Dr Nicholas Coetzer

Dr Nicholas Coetzer is an Associate Professor and NRF rated researcher at UCT School of Architecture where he has worked since 2001 and where he has been ‘programme convenor’ of the undergraduate and postgraduate degrees for a combined period of more than eight years.

After graduating from the University of Natal in 1994, Nic pursued an M.Arch at the University of Colorado where he taught in 1997. After working and registering as an architect in Denver Nic moved to London in 1999 and completed his Ph.D. at the Bartlett School at the University of London in 2004 which was published with Ashgate in 2013 as Building Apartheid – On Architecture and Order in Imperial Cape Town.

Nic has also developed a research interest in design teaching, particularly what defines the limits of architectural pedagogy. These ideas and interests have a strong impact on Nic’s teaching which is student-focused with an emphasis on creativity, ideas, and design process which he recently demonstrated in his postgraduate co-supervision of over 210 MArch(Prof) students.

Apart from many refereed publications in South African Journal of Art History and a regular ‘back page’ column in Architecture South Africa, Nic has recently published in the Architecture Research Quarterly. Book chapters can be found in 10+ Years 100+ Buildings, Architecture in a democratic South Africa, Material Matters. Architecture and Material Practice and most recently in Handbook for Sustainable Tourism Practitioners: The Essential Toolbox published by Edward Elgar. Nic has also co-edited sCapes: Not an… published with Cambridge Architectural Press. Nic is writing his second book An Architecture of Care: A Genealogy of Moral Instrumentality from Arts and Crats to Other Progeny to be published through Routledge.