Chair

Led by Prof. Fabienne Hoelzel, the Chair of Urban Design examines contemporary urbanization processes and develops strategic urban design approaches that respond meaningfully, productively, and with future orientation, rooted in feminist, decolonial, and democratic values. A particular focus lies on contested territories and the intersection of war violence and gender-based violence, where urban design can contribute to conflict transformation and equitable development.

Case studies through the means of research-by-design, field research, and academic research include the urban regions of Lagos (Nigeria); Dadaab (Kenya); Addis Abeba, Hawassa, and Zeway (Ethiopia); Mumbai (India); Jerusalem Metropolitan Area (Israel/Palestine), Gaza (Palestine); Stuttgart Metropolitan Area and the region of the Allgäu (Germany), and the region of Northwestern Switzerland.

The staff and the projects of the Chair of Urban Design were awarded several prizes and stipends. The outcomes of the urban design studios “Mumbai. Urban Metabolism” and “Stuttgart 22+” received the 3rd prize at the Global Schindler Award 2019, the first prize (ex aequo) with special appreciation at the Studentenförderpreis 2019 of the Architektenkammer Baden-Württemberg, the 3rd prize at the bautec 2018/ BAKA, Berlin, and were shortlisted for the Bau 2019/ BAKA, Munich, respectively. The urban design studio "Vergesst das Allgäu (nicht)!" received the 3rd prize at the bautec 2020/ BAKA. The urban design studios "Urban Systems: Otumara, Lagos" and "Lagos, Oworonshoki. Decolonial and Feminist Practices in Urban Design were awarded the 2020 Academy Prize and the 2023 Academy Prize, respectively. The urban design studio "(Post) Covid City Stuttgart" was in September 2022 published on baunetz Campus. One of the chair's long-term teaching and research topics, "The Role of Urban Design in Rapid Urbanization“, received from the Baden-Württemberg Ministery of Sciences, Research and the Arts substantive fundings for 2021/22 as one of five innovative projects within the program "Langfristiger Austausch in Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft in Afrika“.

The chair maintains institutionalized academic partnerships with the ECL-EiABC-AAU, Addis Abeba (Ethiopia), the University of Lagos (Nigeria) and the Kenyatta University in Nairobi (Kenya). The collaboration with the Islamic University in Gaza City (Palestine) is in preparation; the respective negotiations are under way. Project partners include the Heinrich Böll Foundation Abuja, the Baden-Württemberg Stiftung, the DAAD, Fabulous Urban | Nigeria Foundation, and the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem. Former partners include the Goethe-Institute Addis Abeba, the Moovel-Lab (subs. Daimler AG), and the Architekturforum Allgäu, among other. The chair collaborates closely, continuously, and in various ongoing projects with the ABK degree programs in communication design and in industrial design.

Professor Fabienne Hoelzel

Dipl arch MAS ETH gta SIA, CAS ETH Development and Global Cooperation
Founder and Director of FABULOUS URBAN | NIGERIA FOUNDATION
Founder, President of sanloop

Publications: fabienne-hoelzel.com

Fabienne Hoelzel is a feminist urbanist, architect, and scholar whose work addresses the most urgent question
of our time: how do we build just cities on a planet in crisis—particularly for those facing compounded
exclusions at the intersection of gender, race, class, and displacement?

Her practice confronts the places where this question is most acute—informal settlements, refugee camps,
war-destroyed cities—and the people most failed by current systems: displaced women, slum dwellers,
communities denied basic infrastructure. Across fifteen years of work in São Paulo, Lagos, Nairobi, and
beyond, she has built sanitation systems, shelter, and community spaces where they have been systematically
denied. Her research exposes how urban infrastructure produces gendered violence—and how it can be
redesigned to protect, empower, and transform.

Her feminism is intersectional by necessity: in Lagos, Dadaab, and Gaza, gender injustice cannot be separated
from economic exploitation, racial capitalism, colonial legacies, and forced displacement. Her work
demonstrates how these systems interlock—how a lack of sanitation is simultaneously a gender issue
(women's safety), a class issue (infrastructure denied to the poor), a racial issue (communities of color
systematically excluded), and a colonial issue (Northern planning models imposed as universal). This
intersectional analysis informs both her research and her built work.

She works in and on the Global South not because these places need saving but because they produce
knowledge. Lagos, Dadaab, Gaza—they reveal the inequalities, failures, and improvisations that wealthy cities
insulate themselves from. Her expertise comes from there. It applies everywhere.

She is Professor of Urban Design at ABK Stuttgart, Founder-Director of FABULOUS URBAN | NIGERIA
FOUNDATION, and Founder and Chair of sanloop—a Swiss nonprofit scaling the Mobile Dry Diversion Toilet
(MDDT) globally. The MDDT is a sanitation system designed with women to address the violence they face
when infrastructure fails them. She previously led the Urban Design and Planning team for São Paulo's
slum-upgrading program, which received the UN-Habitat Scroll of Honor (2012).

She advises governments and international organizations on urban development, gender-responsive planning,
and post-crisis reconstruction. Her work has been shortlisted for the Buckminster Fuller Challenge, won the
Svizra27 national exhibition competition (2021), been featured on Swiss national television, and presented
during the UNHCR Global Refugee Forum.

Academic Associate Lisa Dautel

MA
SiP AKBW

Lisa Dautel graduated in 2020 from the Stuttgart Academy of Art in Design in Architecture. Since 2020, she has been working with berchtoldkrass in Karlsruhe. In the winter semester 2021 and in the winter semester 2022, Lisa was the Deputy Academic Associate at the Chair of Urban Design. Since the summer semester 2023, Lisa has been the Academic Associate at the Chair of Urban Design.