Since 2023, cue — Chair for Transitioning Urban Ecosystems at the Institute of Architecture, Technische Universität Berlin, has been dedicated to providing students and researchers with skills for climate-oriented urban design. The care for geomorphology, unbuilt spaces and alive matters in more-than-human urban (eco)systems reveals socioecological values and functions that are crucial for transitioning toward a sustainable, just and vibrant inhabited environments, especially in the face of climate and other current crises.
By engaging critically in environmental and urban histories, theories and politics, cue explores the multiple potentialities of architectural and urban design beyond building, questioning the agencies of spatial knowledge production and representation as worldmaking.
Through field-based interdisciplinary interactions with Earth and Life sciences, stakeholders and citizens, as well as cross-scalar mapping, transects and prospective scenarios, cue envisiones territorial structures and novel typologies of open space as ecological habitats and interfaces of multiple metabolic fluxes.
Including diverse German, French, Swiss, British, Scandinavian and Latin-American backgrounds, the cue team is currently focusing on the climate-oriented transition challenges of European urban ecosystems, such as carbon sequestration in post-glacial soils of the densely urbanised Swiss Plateau, and countering desertification trends in sandy meadows of Berlins Urstromtal’s terrain vagues, while advancing doctoral research to polar and tropical regions of the Earth.
If you are interested in research and design collaborations, thesis supervision, or more information about us, please reach out via chair@cue.tu-berlin.de
Prof. Dr. Antoine VialleHead of Chair
vialle@tu-berlin.de
Antoine (b. 1983, France) is licensed architect (2007), urbanist and doctor in science (2021). Following his training at the École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Paris-Belleville (ENSAPB), Antoine Vialle has worked in several architecture firms. Since 2011, he has been teaching (Scientific Assistant and Lecturer) in various schools and conducted a PhD on Swiss urban soils at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)—Laboratory of Urbanism. In 2010-2011, he was fellow of the French Academy in Rome—Villa Medici. In 2019, he was Doctoral Visiting Student at the MIT Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism in Cambridge (MA). In 2021, Antoine Vialle was postdoctoral researcher and project manager at the EPFL Habitat Research center (HRC). In 2022-2023, he has been leading a research project on the topic of urban soils and carbon sequestration in urban requalification projects at the University of Lausanne (UNIL) —Competence Centre in Sustainability. Funded by the Soil Section of the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) and by the Canton of Vaud (DGTL), this interdisciplinary project was developed in collaboration with the UNIL Institute of Earth Surface Dynamics, the ETHZ Department of Environmental Systems Science. Within transdisciplinary teams, Antoine Vialle has developed awarded design projects such as Lausanne Jardin 2019 and Europan 16 (Carouge). He was also assistant curator for the Lausanne Jardins festival 2024. Since October 2023, Antoine Vialle is Tenure Track Professor for climate-oriented urban design at the Technische Universität Berlin, Fakultät VI - Planen Bauen Umwelt, Institut für Architektur, where he leads cue, the new Chair for Transitioning Urban Ecosystems.
Alexander PappeOffice manager
alexander.pappe@tu-berlin.de
Alexander has been working as an office manager for cue since 2025. He studied for a Master of Arts in Literature – Art – Culture (with a focus on German literature) at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena.
Since 2024, Alexander has been working on a dissertation on intergenerational conflicts in contemporary East German literature.
Aniella Sophie GoldingerResearch and teaching associate, PhD candidate
goldinger@tu-berlin.de
Aniella (b. 1994, Denmark) is a landscape architect and spatial researcher, based in Berlin. Her research is centered around oceanic hinterlands and the extended urban fabric of the polar territories and works to render visible the interplay between structures of power, ecologies, and more-than-human stakeholders across critical urban theory, mapping and science and technology studies. She is a doctoral research and teaching associate at cue, Institute of Architecture, Technische Universität Berlin and a member of the Architectural Association's Terrain Lab.
She holds a Master’s degree in landscape architecture, specializing in Arctic and sub-Arctic territories, from the Oslo School of Architecture and the Arctic University of Norway, where her thesis delved into the material agency and spatio-legality of sea ice in Arctic marine spatial planning, and a BA in architecture from the Royal Danish Academy, School of Architecture.
