Current fellows
Raquel Jerobon is an urban planner and designer and is currently a doctoral fellow at the LUS Institute at ETH. Her research investigates how and to what extent extended urbanization processes in indigenous Maasai territories are being impacted by these changes specifically concerning spatial production processes and transhumant livelihoods of the local community. She holds a Master of Human Settlements degree from KU Leuven, Belgium and an undergraduate degree in Urban Design and Development from Technical University of Kenya.
Robin Hueppe holds degrees in architecture, urban design, and planning from Rice University and TU Berlin, where I taught and researched in various assistant positions. Previously, he worked as a designer, educator, and writer. His research engages East and West Berlin’s mass housing landscapes. He previously taught as an adjunct professor at the University of Houston and published in journals such as OASE, Pidgin, PLAT, Room One Thousand, CoSMo, City, Culture & Society, and Paprika! His design collaborations encompass architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design firms. They include Dept. and SWA in Houston, yellow z and a24landschaft in Berlin, and ZT Arquitectos in Lisbon. He was also a Fulbright fellow at UC Berkeley and a DAAD fellow at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. Other grants brought me to the Universidade de Lisboa, Tongji University, and the CCA in Montreal.
Juan Villalón Hernando is an architect, urban and landscape designer, and researcher. His work focuses on interdisciplinary design and research processes that link infrastructure adaptation, climate change and biodiversity challenges, and rural and urban ecologies. He holds a Master of Architecture in Urban Design with Distinction from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, a Bachelor in Architecture with High Honors from Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, and a specialization diploma in Ecosystemic services, urban forests, and natural capital from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.
Jacopo Zani is a doctoral candidate at the Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies (LUS) at ETH Zurich since 2022. His work explores alternative methodological approaches to questions of social equality, ecology and power in (post-)extraction landscapes. His current research at Lus is focusing on minor histories of migration and material movement in the development of post-war coal mining settlements in Belgium. Jacopo holds an MSc (honours) degree in Architecture from TU Delft, and spent time studying at Politecnico di Milano and ETH Zurich. His master’s thesis work was awarded with the Dutch National Archiprix in 2023. He co-organised the lecture series Matter Out of Place, and is currently part of the editorial board of the institute’s yearly publication DELUS.
Stefan Laxness is a Doctoral Fellow at the Landscape and Urban Studies Institute (LUS) at ETH Zurich where he is researching community-led landscape restoration initiatives in Europe. Previously, he was a project leader at Forensic Architecture (FA) where he led numerous projects, including the Ayotzinapa Case, developed methodologies for analyzing airstrikes in the Middle East and modeling sites of human rights abuse from witness testimony. As an educator, Stefan was a Unit Master at the Architectural Association in London and co-founded educational forums such as Pantopia.xyz and AA Visiting School Iceland. His work has been exhibited internationally. Stefan holds an AA Diploma from the Architectural Association School of Architecture.
Camila Medina Novoa is an architect with a master’s degree in Landscape Architecture, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 2014, co-founder of LOFscapes Collective, general editor of www.lofscapes.com since 2017, and editor of the book “Landscape is not Nature” (2020) of the same organization. Between 2014 and 2021, she taught landscape theory and history courses in different universities in Chile. At LUS, she will be concerned with historical processes of landscape transfer and their ecological and cultural consequences, integrating notions of art and science history.
Santiago del Hierro is an Ecuadorian architect and urbanist joining us from The Hague. Since 2008, his research has focused on development initiatives in the Andean Amazon, exploring how design can alternatively engage issues related to resource extraction, the expansion of agricultural frontiers, the encroachment of indigenous territories and contemporary narratives on what a post-development landscape could hopefully look like. Santiago holds a Master in Architecture from Yale University, where he attended as a Fulbright scholar, and between 2009 and 2010 was a resident researcher at the Design Department of the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht. Until 2017, prior to moving to The Netherlands, he taught at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, where he developed and coordinated the Urban Design Masters program. He has also been a guest professor at the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam, the Escuela Técnica Superior de Aquitectura de Valencia, TU Delft and Fontys University of Applied Sciences. He is currently involved with different teams in research and design projects for Colombia, Ecuador, Ethiopia and Suriname.
