Prof. Vanessa Miriam Carlow on the Board of Trustees of the Volkswagen Foundation Federal State appoints Director of the Institute for Sustainable Urbanism

The government of Lower Saxony has appointed Professor Vanessa Miriam Carlow, Director of the Institute for Sustainable Urbanism (ISU) at Technische Universität Braunschweig, to the Board of Trustees of the Volkswagen Foundation. Her term of office is five years; she may be reappointed once. The 14-member Board of Trustees forms the Board of Directors of the Volkswagen Foundation.

Professor Vanessa Miriam Carlow. Photo credit: Rosa Merk

“I am very much looking forward to serving on the Board of Trustees of the Volkswagen Foundation,” says Professor Vanessa Miriam Carlow. “As an architect and urban planner, I would like to specifically advocate there for research on the sustainable development of the built environment in cities and rural areas.”

The scientist is the spokesperson for the research focus “Future City” at TU Braunschweig and is currently establishing a state-of-the-art centre of excellence for urban research with the ISU SpACE Lab. The “ISU SPatial Analytics + Crossdisciplinary Experimentation Lab” will combine architecture, urban design and planning with a variety of other disciplines.

Professor Carlow studied architecture and urban design at TU Berlin and TU Delft. She holds a joint MA in Urban Management from Erasmus University Rotterdam, University of Copenhagen, Ca Foscari Venice, Autonomous University of Barcelona and University of Antwerp (2003-2004) and a PhD from the Center for Strategic Planning at the Royal Danish Academy of Arts Copenhagen (2012). Since 2012, she has directed the Institute for Sustainable Urbanism (ISU). Previously, she was co-founder of COBE in Copenhagen (2005-2012) and sole owner of COBE Berlin (2012-2020), renamed ‘Vanessa Carlow Urbanism Research Architecture’ in 2021. The architect has taught at universities worldwide, including a visiting professorship at Cornell University NY.

Six new members on the Board of Trustees

A total of six new members have been appointed to the Volkswagen Foundation’s highest decision-making body by the German government and the state government of Lower Saxony. In addition to Professor Carlow, Professor Sebastian Lehnhoff, Director of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oldenburg and Chairman of the Board at OFFIS e.V., is a new member of the Board of Trustees from Lower Saxony.

With a funding volume of 250 million euros (2020) most recently, the Volkswagen Foundation is the largest private science sponsor in Germany. In the 60 years of its existence, it has funded around 33,000 projects with a total of more than 5.5 billion euros.

Further information on the new members in the press release of the Volkswagen Foundation:
www.volkswagenstiftung.de/aktuelles-presse/presse/pm-wechsel-im-kuratorium-der-volkswagenstiftung