Matthew James Wells teaches the history and theory of architecture at the gta Institute, ETH Zurich, in the Chair of Prof. Dr Laurent Stalder. He is an architectural historian who works on the relationships between representational techniques, technology, and professionalism in the built environment of the nineteenth and twentieth century.
He undertook his doctoral work at the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Royal College of Art, where his thesis explored how architects thought about and used models during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The thesis was awarded the Theodor-Fischer-Preis (2019) and commended in the RIBA President's Awards for Research (2017). He is currently working on a monograph based on the research, provisionally titled Modelling the Metropolis. In summary, Modelling the Metropolis explores how as nineteenth-century London expanded, was rebuilt, and reconfigured, architectural models were central in the expectations and interactions between architects, politicians, and the wider public in local, national, and global settings. With the construction of new civic buildings, in private debates, and public exhibitions architectural models had a central part to play in the discussions surrounding the appearance of the contemporary city.
He studied architecture in Liverpool and London, and obtained his Masters in the History of Art from the Courtauld Institute (2014). Prior to his appointment at ETH Zürich he has taught at the universities of Kingston, Liverpool, and Nottingham. Recently his writing has been published in Architectural History, the Burlington Magazine, the JSAH, the Journal of Art Historiography, and San Rocco.