Johanna Just graduated from the Bartlett School of Architecture (London) with a MArch (Distinction) degree under SmoutAllen, where she received the Bartlett School of Architecture Medal. She holds a B.Sc. in Architecture from the Leibniz University of Hanover and has spent time studying at IUAV in Venice. She has taught on the MA/MLA Landscape Architecture programme at Bartlett School of Architecture and BArch programmes at Oxford School of Architecture and the Bartlett. Johanna is a founding member of the Bakerloos (London) where she has designed collaborative mapping workshops and installations. She has experience in architecture and art practice working with Haworth Tompkins (London), Ay Architects (London), BeL (Cologne) and Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg (London). In her research as a doctoral fellow at the Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies (LUS) she explores multispecies entanglements with landscape in the Upper Rhine Plain, Germany.
Sara Frikech studied architecture at TU Delft and has practised as an architect at various offices. She has shown her independent work at Le 18 (Marrakech), Salone del Mobile (Milan) and 2016 Marrakech Biennale. Her academic and artistic work has been supported by the Creative Industries Fund NL and a research fellowship from Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam. Her writing has been published in San Rocco Magazine and Trialog Journal. Currently, she is a doctoral fellow at the Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies (LUS), ETH Zurich. Her dissertation focuses on hydraulic infrastructures implemented in the city and hinterland of Meknes during the French protectorate (1912-1956).
Past fellows
Nicole de Lalouvière obtained her PhD as LUS Fellow in 2023 with a research project titled ‘Irrigation Systems of Canton Valais: A Resilient Landscape Common?’, as part of the Chair of the History and Theory of Urban Design led by Prof. Dr. Tom Avermaete. Her research focused on the irrigation channels (bisses/Suonen) of Canton Valais as a form of ‘landscape commons’. Nicole holds an undergraduate liberal arts degree from Colgate University (Hamilton, New York), where she majored in architectural history. She graduated from the University of British Columbia (Vancouver) with a Master of Architecture and received the thesis prize for work on design futures for Diego Garcia (British Indian Ocean Territory). She has also spent time studying art history in London and architecture at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. She has practiced as an architect and landscape architect at MAD Architects (Beijing), PUBLIC (Vancouver), Hapa Collaborative (Vancouver), Vogt Landschaftsarchitekten (Zurich), and Baumschlager Eberle Architekten (Zurich). Nicole co-authored the book chapter “Search and Research: The Mols Landscape in Denmark” with Günther Vogt, published in Your Glacial Expectations (edited by Studio Ólafur Elíasson, Thames & Hudson, 2017). She is a co-author with Günther Vogt, Nicola Eiffler, Gijs Rijnbeek, and M.K. Smaby of the book Wunderlust, Wanderkammer (Lars Müller Publishers, 2016). Her work has been published in the Journal of Alpine Research and gta papers, and shown in the Critical Care exhibition at the Zentrum Architektur Zürich (ZAZ).
Ina Valkanova is an architect, curator and researcher. She studied architecture in RWTH Aachen and University of Arts, Berlin. Her research explores the relationship between production and place and the paths for transformation in the case of Trakia Economic Zone in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. She was a coordinator for investment and innovation of the long-term development strategy of the city of Sofia – Vision for Sofia 2050, which aims to improve the mechanism of urban planning by including all interest groups in the decision-making process from its very beginning. Prior to this, she also served as the director of the international architecture festival “One Architecture Week” in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Ina is a co-founder of Gradoscope, a collective focused on city reinvention, based in Sofia, Bulgaria. She has taught in the University of Architecture in Sofia and has lectured in various European locations, such as Copenhagen Architecture Week and Belgrade International Architecture Week. She was a collaborator of Alvaro Siza in from 2011 to 2012 on the project Atrio de la Alhambra.