Curriculum Vitae
Tiago Matthes is a research assistant and doctoral candidate at the Professorship of Construction Heritage and Preservation (ETH Zurich), led by Prof. Silke Langenberg. As part of the SNSF project “Architecture & Patent,” he studies patents in the history of construction and architecture.
He studied architecture at Leibniz University Hannover and visual culture at TU Vienna. He completed his diploma thesis in 2011 under Prof. Michael Schumacher (LUH) and Prof. Peter Mörtenböck (TU Vienna).
From 2011 to 2015, he worked as an architect at spillmann echsle architekten in Zurich, contributing to projects such as the extension of the “rauti-huus,” the expansion of “Tanzwerk 101,” and the renovation of the “Maag Halle.”
Between 2013 and 2019, he taught as a research assistant at the Professorship of Construction and Design (KIT) under Prof. Ludwig Wappner and was a guest lecturer at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing in 2016. In parallel, he pursued freelance activities and, from 2020 to 2022, worked in project development at planzeit.
Dissertation
In his doctoral project “Structure and Process,” he scrutinizes the role of patents and other forms of intellectual property in shaping the development of skeletal frame constructions within the ETH building stock between 1960 and 1980. The project investigates how shifts in construction technology, the economic logics of the post‑war building industry, and the consolidation of regulatory frameworks converged, and how these dynamics informed structural choices, material decisions, and construction processes.
Recent Publications
The Machine Laboratory at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology: A Diachronic Study of Patents and Innovation
What We Learned from the Mushroom: A Patent Between Technological Invention and Standards.
Kontakt
hello@tiagomatthes.ch