
Tel. +49 89 289 25014
Fax. +49 89 289 25016
n.kling@tum.de
ORCID: 0009-0003-4366-0105
About Norbert
Since 2018, Norbert has been teaching urban design, architecture, and urban theory at the Chair of Sustainable Urbanism. His research interests include conditions of asymmetric urban change, multi-dimensional inner development, thick mapping, and concept formation in the spatial disciplines. He is the author of The Redundant City (transcript, 2020) and co-author of Entwurfslehre im Bachelor Architektur: Das Cottbus Experiment (Reimer, 2011). He co-edited Taking Action: Transforming Athens' Urban Landscapes (Jovis, 2023) and Porous City: From Metaphor to Urban Agenda (Birkhäuser, 2018). The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) supported his research in Athens in the spring of 2023 with a bilateral research exchange grant. For The Redundant City, he was awarded the 2020 Dr Marschall Prize by the Department of Architecture.
Norbert is trained and registered as an architect (ARB, ByAK) and urban planner (ByAK). He studied at the Technical University of Munich, the University of East London, and the London Metropolitan University/UNL (RIBA Part 3). In 2003 he co-founded the office www.zectorarchitects.net together with Carsten Jungfer in London and Munich. He has been involved in numerous realisations, including Dalston Roof Park and the redesign of Kavalierstrasse Dessau. zectorarchitects won 1st prize in the EUROPAN 10 competition (Dessau) and were co-winners of the EUROPAN 9 (Linz) competition. In 2020 the practice received the architecture award by the city of Munich (Förderpreis 2020 der Landeshauptstadt München).
From 2014 to 2018, he taught urban design at the Chair of Urban and Regional Planning at TUM, collaborated on the conference and publication project Porous City, conducted research on the conceptualisation of conflict and change in architecture and urbanism, and a situational analysis of a large housing estate in Munich. In 2019 he completed his doctorate with the empirically grounded, sensitising concept of the Redundant City (first supervisor Prof. S. Wolfrum).
From 2007 to 2012 Norbert worked at the Brandenburg University of Technology at the Chair of Design and Building Studies, where he taught in the design studio and conducted research on design education in the Bachelor of Architecture. During his time at BTU, he initiated the faculty’s cooperation with the European network OIKONET.
Publications