Imke
Woelk

Imke Woelk studied architecture at the Technische Universität Braunschweig and the IUAV in Venice, and fine arts at the Braunschweig University of Art (HBK). When still a student, she realized the residential building “The Eagle” together with the architect Dirk Alten, which received a prize in 1993 from the Premio Internazionale di Architettura Andrea Palladio. After earning her Diplom degree at the TU Braunschweig, she worked in 1993-1997 for Massimiliano Fuksas in Rome and William Alsop in London. Back in Berlin, she established the interdisciplinary architectural office of IMKEWOELK + Partner together with Martin Cors. In 1998, as an academic associate at the TU Berlin, she assumed the teaching tasks of the retiring Professor Georgij Nedeljkov, and in 2000 – 2003, assisted Prof. Finn Geipel in developing the Laboratory for Integrative Architecture (LIA) on the scholarly and pedagogical levels. In the area of research, Imke Woelk is working on rational and intuitive patterns within communicative processes. Since 2001, her investigations have focused on concrete space and its formation and interpretation. In 2003, she received the Rom Preis, Villa Massimo, the highest distinction for artists living in Germany. There, with a point of departure in twentieth century conceptions (Mies van der Rohe’s “universal space,” Umberto Eco’s “opera aperta”), she elaborated conceptual drawings and models dealing with the central issues of contemporary space. As a guest professor at the Duksung Women’s University in Seoul, she taught exhibition design and scenography from 2005 to 2009. In 2010, she completed her doctoral dissertation at the TU Berlin under Finn Geipel and Andres Lepik on the forms of use of the main pavilion of Mies van der Rohe’s Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin. In 2015, in the context of a research scholarship from the Danish Arts Foundation, she investigated the function of nature in the work of the Danish architect Jørn Utzon. In 2016 she was appointed to the Art Advisory Committee by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe in Berlin. In 2018 she completed the online study program ‘The Architectural Imagination’ at the Harvard Graduate School of Design with K. Michael Hays . Imke Woelk received the chair of the jury for the national Czech Architecture Prize in 2019. Her video ‘After All – The Culture of Nature’ was presented at the Art Film Festival in Cannes AFIFF 2019 and nominated for the award.