The spaces we create and inhabit are more than mere backdrops. They are physical and tangible manifestations of cultural and social values. And they shape our identities, our beliefs, and our understanding of our surroundings. In other words, they reflect how we conceptualize the world, and they influence how we perceive, imagine, and transform it.
The Center for Spatial Cosmology (CSC) is a transdisciplinary platform spanning across the fields of art, architecture, and anthropology. It seeks to examine the relationship between spaces (buildings, places, landscapes, and environments) and the cosmologies (worldviews, belief systems, myths, and ideologies) that shape them and are constructed through them.
TRANSDISCIPLINARY CREATION: Merging art, architecture, and anthropology (AAA) to discover the cultural, political, and emotional dimension of spatial constructions and built environments.
CONCRETE, GROUNDED PRACTICE: Engaging with the messy realities of spaces, where material and immaterial forces intertwine, with a down-to-earth, hands-on approach, and a broad spectrum of experimental media.
COSMOLOGICAL INQUIRY: Investigating and working with traditional and contemporary spatial cosmologies, and elucidating the complex, dynamic, and speculative dimensions of space-making—following the question: “What world emerges from the spaces we make?”
We thereby combine critical analysis and speculative transformations through art works and experimental architectural designs. Expanding conventional understandings, perceptions, and practices, the CSC strives to contribute to rethinking and reimagining space- and worldmaking at a critical time.
PROF. DR. MICHAEL HIRSCHBICHLER
Michael Hirschbichler is professor for Design and Experimental Creation, and director of the Center for Spatial Cosmology at HafenCity University Hamburg. In his work and research – spanning art, architecture, and anthropology –, he explores the connections between spaces and worldviews, grappling with the place of humans and world-making at a critical time. Michael Hirschbichler completed his doctoral dissertation at Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) on mythical constructions in Papua New Guinea (published by Wasmuth Verlag and Routledge). He was a lecturer at ETH Zurich and HSLU Lucerne, the director of the Architecture Program at the Papua New Guinea University of Technology, a visiting professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and a postdoctoral researcher at TU Delft, Goldsmiths and Aarhus University. He is a recipient of the Rome Prize by the German Academy Villa Massimo.
DR. PHIL. ELIZABETH GALLÓN DROSTE
Elizabeth Gallón Droste (b. Bogotá) is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Spatial Cosmology at HafenCity University Hamburg. She weaves artistic research and anthropology through listening, speculative (non)fiction, moving images, sound, and site-based encounters. Her work navigates remediations and the (after)lives of extraction, engaging with socio-environmental conflicts and the echoes they leave behind, attuning to the entanglements of (im)materialities, minerals and waters, terrestrial and cosmological forces that shape planetary existence. She holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Freie Universität Berlin (2024) with Voicing Rivers Atrato. Since 2022, she has been part of ~pes, an artistic duo exploring subterranean and interstitial worlds through sonic evocations. Since 2014, she has collaborated with communities in Germany and Colombia, activating audiovisual encounters, workshops, and site-based processes centered on fluvial ecologies. Elizabeth has participated at RAW Material Dakar (2024), Meandering by TBA21 Academy (2023), and documenta15 (2022). Her publications include the book Útica, Under the Murmuring Waters (Oreri, 2024).
JEANNE ASTRUP-CHAUVAUX (PHD CANDIDATE)
Jeanne Astrup-Chauvaux (she/her) is a berlin based human being working at the intersection of arts and architecture. She graduated from the University of the Arts Berlin (2022) and her artistic practice is diverse and versatile: through film, story-telling, speculation and performance she adresses pressing societal and ecological issues.
Jeanne works in different constellations and is part of 4 different collectives: Since 2018 she is an initiating member of Floating University Berlin, where works as a space maker, curator, artist and researcher for different programs. In 2019 she co-initiated spätispäti , a collective questioning institutional learning structures, space production, consumerism and relations of trust and power through collective performative action. In 2019, she co-initiated Urban Fragment Observatory (ufo ufo), a spatial research collective using films to illustrate ways to escape the monotony of our built surroundings. She is also a founding member of Collectif Trouble, a performance collective between Berlin and Marseille.
CAN PETER GROTHMANN (PHD CANDIDATE)
Can Grothmann is an architect and designer with a background in architecture and urban design. He graduated from HafenCity University Hamburg in 2022 and was a recipient of the AAC scholarship, the Deutschlandstipendium, and the BDA Student Prize. During his professional experience in architecture offices, he contributed to competition-winning designs before establishing his own practice, pour.works. His work explores spatial potentials across different scales, with a focus on architectural competitions and building design. In addition, he engages in self-initiated projects, such as dismantling, cataloging, and reconstructing greenhouses to investigate adaptive reuse, material cycles, and new spatial potentials. His practice extends to interdisciplinary fields, including ceramics, furniture design, and material research. He is currently pursuing a practice-based PhD exploring “Selbstbaukulturen”, examining their architectural, social, and material implications through both theoretical research and hands-on experimentation. He has also been involved in exhibition curation and design. He co-developed and curated the exhibitions credit exhibit and how to exhibit, examining societal and ecological questions of our built environment through spatial presentation and discourse.
ALI AL-SAADI
Ali Al-Saadi is an architecture student at HafenCity University Hamburg. Beyond his academic pursuits, he actively engages at the intersection of architecture and politics, serving as the Head of the Student Council Executive Board and as an active member of Nexture+. His work is centered around creating spaces for interaction and dialogue, often facilitated through exhibitions and symposia. Notable examples include Mensch und Architektur at the xpon-art gallery, and Architektur im Aufbruch at Jupiter Hamburg and Water Pressur" at the MK&G Hamburg. While his practice is deeply interdisciplinary, photography plays a key role in his approach, with a particular focus on capturing urban everyday scenes and exploring the dynamics of hierarchy within these environments.
Prof. Dr. Michael Hirschbichler
Professorship for Experimental Creation
HafenCity Universität Hamburg
Universität für Baukunst und Metropolenentwicklung
Henning-Voscherau-Platz 1
20457 Hamburg
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2025