A Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship to be hosted at BTU

There are buildings that one does not simply visit, but reads like a text – line by line, column by column. The Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin is such a building. Designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, one of the most influential architects of the 20th century, it is regarded as the architectural embodiment of clarity and minimalism. It is precisely this legacy that a young Italian researcher will be exploring from October onwards; he is coming to the BTU specifically for this purpose and will also travel from there to Chicago, the city where Mies van der Rohe spent much of his later life.

Davide Galleri studied architecture at the prestigious Federico II University in Naples, Italy, where he also completed his Ph.D., which included a year in the United States at the Mies van der Rohe-designed Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago as a Fulbright Fellow.

He is interested not only in how buildings are designed, but also in how they can be preserved across generations – both in practice and in theory, as a craft and as a science. This is precisely why the European Union has now honoured him: his research project has been awarded the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship in the HORIZON-MSCA-2025-PF funding framework – a mark of distinction reserved solely for proposals that achieve the highest quality rating in the scientific evaluation process.

The title of his project – ‘CATCH-MIES: Comparing Approaches in Transatlantic Conservation of Heritage, A Multidisciplinary Innovative Examination Strategy‘ - conceals an idea that is as simple as it is fascinating: how is the architectural legacy of the same architect treated on both sides of the Atlantic? Mies van der Rohe built on both continents, in Berlin as well as in Chicago, where he left his mark on the Illinois Institute of Technology and left behind skyscrapers that continue to define the architectural style to this day.

The MSCA Global Fellowship will be hosted by BTU Cottbus as the main host institution of this research with Prof. Dominik Lengyel as supervisor, by the University of Texas at San Antonio as outgoing phase institution for the United States, with Prof. Michelangelo Sabatino as supervisor. The research will also include a professional secondment at the Chicago firm Harboe Architects, led by Thomas "Gunny" Harboe. Dr. Davide Galleri, proponent and grantee of this MSCA fellowship, will work as the main researcher across these institutions.

For the next 30 months, Galleri’s journey will take the form of a transatlantic route. He will begin at the Chair of Architecture and Visualisation at the BTU, where he will conduct research from October to December 2026. His fellowship will then take him to the USA for fifteen months, to the University of Texas at San Antonio and to an architecture firm based in Chicago, whose offices are situated in one of the iconic buildings in the Loop, the historic heart of Chicago. Both Prof. Sabatino and Gunny Harboe are recognized experts on the work of Mies van der Rohe. The connection with them did not come about by chance, but has developed over many years: Professor Dominik Lengyel, holder of the Chair of Architecture and Visualisation at the University of Cottbus, knows both of them from his own lecturing activities in Chicago.

From April 2028 to March 2029, Galleri will return to the BTU for the final phase of the project to bring together his research findings from Europe and the USA.

“It is a great honour for us to welcome such an outstanding young researcher to our department,” says Professor Dominik Lengyel. “His project links research through visualisation at the BTU with a transatlantic network of Mies van der Rohe experts – a constellation that will open up new perspectives on the preservation of this heritage.”

About the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Mobility Programme

The fact that such a project is even possible is also down to the funding scheme itself: the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions are regarded as one of the most prestigious mobility programmes in EU research funding – named after a scientist who herself was at home across two countries, two languages and two