Silke Langenberg

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Silke Langenberg is a Swiss heritage scientist and architect. She is a full professor of construction heritage and preservation at ETH Zurich, working in the Institute for Preservation and Construction History and the Institute for Technology in Architecture.

Education and early career
- She studied architecture at the University of Dortmund and at IUAV in Venice, and earned a doctorate in engineering sciences at the University of Dortmund.
- She worked as a research assistant at the Chair of Preservation and Building Research, University of Dortmund.
- From 2006 to 2014 she was a researcher at ETH Zurich.
- Between 2011 and 2013 she was a researcher in residence at the Singapore-ETH Centre for Global Environmental Sustainability.

University of Applied Sciences in Munich and return to ETH Zurich
- In 2014 she became professor for Building in Existing Contexts, Preservation and Building Research at the Munich University of Applied Sciences.
- On 1 August 2020 she returned to ETH Zurich to take up a second full professorship in preservation and construction history.

Research focus and ideas
- She stresses the importance of including engineering aspects when discussing the preservation of architecture from the 1960s and 1970s.
- She has studied the conflicts between a building’s underlying concept and preserving its original material substance, particularly in “system buildings.”
- In 2023 she introduced the concept of “transformation value” into heritage theory.
- Her work covers how to rationalize building processes and address development, repair, recognition, and long-term preservation of serially produced, industrially and digitally created constructions.

Projects and contributions
- In 2014 she started a repair course with students at the Munich University of Applied Sciences, in collaboration with Fablab and Haus der Eigenarbeit; the results were widely published, exhibited, and adopted by academic institutions in Germany and Switzerland.
- She helped establish the German Research Programme “Construction as Cultural Heritage” and named her professorship “Construction Heritage and Preservation,” shaping a distinct field of research at ETH Zurich. Her role connects the Institute for Preservation and Construction History with the Institute for Technology in Architecture.

Affiliations
- She is a member of the Swiss Society of Engineers and Architects (SIA, Zurich Section) and an associated member of the Federation of Swiss Architects (BSA), among other professional associations.