Bio
Research Interests
Deborah Hauptmnn joined the College of Design as the Chair of the Department of Architecture in 2013. Prior to coming to Iowa, Hauptmann spent her academic career at the TU Delft in the Netherlands. Hauptmann's research interest include: philosophical notions of time & space in relation to architecture and urban theory, specifically developed through a close reading of Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze; the problematic of the virtual [Bergson, Deleuze, Foucault, Lefebvre et al.]; the geo-politics & socio-poetics of the city [Beck, Derrida, Rancier, et al.]; and issues pertaining to the limits and extensions of trans-disciplinary thinking. Her work draws on disciplines in philosophy, the social sciences and the neurosciences. For instance, her co-edited volume, Cognitive Architecture: From Biopolitics to Noopolitics: Architecture and Mind in the Age of Information and Communication, begins with the premise that in a world increasingly populated by technologies of information and communication, the analysis of biopolitics must be expanded to include thinking on noopolitics. While the former acts on body, or populations of bodies, and inscribes habits and practices specific to life (bios), the latter operates on mind (nous), on general intellect and mental disposition.
Select publications include: ‘Repositioning: The after(s) and the end(s) of theory’, in This Thing Called Theory, 2016; ‘Northern Line’, co-authored with A. Radman, in Deleuze and Architecture, 2013; Forward to Writing and Seeing Architecture: Christian de Portzamparc and Philippe Sollers, 2008; The Body in Architecture, 2006. Hauptmann is a Henri Bergson scholar; she is the English (co)translator of his 1889 Latin thesis Quid Aristoteles de Loco Senserit / On Aristotle’s Conception of Place.
Dr. Hauptmann lectures and moderates academic panels internationally and, since 2008, has the pleasure to participate in the Biennale Educational Sessions at the Venice Biennale in Architecture, where she hosts three-day workshops and symposia.