Georg Rafailidis

Associate Professor - Department of Architecture
grafaili@buffalo.edu - Hayes Hall 312 - (716) 829-5896

Associate Professor - Department of Architecture
grafaili@buffalo.edu - Hayes Hall 312 - (716) 829-5896

Georg Rafailidis headshot.

Associate Professor Georg Rafailidis investigates new building forms and construction systems in which notions of materiality, time and authorship are stretched to new frontiers.

Georg Rafailidis is a registered architect with the architect chamber Berlin, Germany. He received his architectural diploma from the University of Applied Sciences in Munich Germany and a Master of Arts from the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, England. Rafailidis was assistant professor at the RWTH University in Aachen Germany from 2005 until 2010 before coming to UB.

Rafailidis worked for Herzog & de Meuron in Basel and London before setting up the platform davidsonrafailidis.net, with his partner Stephanie Davidson in 2008. Davidson Rafailidis investigates how to create long-lasting meaning in the built environment within a global economy that operates through business plans that focus on the short-term. Davidson Rafailidis investigates this contemporary dilemma through two venues: Firstly, by exploring a stable long lived architecture that is able to connect to people in fundamental, long-lasting and immediate ways independent of short-lived, official programs. A second category of projects pursues this inquiry through unstable architecture that transforms over time. With unstable architecture, Davidson Rafailidis investigates how architecture could respond and adapt to changing demands or simply disappear after its initial use.

Following the work of Davidson Rafailidis, the objective of Rafailidis’ teaching is to encourage and demonstrate attitudes and ways of working that lead to new building forms and construction systems in which notions of materiality, time and authorship are stretched to new frontiers. An important aspect of Rafailidis’ mentoring is to demonstrate that the research questions pursued in an academic context have immediate relevance in the built environment. This ambition is documented in the book on beginning design Processes of Creating Space (Routledge 2017) with endorsements by Herman Hertzberger, Prix de Rome winning architect Jacques Rousseau and artist Rachel Whiteread.

Davidson Rafailidis received funding from the Landesregierung Nordrhein-Westfalen Germany, Edmonton Public Art Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts, and many others. International awards include Arch+ Competition 1.prize, Blueprint award, Best of Canada Design award, Architizer A+ Award, DETAIL Prize finalist, AZ Award of Merit, Storefront for Art and Architecture StreetFest competition winner, Reinventing the Strip Mall competition winner and a Van Alen Institute Honorable Mention. Publications include BRACKET journal, DETAIL Magazine, Arch+, BAUWELT, db Deutsche Bauzeitung, AIT, Transmaterial, De Architect, C3 and AIT among others. Recent projects were exhibited in international venues such as the Lisbon Architecture Triennial 2016, The New Museum in New York, Museum of Architecture and Design MAO Ljubljana, Toronto Harbourfront Centre, eme3 Spain, Musée de design et d‘Arts Appliqués Contemporains Switzerland and the EKWC Netherlands, among many others.