Urs Peter "Upe" Flueckiger

Professor; Dean

M. Arch, Virginia Polytechnic Institute
Schule fuer Gestaltung, Basel, Switzerland (Art and Applied Art School)
Swiss Federal Certificate of Construction Design

Urs Peter Flueckiger is a registered architect and a member of the Swiss Society of Engineers and Architects (SIA), and has practiced architecture internationally in Europe, North America, and Japan. Flueckiger is an expert on the cultural meaning and construction systems of modular housing, with particular focus on low-cost and ecological housing types. Flueckiger's Master of Architecture thesis, Premanufactured Housing, or, Living in 6 1/2 ounces of pure architecture, examines the intersection between industry, domesticity, and modernity.

A Full Professor at Texas Tech University's College of Architecture, Flueckiger has led collaborations with the Colleges of Engineering and Art to advance Design-Build Housing as an interdisciplinary pedagogical platform that provides students first-hand experiences with how housing size, shape, materials, and construction relate to human experience, renewable energy sources, and resilience. Pilot (built) projects include an award-winning Artist studio and NGO space, and an experimental housing type called The Sustainable Cabin. Flueckiger's most recent book “How Much House? Thoreau, Le Corbusier, and the Sustainable Cabin” (2016) draws on a rich archival and field-based analysis of how small housing systems are material and cultural constructs that shape and are shaped by context.