Baerbel Mueller is an architect and researcher based in Austria and Ghana, whose spatial practice is strongly informed by contextual approaches, shaped by an interest in translating these into new typologies and contemporary responses. She is the dean of and an associate professor at the Institute of Architecture (I oA) at the University of Applied Arts Vienna (Die Angewandte), and founder and head of [Applied] Foreign Affairs ([A]FA), a lab which investigates spatial, environmental and cultural phenomena in rural and urban Sub‐Saharan Africa. She is founder of nav_s baerbel mueller [navigations in the field of architecture and urban research within diverse cultural contexts], focusing on projects located on the African continent since 2000.

Her work comprises architecture, urban research, installations, scenography, and curatorial projects, and has been shown at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2006), Chicago Architecture Biennial (2023), Marrakesh Biennial (2016), Architekturmuseum Munich (2013), Az W (2005; 2014), Kunsthalle Exnergasse (2007) Vienna, and the Nuku Center for Photographic Research and Practice (2022), amongst others. She received the Austrian Ars Docendi State Award for excellence in teaching in 2015, edited [applied] Foreign Affairs‐investigating spatial phenomena in rural and urban Sub‐Saharan Africa (Birkhäuser, 2017) and Structures of Displacement (Birkhäuser, 2020), designed Nubuke Extended, an arts campus and gallery in Accra (with Juergen Strohmayer, 2019), and co‐curated the 2021 Vienna Biennale exhibition, Ecologies & Politics of the Living (with Ibrahim Mahama and Elisabeth Falkensteiner). She is co‐editor of forA on the Urban (2021‐).