Profile

Claudia Westermann is a Senior Associate Professor in Architecture and licensed as a practising architect with the German Chamber of Architects. She holds post-graduate degrees in Architecture and Media Art from the Karlsruhe University of Technology (KIT) and the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design (HfG) at the Center for Art and Media (ZKM) in Germany respectively, obtaining a Ph.D. from the Centre for Advanced Inquiry in Integrative Arts (CAiiA), Planetary Collegium, University of Plymouth, UK. Her Ph.D. was supervised by the renowned pioneer in telematic art, Prof. Roy Ascott.

Dr. Westermann worked in architectural practice for several years before founding her own studio with a focus on trans-disciplinary projects at the threshold of art, technology and architectural design. Her works have been widely exhibited and presented, including at the Venice Biennale (Architecture), the Moscow International Film Festival, ISEA Symposium for the Electronic Arts, the Center for Art and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, Germany. The project Seats For Seeing, which she created in collaboration with colleagues at XJTLU, was installed in Fujian, China, in 2019.

Claudia Westermann’s research is informed by second-order cybernetics, actualising in inter-disciplinary projects concerned with the ecologies, poetics, and philosophies of art and architectural design. In recent years, her research has increasingly engaged with Asian/Chinese positions. The research aims to advance the understanding of Art, including Design, as a performative process that creates limits rather than limitations and, is, therefore, a discipline of radical communication that always seeks to extend itself towards an Other – the unknown – addressing it without pre-quantifying it to render it scientifically verifiable.

Claudia Westermann is a member of the Editorial Organism of the ESCI listed journal Technoetic Arts, founded by Prof. Roy Ascott. She was elected to the Executive Board of the American Society for Cybernetics (ASC) as Member-at-Large for the 01.2021-12.2023 three year term.

Administrative posts at XJTLU have included the Programme Director of the BEng(Hons) Architecture and the Chair of the Departmental Learning and Teaching Committee with shared membership in the University's Learning and Teaching Committee from 2015 to 2018. She is currently the designated marketing and alumni coordinator.

Her website is at https://www.litra-design.com.