Dr. Ole W. Fischer studied architecture at the Bauhaus University Weimar and at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zurich from 1995 to 2001. Between 2002 and 2008 he taught at the Institute of History and Theory of Architecture (gta) of ETH Zurich, where he also obtained his PhD. In his doctoral thesis he analyzed the programmatic transcription of the philosophy of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche into theory and work of the Flemish artist, architect, designer and educator Henry van de Velde. Parallel, as a licensed architect and urban designer in Zurich, he worked in interdisciplinary project teams, where his architectural and urban design projects won several prizes and honorable mentions. In summer 2004 and 2005 he was a research fellow of Klassik Stiftung Weimar, in spring 2005 a visiting PhD fellow at Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), and in 2008–09 fellow in residence of Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart. In spring 2009 he returned as postdoc research fellow to Harvard GSD to work on a history of critical theory in architecture. Parallel he taught as visiting adjunct professor for history and theory of architecture at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Providence in fall 2009, and as visiting assistant professor at the History Theory Criticism program of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) School of Architecture and Planning in spring 2010. In 2009 he was selected as co-curator & co-general commissioner of the German pavilion themed "Sehnsucht" at the Biennale di Venezia 2010. In summer 2010 he was appointed as assistant professor for history, theory & criticism of architecture at the University of Utah School of Architecture, Salt Lake City, where he was promoted to associate professor with tenure in summer 2017, and served as associate chair 2019–2021. In 2021 he accepted the tenured position as Professor for History and Theory at the School of Architecture at the Hochschule Biberach in Southern Germany. In 2023 he was appointed as Professor for History and Theory of Architecture and Design at the State Academy of Fine Art and Design Stuttgart (Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart), Germany, where he continues to teach and conduct research. He held appointments as visiting professor for architectural theory at the department of architecture at the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien) in summer 2015, and as visiting professor for architectural theory at the Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) in summer 2019. In spring 2018 he spent his sabbatical as visiting researcher at Professur Architeturtheorie, Institut für Architetur, TU Berlin, followed by the appointment as Nietzsche Fellow in Residence at the Kolleg Friedrich Nietzsche in Weimar over summer 2019. Earlier in his career, he held fellowships by DAAD, Studienstiftung, Gerda Henkel Stiftung, and the ETH. In addition, he has been serving as design critic at studio reviews at ETH Zurich, EPF Lausanne, Harvard GSD, Yale SoA, MIT SA+P, RISD, Columbia GSAPP, Cooper Union, Princeton SoA, TU Berlin, TU Wien, TU Graz, Akademie der bildenden Künste Vienna, UMPRUM Academy of Art, Architecture and Design Prague, etc.
He lectured and published internationally on contemporary questions of the theory, history and criticism of architecture and art, amongst others in Archithese, Werk, Journal of Society of Architectural Historians JSAH, MIT Thresholds, Archplus, An Architektur, Graz Architecture Magazine GAM, Umeni/Art, Beyond, log, Framework, West 86th etc. He contributed to a series of books, such as The Humanities in Architectural Design (London: Routledge, 2010), the The Handbook of Architectural Theory (London: Sage, 2012), and The Other Architect (Montréal: CCA/Spector, 2015), This Thing called Theory (London: Routledge, 2016), Theory’s History, 196X-199X (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2020), and Penser-Faire / Thinking-Making (Brussels: Éditions de l'Université de Bruxelles, 2021).
He is co-editor of Precisions – Architecture between Sciences and the Arts (Berlin: Jovis, 2008), of Sehnsucht – a book of architectural longings (Vienna: Springer 2010). He is co-founder of the peer-reviewed international critical journal Dialectic since 2012 which won the support of the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in Fine Arts, Chicago, Il in 2013 and in 2020. His is author of Nietzsches Schatten [Nietzsche's Shadow] (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 2012).