Anuschka Kutz

is a founding director of OFFSEA. She is a qualified architect and urbanist trained at the Technical University of Berlin, MArchi, Moscow and the Bartlett, University College London. Originally from Berlin she is now based in London. She leads projects at offsea in research and practice in the field of architecture, urbanism, spatial ethnography, strategic interventions, design and art. She is currently a Visiting Professor in Architecture at KU Leuven, campus Sint-Lucas Brussels, Belgium, where she heads a studio in the International Master in Architecture Program in the field Urban Practices and Urban Cultures. Her studio Urban Field Lab currently engages with Urban and Rural Fragilities in the Global Context (http://architecturemasterstudios.be). She is a member of the research group Urban Projects, Collective Spaces and Local Identities (http://www.collectivespaces-kuleuven.be), a trans-disciplinary research group at the Department of Architecture of the University Leuven (KU Leuven). She is also holding a position as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Brighton, UK, where she is engaged in research and where she heads one of the MArch studios (http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/staff/anuschka-kutz). Anuschka has a long-standing academic engagement and has held positions at the Technical University of Berlin, the London Metropolitan University and Kingston University and is a frequent contributor to the international academic scene, through talks, panel discussions and conferences. Prior to forming OFFSEA, she worked for internationally acclaimed architectural practices, Zaha Hadid Architects and Michael Hopkins and Partners as well as working as an independent architect. Anuschka’s research focuses on the correlation between everyday practice and personal, urban and collective space. She employs spatial ethnographic methods to undertake detailed, forensic close-up studies into the lived space, to then relate insights back to larger systems and frameworks that govern the urban and spatial realm. In search of the often invisible and at times messy, contradictory, opportunistic and both formal and informal nature of everyday spatial practice, where the domestic, shared, collective and urban realm crisscross in sometimes surprising and unorthodox ways, she traces personal social networks and spatial tactics to unveil how everyday patterns of appropriation co-relate to larger urban systems and fragilities and how they contribute to form space. Close-up studies serve as probes into how wider socio-economic and cultural territories and frameworks impact upon individual lives.