Oliver Sukrow – Alternative Spaces of Innovation. A Comparative Study of 19th-Century Spa Towns as Regional Innovation Clusters

 

Dr. Oliver Sukrow received a $21,118 BIAAS grant for his research project “Alternative Spaces of Innovation. A Comparative Study of 19th-Century Spa Towns as Regional Innovation Clusters.” His interdisciplinary project aims from a historical-comparative perspective at exploring how 19th-century spa towns in Austria and California became regional innovation clusters. This project argues that innovation in 19th-century Austria and California also occurred in ‘alternative’ spaces such as spa towns. He is particularly interested in exploring which architectural and cultural strategies were employed in order to re-design the natural conditions in and around 19th-century spa towns as landscapes of health in which new relationships between humans, landscapes, and cure were architecturally framed.

Dr. Oliver Sukrow holds a Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Heidelberg. He is currently a postdoctoral scholar and Assistant Professor at the Research Unit Art History at the Technical University Vienna. His main research areas are art and architectural history of the GDR, the relationship of Utopian thinking and architecture, as well as the cultural history of 19th-century landscapes and architectures of health and wellbeing.