Florian Urban is an architectural historian. He is Professor of Architectural History and Head of History of Architectural and Urban Studies at the Glasgow School of Art.
He holds a Master of Fine Arts from the University of the Arts in Berlin, an MA in Urban Planning from UCLA and a Ph.D. in History and Theory of Architecture from MIT.
He was born and raised in Munich, Germany and spent most of his adult life in Berlin before moving to Glasgow in 2010. Before joining the Mackintosh School of Architecture he taught at the Center for Metropolitan Studies, Berlin Technical University and worked for the German Federal Institute for Research on Construction, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development (BBSR). Since 2009 he has been the Book Reviews Editor-in-Chief for the journal Planning Perspectives.
His book “Architecture and Fuel - 14 Buildings from Antiquity to the Oil Age” (co-authored with Barnabas Calder at the University of Liverpool will be published by Routledge in 2025. The book will compare and contrast historical buildings with regard to their embodied and operational energy, raising awareness on the historical influence of pre-fossil fuel and fossil-fuel energy regimes on architectural design in light of the current climate emergency.
Research interests:
- History of architecture in the urban context, particularly in the 20th century
- architecture and energy in historic buildings
- Relation between architecture and social, cultural, and political forces
- Discourses on postmodernism, particularly in East Germany and Poland
- The architecture of mass housing as a global phenomenon
- New Tenements, that is, dense multi-storey urban residences since 1970
- Informal housing/self-built housing, particularly in Europe in the mid 20th century
- Discourses on historic preservation and identity