BERLIN, GERMANY.-On 26 October 2007, Kristin Feireiss will receive an honorary doctorate from the Carolo-Wilhelmina Technische Universit鋞 in Braunschweig. In awarding this degree, the TU Braunschweig pays tribute to Feireiss (who was born in Berlin on 1 July 1942) for her activities as a journalist, curator, and founder of the Architecture Forum Aedes (Berlin), and for serving for more than 25 years as a mediator between academic architectural research and an interdisciplinary, international public.

The motive for this award is Kristin Feireiss抯 decisive contribution to the deepening of discussions related to architecture and urban planning in Germany, contributions which have raised awareness of the cultural and economic significance of this artistic form far beyond the boundaries of the Federal Republic.

Her outstanding achievement consists of the creation of a unique forum for presenting contemporary architecture in exhibitions and publications against the background of classical modernism, a forum that has for many years significantly shaped scholarly and academic perspectives on architecture. In the process, Kristin Feireiss has made an essential contribution to enhancing the prestige of German architecture abroad.

During her tenure (from 1995 to 2001) as director of the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi), she called greater attention to the transformative processes which have affected European and non-European cities beginning in 1989, and has carried out groundbreaking research in this area. Through her activities with the NAi, she was one of the first to sensitize a wider public to the transformations wrought in developing countries by enforced urbanization, and to carry out fundamental investigations into the parallel societies associated with them (for example, her researches and 1998 exhibition on architecture in South Africa, and her contributions as coeditor of Informal City/Caracas Case in 2005). In recognition of her commitment, she has received the German Bundesverdienstkreuz am Band (Cross of the Order of Merit, 2001) and the Wolfert van Borsel Medal in the Netherlands (2002). Currently, she serves as co杁irector of the internationally acclaimed Architecture Forum Aedes in Berlin together with her partner Hans-J黵gen Commerell. She has edited numerous monographs and thematic volumes in the international architectural context and has been active as a juror in many international competitions, including Beijing (2008), Master Plan for the Olympic Games (2002) and the Mariinsky Opera, St. Petersburg (2003). Since 2007 she was been appointed as a member of the European Cultural Parliament.