Baerbel Mueller is an architect, researcher, and curator 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 was the dean (2021-2025) and is an associate professor at the Institute of Architecture (I oA) at the University of Applied Arts Vienna (Die Angewandte), and head of [Applied] Foreign Affairs ([A]FA), a lab investigating spatial, environmental, and cultural phenomena in rural and urban Sub‐Saharan Africa. She is the principal of her studio 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 spans architecture, urban research, installations, scenography, and curatorial projects, and has been showcased at the Rotterdam Architecture Biennial (2024), Chicago Architecture Biennial (2023), Nuku Center for Photographic Research and Practice, Tamale (2022), Vienna Biennale for Change (2021), Architekturmuseum Munich (2013), Marrakesh Biennial (2016), Venice Architecture Biennale (2006), Kunsthalle Exnergasse (2007), Az W (2005; 2014), among 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 has been co‐editor of forA on the Urban (2021‐2024).