Sessions
Keynote Address
8:50 AM - 9:10 AM Wed
Cor Wagenaar studied history at the University of Groningen with the political historian Isaac Lipschits before specializing in the history of architecture and urbanism at the same university. In 1993 he published a PhD-thesis on the reconstruction of Rotterdam. He participated in research projects sponsored by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (Town planning in the Netherlands) and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (the correspondence of J.J.P. Oud), initiated, with 010 Publishers, a series of monographs on Dutch urbanists in 1996, and acted as one of the curators of an exhibition on the work of J.J.P. Oud in the Netherlands Architecture Institute in 2001. He was co-author (with Martien de Vletter and Ed Taverne) of J.J.P. Oud. Poetic Functionalist 1890-1963. Between 2005 year and 2008 he was a member of the editorial board of the Dutch Architecture Yearbook. In 2001 he joined the Institute of History of Art, Architecture and Urbanism at Delft University of Technology as Assistant Professor and, since 2006, Associate Professor.
In 2014 he was appointed Thomassen à Thuessink Professor at the University of Groningen, which focuses on the relation between architecture, urbanism and health.
In addition to the Thomassen à Thuessink chair, he was appointed Full Professor in the history and theory of architecture in urbanism in 2016; in 2019, the work of the Thomassen à Thuessink was incorporated in the history and theory chair.
In 2016, he founded the Expertise Center Architecture, Urbanism and Health (brochure at a-u-h.eu), of which he is the director. The center approaches healthcare architecture and urbanism from the perspective of the design discipline, which greatly contributes to making the findings in this field applicable in practice.
His work revolves around two closely related themes: the history and theory of urban planning since 1750, and healthcare architecture and urbanism. He organized an international conference on this theme on behalf of the University Medical Center of Groningen in 2005, which culminated in The Architecture of Hospitals, 2010, and contributed to its follow up (‘building the future of health’) in 2016. He has given keynote lectures on healthcare architecture in London, Saint-Petersburg, Zürich, Dubai and several times in Berlin and China (Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and is co-founder of the Berlin based European network on healthcare architecture (enah.eu), as well as the Platform Health in Delft University.
Other projects include Happy. Cities and Public Happiness in Post-War Europe (2004, editor), and Town Planning in the Netherlands since 1800. Responses to Enlightenment Ideas and Geopolitical Realities (2011; reprinted in 2015). Cor Wagenaar lives and works in Groningen and Berlin.