Dr Kim Förster is Senior Lecturer in Architectural Studies at the University of Manchester and member of the Manchester Architecture Research Group (MARG). He joined Manchester in 2019 after a three years tenure at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, where he served as Associate Director of Research. His research and teaching focusses on knowledge and cultural production, as well as institutional and environmental history, with particular attention to issues of building transition in terms of the social metabolism, practices and policies of energy and material flows, and ways that they are debated and mediated. He is author of “Building Institution” (transcript, 2024) and “Undiciplined Knowing. Writing Architectural History through the Environment” (CCA, 2023), and editor of the open access series “Environmental Histories of Architecture” (CCA, 2022). His current research project investigates the C19, C20 and C21 history of global cement as a modern industrial building material and cheap commodity, offering a corporate critique from perspectives involving cultural studies and environmental humanities. He has published widley on these topics in esteemed international and interdisciplinary contexts, including contributions to publications such as e-flux Index (2024) and e-flux Architecture (2023), “Solarities” (punctum books, 2023), “Beyond Concrete” (Triest, 2022), and Werk, Bauen und Wohnen (2022). Dr Kim Förster holds a German Staatsexamen (equivalent to a Master’s degree) in English and American Studies, Geography, and Pedagogy from Humboldt University in Berlin, as well as a doctorate in Architecture (Dr. sc.) from ETH Zurich.