Konrad Ottenheym is professor of architectural history at Utrecht University, The Netherlands, and member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences. He is a specialist on Dutch seventeenth-century architecture, its sources in the Italian renaissance and its influence in Europe. He is author of various monographs on Dutch architects of the Golden Age, Philips Vingboons, Pieter Post and Jacob van Campen, as well as on the influence of Italian architectural treatises in seventeenth-century Dutch architecture. He has cooperated in the English editions (Architectura et Natura Publishers, 2004 and 2007) of Vincenzo Scamozzi’s treatise L’Idea della architettura universale, the main handbook on classical design theories in seventeenth-century Holland. He is coauthor with Krista De Jonge (Belgium) of Unity and Discontinuity, Architectural Relationships between the Southern and Northern Low Countries 1530-1700 (Brepols Publishers, 2007) on the migration of architects and architectural ideas and models from the Low Countries through Europe. In 2013 they published The Low Countries at the Cross Roads. Netherlandish Architecture as an Export Product in Early Modern Europe (1480-1680), a book on the contributions of Netherlandish architects and sculptors to the architecture elsewhere in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Currently he is preparing a comparative study on the reception of the former Roman limes in Early Modern architecture (across Europe and the Maghreb).

In 2010-2015 he participated at the ESF networking program PALATIUM on residential architecture in early modern Europe (www.courtresidences.eu). In 2014-2016 together with Karl Enenkel (Univ. of Münster, Germany) he chaired the reserach program 'The Quest for an Appropriate Past.Literature, Architecture, Art and the Creation of National Identities in Early Modern Europe (c.1400–1700)', financed by the Dutch Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences. Published in november 2018 by Brill (Intersections Series no.60), available in open access.

Konrad Ottenheym contributed to various architectural exhibitions, in 1997 in Hamburg (Germany), in 1999 and 2004 in Vicenza (Italy) and in 2000 in Washington DC, and in 1995, 2002 and 2010 in the Royal Palace of Amsterdam. 

Current Functions

2019 -, Director of the Humanities' Honours Programme of Utrecht University.

2019-,  Member of the Supervisory Board of 'PALAMUSTO, Research and Training on the Palace Museum of Tomorrow' (H2020- M. Sklodowska Curie ETN)

2015 -, member of the 'Residenzen-Kommision' of the Academy of Sciences at Göttingen (Germany).

2013 - , member of the Advisory Council of the 'Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte', Munich (Germany).

 Academic stay abroad

2019, spring Visiting professor LMU Munich (Institut für bayrische Geschichte)

2016, Spring: scholar in residence at the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome (KNIR)

2015, Spring: scholar in residence at the Dutch Institute for Art History in Florence (NIKI)

2009, Spring: visiting professor Rutgers University (NJ), USA

2004, Febr.-June: Fellow/ visiting professor at the Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura ‘Andrea Palladio’, Vicenza (I)

funded Research projects 

2014-2016 'The Quest for an Apporopriate Past. Literature, Architecture, Art and the Creation of National Identities in Early Modern Europe (c.1400–1700)'. A research networking program financed by the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen (Royal Netherlands Academy of Art and Sciences).

2010- 2015 Member of the steering committee of the ‘PALATIUM’- project (a Research Networking Programme of the European Science Foundation).

2006- 2010: The Low Countries at the cross roads. Netherlandish architecture as an export product in early modern Europe (1480-1680), in cooperation with prof dr. Krista De Jonge, KU Leuven. Financed by NWO.

 2005-2008: ‘Public Buildings in Early Modern Europe’, in cooperation with the Centre Chastel of the Sorbonne (Paris-IV) : a series of three international conferences (Paris 2005, Utrecht 2006 and 2008). Financed by NWO.

2002-2006: Passion and Control, a project on eighteenth-century urban building administration in the Low Countries, in cooperation with prof.dr. A. van der Woud (VU/ RU Groningen) and dr. F.H. Schmidt (VU).Financed by NWO.

1996-2000: Unity and Discontinuity. Architectural relationships between the Southern and Northern Low Countries 1530-1700, in cooperation with prof.dr. Krista De Jonge (KU Leuven). Financed by NWO.

Key publications

Karl Enenkel, Koen Ottenheym, Ambitious Antiquities, Famous Forebears. Constructions of a Glorious past in the Early Modern Netherlands and in Europe (Brill's Studies on art, Art History, and Intellectual History 41), 437 pags.; also published in Dutch as: Oudheid als ambitie. De zoektocht naar een passend verleden 1400-1700, Nijmegen 2017 (349 pags.). 

Karl Enenkel, Koen Ottenheym (eds.), The Quest for an Appropriate Past in Literature, Art and Architecture (Brill's Intersections series 60), Leiden 2018 (784 pags.) open access  https://brill.com/view/title/36000

K.A. Ottenheym, 'Proportional Design Systems in Seventeenth-Century Holland', Architectural Histories, vol. 2, no. 1 (2014), open access https://journal.eahn.org/articles/10.5334/ah.bj/ 

K.A. Ottenheym, K. De Jonge (eds.), The Low Countries at the Crossroads. Netherlandish Architecture as an Export Product in Early Modern Europe (1480-1680), Turnhout 2013 (514 pags.)

K.A. Ottenheym, Schoonheid op Maat. Vincent Scamozzi en de architectuur van de Gouden Eeuw, Amsterdam 2010.

 K.A. Ottenheym, K. De Jonge, M. Chatenet (eds.), Public Buildings in Early Modern Europe, Turnhout 2010.

 K.A. Ottenheym, ‘Vincenzo Scamozzi’s Classical Orders, an Introduction to Book VI of L’Idea della Architettura Universale’, in: P. Garvin, K.A. Ottenheym, W. Vroom, Vincenzo Scamozzi, Venetian Architect. The Idea of a Universal Architecture VI. The Architectural Orders and their Application, Amsterdam 2008, (361 pags.) pp. 9-43.

 K. De Jonge, K.A. Ottenheym, Unity and Discontinuity. Architectural Realationships between the Southern and Northern Low Countries (1530-1700), Turnhout 2007 (425 pages).

 K. Bosma. A. Mekking, K. Ottenheym, A. van der Woud (red.), Bouwen in Nederland 600-2000, Zwolle/Amsterdam 2007;

 K.A. Ottenheym, ‘Dutch Contributions to the Classicist Tradition in Northern Europe in the Seventeenth Century: Patrons, Architects and Books’, Scandinavian Journal of History 28 (2003), pp.227-242.

 K.A. Ottenheym, ‘Amsterdam 1700: urban space and public buildings’, in: H. A. Millon (ed.), Circa 1700: Architecture in Europe and the Americas (CASVA Studies in the History of Art 66), National Gallery of Art, Washington/ Yale University Press, New Haven/ London 2005, pp.118-137.

 K.A. Ottenheym, `Fürsten, Architekten und Lehrbücher. Wege der holländischen Baukunst nach Brandenburg im 17. Jahrhundert.' in: H. Lademacher (red.), Onder den Oranje boom. Dynastie in der Republik. Das Haus Oranien-Nassau als Vermittler niederländischer Kultur in deutschen Territorien im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert, München 1999, pp.287-198, 460-462.

 J. Huisken, K.A. Ottenheym, G. Schwartz (red.), Jacob van Campen. Het klassieke ideaal in de Gouden Eeuw, Amsterdam 1995;