Prof. Dr. Markus Breitschmid



Markus Breitschmid is an architect and an architectural historian.

He has studied architecture in Switzerland, the United States and Germany. He is a registered architect (Level E.T.H., No. 1/15593) and a member of the Swiss Institute of Architects and Engineers (No. 135605). He received his doctorate at the Technische Universität Berlin.

Breitschmid joined Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University in 2004. Previously, he was the “2003 Visiting Historian for Architecture and Urbanism” at Cornell University. He held a tenure-track assistant professor of architecture at the University of North Carolina since 2000. Breitschmid has also held teaching positions at The Catholic University of America, the Washington-Alexandria Architecture Consortium, and the University of Louisiana.

Breitschmid was a visiting scholar, a visiting critic and visiting lecturer at several European and American universities.

Breitschmid’s scholarship focuses on the aesthetic mentality of modernism, in particular its promulgations in philosophical aesthetics, architecture, and other forms of art. His lectures and publications attempt to elucidate theoretical knowledge on the nature and transformation of architectural space, form, style, and ornament.


His book publications include:


Publications in "Wolkenkuckucksheim Cloud-Cuckoo-Land Vozdushnyi zamok":


breitschmid[at]vt.edu