Born in 1970 in Berlin, Germany. Writer, critic, and educator specializing in architecture. He studied architecture at the Technical University of Berlin(Germany) and the Illinois Institute of Technology(USA), worked at Inggenhofen Architects(Germany) and Shigeruban Architects(Japan), and was an architecture journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle(USA). He has published hundreds of articles on architecture and urban design in newspapers, magazines, and internet media in Europe and elsewhere. He has taught at Kansas State University, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and Damkang University in Taiwan. He currently lives in Berlin with his wife, Mao, and their two daughters, Dana and Nina. He is the author of Tokyo Architecture, Bauhaus Architecture, The Chinese City, and Cities of the Pacific Century, among other books.