International award for the best dissertation on construction history for Aleksandra Kosykh
Aleksandra Kosykh wrote her dissertation as part of the DFG Graduate College "Cultural and Technical Values of Historic Buildings" (GRK 1913) at the Institute of History of Art and Architecture of the Faculty of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Urban Planning at the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg (BTU) and defended it in February 2022 with the overall grade "with distinction".
Supervised by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Werner Lorenz, she discovered and examined under the title "Pioneers of Modern Construction. Building with iron in 18th-Century Russia" , she discovered and investigated previously unknown steel buildings in Russia that still exist today, opening up a fundamentally new understanding of the early history of steel construction.
This was also acknowledged by the jury in its decision: "Aleksandra Andreevna Kosykh has produced an extraordinary work of exceptional interest on the history of metal construction in Russia, bringing the analysis forward to the 18th century and highlighting important links between this early Russian building tradition and the later English and French ones. (...) The work was carried out in the context of the well-known excellent research on the history of steel construction at the University of Cottbus." (Translation from Italian)
The research on historical steel construction in Russia begun in 2002 under the direction of Prof. Lorenz at the former Chair of Construction History and Structural Preservation led to numerous contacts and collaborations. These were abruptly interrupted by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022; there are currently no longer any links. Even a DFG application that Aleksandra Kosykh had already completed to further her research as a postdoc was not submitted due to the war.
The Premio Lino Gentilini was not the first prize that Dr.-Ing. Aleksandra Kosykh received for her dissertation. In spring 2023, her work had already been recognized as the best dissertation of 2022/23 by the Society for the History of Civil Engineering (GBTG) in Berlin. However, she had to share the prize with another doctoral student in both Berlin and Trento. However, the fact that both "co-winners" received their doctorates from two different chairs at the renowned ETH Zurich only underlines the level of Aleksandra Kosykh's dissertation at BTU.
Contact
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Werner Lorenz
Faculty of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Urban Planning
DFG Priority Program 2255 "Cultural Heritage Construction"
T +49 (0) 355 69-2694
werner.lorenz(at)b-tu.de
