Trained as an architect and working today as an artist, I explore the shifting thresholds between the built and the natural. My practice moves across painting, permaculture, and spatial design—disciplines through which questions of place, form, and ecology continuously intersect. This site brings together current explorations with the projects that have informed their evolution.
I understand architecture and painting as parallel modes of spatial inquiry—each tracing the fragile line between the figurative and the abstract, the material and the imagined. My current practice brings together abstract landscape painting and permaculture garden design, grounded in a foundation of earlier work in architecture, curatorial projects, research, writing, and teaching.
This site gathers ongoing works alongside an archive of projects. Together they trace a continuing engagement with spatial perception, ecological design, and cultural dialogue—an evolving investigation into how we inhabit, shape, and are shaped by the living world.
KRISTIEN RING
(1969*) grew up in Pittsburgh, PA, USA, and has been living in Berlin since 1991. A German citizen, Ring studied both in the USA and Berlin (Dipl.Ing. Architektin, B.E.D.Arch U.S.A.) and is a registered architect and member of Architects’ Association Berlin, Germany since 1998.
Former teaching: (2023-2024) Extraordinary Professorship position at the Faculty of Architecture, Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic. (2015 – 2020) Professor at the University of South Florida, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Design. (2016) Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies of the University of Western Australia. (2014) Visiting Professor at the University of Sheffield, England, SSoA School of Architecture. (2011 – 2012 / 2014 – 2015) Assistant Professor at the Technical University of Braunschweig, Architecture Department, Institute for Design and Architectural Strategies, IDAS.
Author (selection):
URBAN LIVING _Strategies for the Future / Strategien für das Zukünftige Wohnen, by Kristien Ring, in collaboration with the Berlin Senate Department for Urban Planning, 264 pages, German/English, ©Jovis 2015, ISBN: 978-3-86859-331-0, and
SELFMADE CITY_ Berlin: Self-Initiated Urban Living and Architectural Interventions, by Kristien Ring, in collaboration with the Berlin Senate Department for City Planning and Environment, 224 Pages, German/English, ©Jovis 2013, ISBN 978-3-86859-167-5 (2 editions, 5000+ copies, out of print)
Kristien has presented her published work extensively at international conferences worldwide, including a TEDx talk, as well as the Venice Architecture Biennale.
(2004 -2011) founding Director of the DAZ German Center for Architecture in Berlin.
(1990’s +) Kristien worked in several international architectural offices as an architect.