Michel Zisman Zalis Research and teaching associate, PhD candidate
zalis@tu-berlin.de
Michel (b. 1994, Brazil) is an architect and urban and territorial researcher based in Berlin. Since 2024, he has been part of cue – Chair for Transitioning Urban Ecosystems at the Institute of Architecture, Technical University of Berlin, where he teaches design studios on climate-oriented urban design and works on his doctoral research at the intersection of urban and territorial studies, critical design theory, and critical conservation studies, investigating the hypothesis of conservation as design from the relationship between urbanization processes and the spatialization of nature conservation in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. He holds a MAS in Urban and Territorial Design from ETH Zurich/EPF Lausanne and a professional degree in Architecture and Urbanism from PUC-Rio, with an academic exchange at FAU Lisboa. Michel has talked about his work at the University of São Paulo, TU Berlin, PUC-Rio, DIA Hochschule Dessau, and IUAV University of Venice, and has published in Art of the Working Class, transmagazine, and Prumo Magazine. In recent years, he has collaborated on research projects such as the Planetability Working Group, Atlas do Chão, and ENTRE, as well as with architecture practices including AIA Estudio and Zebulun Arquitetura.
Nilra ZoralogluLecturer, PhD candidate
n.zoraloglu@campus.tu-berlin.de
Nilra Zoraloglu (b. 1996, Turkey) is an artist, architect, and researcher based in Berlin. Her research investigates the material, political, and ecological relations between urban soil, extraction, construction, and technogenic ground. Moving between architecture, ecology, and artistic research, she uses mapping, moving images, and material experiments to explore soil as an active agent and archive of urban transformation.
She is a doctoral researcher at cue, Institute of Architecture, Technische Universität Berlin. Her doctoral project, Architectures of the Excavated Ground, is supported by a scholarship from the Heinrich Böll Foundation, where she is also part of the Ecological and Social Research Cluster. She holds an MSc in COOP Design Research from Hochschule Anhalt, developed in cooperation with the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and a BA in Architecture from Middle East Technical University.
Tim MartensLecturer, PhD candidate
tim.martens@campus.tu-berlin.de
Tim Martens (b. 1998, Germany) has an independent practice that moves between the fields of territorial research, transformation design, and urban ecology. He explores how post-fossil hinterlands are entangled with planetary health, socio-cultural rifts, and territorial injustices. Together with CUE, Tim is developing a design model for transitional landscapes grounded in soil care, ecosystem remediation, and more-than-human solidarity.
Tim holds a master’s degree in architecture with a focus on “cities and territory” from EPF Lausanne and maintains interdisciplinary commitments across Germany, Belgium, and Switzerland. Recently, he presented his work at “It Was All Fields Once” by Newrope (ETHZ), the “World Planning Schools Congress 2026” in Helsinki, and at the exhibition for the SRU Circular Building Report.
Su WangVisiting researcher
zju-wangsu@outlook.com
Su Wang (b. 1998, China) is currently a PhD candidate in Architecture at Zhejiang University. Her research focuses on resilience-oriented planning and construction for stormwater and flood disasters in mountain villages and towns in southern Zhejiang Province, China, interpreting resilience practices in human settlements from the perspective of traditional construction wisdom. She is also interested in other dimensions of settlement resilience, including hydrology, climate, and architectural space. In addition, she has a strong interest in urban and rural public service facilities and low-carbon sustainable construction. Her design practice experience includes the renovation and adaptive reuse of idle public facilities in villages and towns.
From October 2026 to October 2027, Su Wang will be a visiting scholar at Technische Universität Berlin.
Cristina López LitvinovichVisiting researcher
estfinca@gmail.com
Cristina is an architect, researcher, and educator with a situated practice at the intersection of art, architecture, and pedagogy. Experience includes mediating community transformation processes in marginalized territories affected by economic inequality. The practice encompasses pedagogical workshops in situ, university teaching, public site‑specific installations, and the facilitation of collective spaces for debate and critical reflection.
Cristina will spend the summer of 2026 as a visiting researcher at the Technical University of Berlin and the Berlin University of the Arts (a collaboration between the two institutions).
Past team members
Tanja Beier, Tutor Projektwerkstatt
Anne Sophie Wilhelm, Tutor
Alexandre Bossard, Visiting researcher
Marta Magnaguagno, Visiting researcher
Franka Matthes, Tutor
Nick Roberts-Robbins, Projektwerkstatt
Sarah Möller, Tutor
Aline Schulz, Office Manager
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