Trained as art and architecture historian at University of Augsburg he received a research fellowship 1986-1989 at Bibliotheca Hertziana (Max-Planck-Institut) in Rome for his dissertation about Architecture Models in the Renaissance. In 1994 he started as curatorial assistant at Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin, from 1996 to 2007 working as curator and head of architecture collection of Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. From 2007 to 2010 he worked as Curator at the Architecture and Design Department of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 2011/12 he was Loeb-Fellow at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Since 2012 he is Professor for Architecture History and Curatorial Studies at Faculty for Architecture at Technical University Munich (TUM) and Director of Architecture Museum of TUM.
As curator he organized numerous architecture exhibitions in Berlin, New York, Munich. In Berlin he initiated a series of large-scale architecture exhibitions in Mies van der Rohe’s Neue Nationalgalerie, starting with “Renzo Piano. Architekturen des Lebens” (2000), followed by „Content / Rem Koolhaas und OMA/AMO“ (2003). He also worked on „Mies in Berlin“ (co-organized with The Museum of Modern Art, New York) presented in 2001-2002 in Altes Museum in Berlin. At MoMA he presented in 2010 the exhibition „Small Scale, Big Change. New Architectures of Social Engagement“, which was transformed in a traveling exhibition with the title “Think Global, Build Social!”, presented at DAM, Frankfurt am Main and AzW, Wien (2013). As a touring exhibition of Goethe-Institut it was presented from 2014-2018 in more than 30 venues all over the world.
In his current position at TUM he organized more than 30 exhibitions and edited or co-edited the related catalogs and publications. The focus of his research and curatorial work is on using exhibitions as a critical platform and to investigate the social relevance of architecture.