Goldsmiths - University of London

Gesche Würfel MA Dipl.-Ing.

Gesche Würfel is a visual artist and urban planner. After having finished her degree in Spatial Planning at the University of Dortmund, Germany, she worked for a couple of years in urban regeneration and community participation before moving to London. In 2006 she graduated from the MA Photography and Urban Cultures and has been a research associate at CUCR since 2007. Her research interests focus on transitory spaces exploring the notion of place, the relationship humans have to space, and the methods employed for changing (in)habitable places.

Gesche recently finished co-ordinating the UrbanBuzz-funded project Mobilising Knowledge: Mobilising Knowledge - Solving the Interaction Gap between Older People, Planners, Experts and General Citizens within the Thames Gateway on which she has worked with Alison Rooke. This project explored urban change from the perspective of 20 older people from Lewisham in a three-week summer school.

In 2006 Gesche started working on the long-term visual research project Go for Gold! about the impacts of the 2012 Olympic Games on the Lower Lea Valley landscape and about its disappeared spaces. She has given guest lectures, run a photography workshop and organized walks on this theme.

Gesche is currently working on a collaborative visual research project on urban trees. Her work has been exhibited widely including in the 2007 Bloomberg New Contemporaries show.

Selected publications

with Kendall, David and Tristan Fennell (2009) "A line is there to be broken. Conversation with Prof. Caroline Knowles", In: This Is Not A Gateway (TINAG) (ed.) Critical Cities. Ideas, Knowledge and Agitation from Emerging Urbanists. Volume 1. London: Myrdle Court Press, 62-75.

"2070B" (2009), In: Prost, Jean-Francois (ed.) Adaptive Actions, SPACE: London, 38-41.

"Farewell from the Garden Paradise" (2008), In: London Independent Photography London Independent Photography Magazine, Summer 2008, No. 9, London, 8-11.

with Rooke, Alison (2008) "Mobilising Knowledge: Working with Lewisham’s Older Population", In: Hadzi, Adnan (ed.) Deptford.TV diaries volume II: Pirate Strategies. London: OpenMute, pp. 56-60.

with Rooke, Alison (2007) Mobilising Knowledge: Mobilising Knowledge - Solving the Interaction Gap between Older People, Planners, Experts and General Citizens within the Thames Gateway. Guidelines, Toolkit and Findings. London: Goldsmiths and Urban Buzz (plus DVD).

"Go for Gold! Photographically engaging with the Olympics 2012" (2007), In: University of East London (UEL) Rising East Online. Making regeneration our business. Issue 6, January 2007. London: University of East London.