Background
Breitschmid, Markus was born on April 20, 1966 in Lucerne, Switzerland. Son of Kaspar Breitschmid and Rita Katharina Breitschmid Helfenstein Voser.
architect art historian university professor architectural historian
Breitschmid, Markus was born on April 20, 1966 in Lucerne, Switzerland. Son of Kaspar Breitschmid and Rita Katharina Breitschmid Helfenstein Voser.
Diploma in Architect, Central Swiss University Applied Science, Lucerne, 1992. Master of Architecture, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, 1994. Doctor of Philosophy in Engineering, Technische University, Berlin, 1999.
Breitschmid is professor of architecture at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University since 2004. Previously, he was the "2003 Visiting Historian for the History of Architecture and Urbanism" at Cornell University, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina, and a visiting professor at The Catholic University of America and the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Breitschmid came to prominence in the discipline of architecture by means of his doctoral dissertation "Der Baugedanke bei Friedrich Nietzsche," written at the Technical University of Berlin, that was subsequently published as a book titled " Friedrich Nietzsche und die Architektur" (The Building Spirit Friedrich Nietzsche and Architecture).
Breitschmid"s book is the first comprehensive study of how Friedrich Nietzsche dealt with architecture in his philosophy.
Later, Breitschmid made a name for himself as an author on contemporary architecture, particularly on the architecture of Valerio Breitschmid"s other writing concerns the aesthetic mentality of modernism and contemporary architecture. Among other publications dealing with Contemporary Swiss Architecture, Bruno Taut, Tectonics in Architecture, and Theories of Interpretation.
Member of Society Architectural Historians, Swiss Institute Architects and Engineers, Tau Sigma Delta (honorary).