Biography Prof. Peter Benz

Peter Benz was born in Austria in 1971 to a German father and Peruvian mother. He grew up in Greece before graduating from high school in Mannheim in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1990. After he completed his civilian service, he began studying film and theatre studies, art history and psychology in Erlangen. Following this, he took up studying architecture at the TU Kaiserslautern in 1993. After graduating with a »Vordiplom«, Benz transferred to the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar in 1996 (then called the University of Architecture and Civil Engineering) where he graduated in 1998 with a diploma in architecture.

After graduating, he worked from Weimar as a freelance exhibition designer and in 2001, was invited to teach as an artistic staff member in the Media Events department of the Bauhaus-Universtät Weimar’s Faculty of Media. In 2006, he began working as an assistant professor at the newly established Academy of Visual Arts of Hong Kong University where he was promoted to associate professor in 2014. In Hong Kong, he helped establish the Academy both at the faculty level and the university level as, for instance, Associate Director (Academic Affairs); Programme Director of the Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Visual Arts; Programme Coordinator of the Craft and Design division; and Programme Coordinator of the MVA (Experience Design).

Today, Benz describes himself as an »experiential designer« and is focussed on researching and developing »experiences« as a creative medium. To do so, he uses the courses he teaches as experimental platforms for testing new approaches. He is also interested in the design potential of everyday objects and of un-designed spaces. His projects have recently begun to focus on issues of livelihood, gender integration and the social impact of how creative careers are portrayed. They also focus on the development of creative tools for teaching in the field of art and design.