The Chair was created in 1998 at the initiative of UNESCO. It is managed by the Research Unit-LABEX AE & CC and CRAterre-ENSAG laboratory, as a center of excellence, in the Grenoble School of Architecture (ENSAG). It aims to accelerate the dissemination of scientific and technical know-how on earthen architecture within the international community in two areas: environment and World Heritage and, also in environment, human settlements, and housing.

Anna Heringer is also an architect and Visiting Professor at the Technical University Vienna, Austria (2016-) with research focus on architecture in its socio-cultural context.

Together with Eike Roswag and a team of craftsmen from Bangladesh and Germany, she realized the Meti School in Rudrapur, Bangladesh, that she designed in 2004 as a diploma project at the University of Arts in Linz, Austria. The project won several international awards including the Aga Khan Award of Architecture.

She studied architecture at the University of Arts and Industrial Design in Linz, Austria.

She lectures worldwide and was visiting professor at universities in Stuttgart, Linz, Vienna, and Alghero. She received the Loeb Fellowship (2011) at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Cambridge, MA, USA; adding – in the form of an installation – a ‘Mud Hall’ of rammed earth to the school’s Gund Hall, together with Martin Rauch, students, faculty, and the Loeb Fellow Class.

She teaches a design studio focused on earthen architecture at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) together with Martin Rauch.

She was winner of the Holcim Awards Bronze 2011 Africa Middle East for “Training center for sustainable construction, Marrakesh, Morocco”. She won an OBEL Award 2020 for “The Place of Deep Joy”, a building in Bangladesh that houses a therapy center for people with disabilities and a textile studio producing fair trade fashion and art.

Anna Heringer presented “A few notes from a discussion about de-materialization” at the inaugural Holcim Roundtable held at MIT Endicott House, Boston, USA in 2014 and participated in the 2nd Holcim Roundtable held in Einsiedeln, Switzerland (2015) and 3rd Roundtable at the Institute for Lightweight Structures & Conceptual Design (ILEK), University of Stuttgart, Germany (2018).

She was a workshop moderator for “From manual to digital and vice versa: Digitalization, labor, and construction” at the 6th International Holcim Forum for Sustainable Construction held in Cairo, Egypt in April 2019. She was a Member of the Academic Body at the Norman Foster Foundation - Re-materializing Housing Workshop, supported by the Holcim Foundation and held in Madrid (November 2021).