Wolfgang Wagener
Title: Founder & Principal
Organization: WOWA
Location: Palo Alto, CA
Wolfgang Wagener is the founder and principal of WOWA. Wolfgang draws upon 25 years of international executive leadership experience in real estate strategy, development, health and environmental stewardship, digital leadership, and architectural excellence across multiple platforms and industries. His expertise in defining, designing, developing, and delivering programs for leading companies and institutions ranges from small, strategic initiatives to complex, high-profile developments. With an eye toward design and innovation, Wolfgang excels in supporting all key internal and external constituents in high-pressure, dynamic, fastpaced environments while meeting critical deadlines and real estate deliverables.
Wolfgang Wagener’s international experience as a real estate executive, practicing architect, and innovation thought leader uniquely enables him to integrate best practices from business, professional practice, the public sector, environmental sustainability, and digital transformation with a deep understanding of client, investor, and user needs. Wolfgang Wagener holds a PhD in architecture and engineering from RWTH Aachen University in Germany and an advanced management development degree in real estate from Harvard University. He is a member of the Urban Land Institute, the American Institute of Architects, the Royal Institute of British Architects, and the Society of Architectural Historians, Southern California Chapter, having followed his passion for midcentury modernism from western Europe to the coast of California.
Wolfgang Wagener’s thought leadership for the past 25 years has been at the intersection of architecture, innovation, and real estate. His publications include New West: Innovating at the Intersection for HIRMER, in collaboration with Leslie Erganian; Connected Real Estate: Essays from Innovators in Real Estate, Design, and Construction for Cisco; a contribution to Future Office: Design, Practice and Applied Research, which addresses the integration of IT and building infrastructure, organizational change, and the value of sustainable design for Taylor & Francis; the architectural monograph Raphael Soriano for Phaidon; and many articles, lectures, and media appearances across North America, Europe, and Asia.