Petra Kempf

Petra Kempf, PhD, is an architect, urban designer, and educator teaching architecture at WashU. Her creative practice and research examine how collective forms of living both shape and are shaped by the built environment. Within this framework, she focuses on how these collective forms are influenced by regenerative modes of living grounded in reciprocal relationships that address contemporary environmental challenges. As part of this research, she introduced the methodology of game making and play into her pedagogy as an emerging syntax in the exploration and approach to urban life.

Prior to her appointment at WashU, Kempf has held teaching positions at Columbia University, Rhode Island School of Design, Pratt Institute, Cornell University, and Parsons School of Design, The New School. She has worked at institutions within the public and private sector, including the New York City Department of City Planning, the Project for Public Spaces, and Richard Meier & Partners. She earned a DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) Fellowship, the Architectural League of New York’s Young Architect Award, and grants from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and the Mellon Foundation. She is the founder of Confront(ing) Urbanization, an interdisciplinary research initiative with focus on how the assemblage of collective living is influenced by urbanization.

She has lectured throughout the U.S., Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East, and her work has been exhibited at the 17th, 18th, and 19th Venice Architecture Biennale (2021, 2023, and 2025) and the Chicago Architecture Biennial in 2022 and 2026; the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh; Pink Comma Gallery in Boston; and Roca Gallery in London, as well as at academic institutions including Cornell University, Pratt Institute, the Rhode Island School of Design, and the Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative. She has published a series of articles and is the author of “You Are the City,” “(K)ein Ort Nirgends: Der Transitraum im urbanen Netzwerk,” and a forthcoming book titled “Party Wall Common—Toward Collective Forms of Ownership.” She holds a PhD from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany), an MS in Advanced Architecture and Urban Design from Columbia University, and a BArch from Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences (Germany).