Verena Hartbaum (University of Stuttgart; PhD at TU Munich):
BETWEEN CONFLICT REGULATION AND CONSENSUS POLITICS. AN ARCHITECTURAL AND PROCEDULAR HISTORY USING THE EXAMPLE OF THE BERLIN REPUBLIC
The work is based on the assumption that architecture - as a usually conservative or affirmative and therefore "conflict-shy" discipline - cannot be understood without the political and administrative processes linked to it, and that architectural history must therefore always also be procedural history. As a procedurally highly developed stabilization mechanism of existing conditions, architecture assumes an important social function; reduced to this function, however, it falls far short of its potential, so a fundamental assumption that gave impetus to the writing of this thesis.
First, both classical procedures of architecture and strategies and methods of steering planning preferences are analyzed in terms of procedural theory and traced in terms of history of effects on the basis of examples of architecture and planning. The spatio-temporal terrain of the work is the Berlin Republic, whose implicit subjects - such as the accession of the former GDR, EU integration, or the crisis of management - can also be found in its architectural and procedural history or are also processed there respectively. In doing so, it becomes clear that the discipline is currently either in a mode of conflict oriented toward economic productivity, which can be summarized under the term "competition," or in a mode of conflict avoidance, which in turn is based on strategies of pacifying dissent or on methods of consensus politics.
By presenting approximately 150 years of history of regulation in architecture and urban planning, it is also shown when and why which procedures emerge and how they become entrenched. It is shown that the regulation of architecture and urban planning is connected with historical conjunctures and turning points and can always be traced back to which understanding of conflict and which conflict competences a society can show at the respective point in time. Against the background of this insight, in conclusion the question arises whether implementing current concepts of "staying with conflict" might not also lead to far-reaching changes in proceduralism and thus fundamentally redefine the relationship between architecture, consensus and conflict.
Status: completed 2023
M.A. Leonard Hermann (PhD at University of Stuttgart):
IN THE BELLY OF THE WHALE – GLOBAL DIMENSIONS OF EUROPEAN ARCHITECTURUAL THEORY
The European expansion left its mark on architectural thinking. From the late 17th century onwards, engagement with non-European cultures in theoretical texts proliferates. So far, this dimension has mainly been researched with a focus on specific authors, e.g. William Temple’s famous discussion of the Sharawadgi from 1685. Instead, this PhD project places global dimensions center stage and examines their function within different currents of architectural theory. It considers both how different theoretical systems structure the engagement with non-European architecture and its repercussions on subsequent writings on architecture. A preliminary reading of relevant sources suggests that it is a highly asymmetrical relation predicated on colonial bias but also multidimensional and historically fluctuating.
The PhD project examines the theoretical currents of academic Neo-Classicism, the Picturesque and Organicism. The conceptual repositiong of Vitruvianism in the so-called Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes from the 1670s onwards can be regarded as the origin of all three systems. Their intellectual tradition can be traced into the late 19th century and beyond. The corpus of architectural writing produced in Europe during the project’s given period serves as its main object of research. The bulk of it was published in France and England, in part also in Germany and Italy. Relevant are texts which both serve as discursive incidents relating to earlier positions or instigating subsequent writing and contain engagement with non-European architecture. If this global dimension of a text is accidental or of structural relevance will be discussed in the context of its respective theoretical current.
The PhD project thus contributes to an understanding of post-classical architectural theory within the context of European colonialism: Relevant layers of meaning mark the sources in various ways and are rarely specifically named as such. They can therefore not readily be grasped by a traditional history of ideas. Instead, the project uses methods from conceptual history and discourse analysis to present a historical-immanent reading of theory.
Status: ongoing
M.A. Philip Krüpe (PhD at University of Stuttgart):
VIBE AND VIOLENCE: "PICTURESQUE" ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN PLANNING IN THE ENGLISH AND GERMAN-SPEAKING WORLD SINCE THE 18TH CENTURY. AN AESTHETIC CONCEPT OF AFFECTIVE CONTROL AND (SOCIAL) SPATIAL SEGREGATION
In my dissertation project, I am investigating the thesis that modern architecture and urban planning, which refer to the aesthetic concept of the Picturesque, function as outlines for affective control and (social-spatial) segregation.
The picturesque, popular primarily in English and German-speaking countries, emerged in the architectural, urban planning, and cultural discourses of the 18th to 20th centuries. The term, often referred to as das Malerische in German, describes atmospheric and idyllic phenomena that characterize the vernacular, the landscape, and the identity-nostalgic, usually in ostensible contrast to the industrialized cities and rationalising planning strategies. Beginning in landscape painting and garden design, the concept has since been applied in architecture and urban planning, theme park design, tourism marketing, and image production in print and digital media.
From the 18th century onwards, nation-building in Europe and the USA has been accompanied by new aesthetic concepts like the picturesque, that affectively evoke collective identity and memory formation and can be effective in the sense of a ‘containment’ strategy. Collectives, regimes, and corporations have appropriated the controlling potential of this concept and continue to apply it in various forms – from flat images to immersive park design and even in urban planning, using it as a (bio)political tool. However, from its inception, this approach has produced socioeconomic and racial exclusion.
Status: ongoing
Uta Leconte, M.A. (PhD at TU Munich):
WORLD TRADE CENTERNESS. REPERCUSSIONS OF THE TWIN TOWERS
World Trade Center 1 and 2 in New York, known as the Twin Towers, opened in 1973 in an almost timely coincidence with the end of the gold standard, the onset of a new global economic and cultural system. Targeted and destroyed during the terror attacks on September 11, 2001, the Twin Towers remain highly iconic, representing the global system as it has emerged from the 1970s onwards.
This dissertation starts with the paradoxical imbalance between the strong fame of the Twin Towers as ‘the’ World Trade Center and the largely unknown hundreds of existing World Trade Centers worldwide. It analyses the interrelation between the Twin Towers, the many World Trade Centers and the global organisation owning the World Trade Center trademark, the World Trade Centers Association. Its objectives are to understand why and how the Twin Towers became to represent the global system and why and how their proliferation in a series of World Trade Centers occurred.
In an abductive research approach, a theoretical framework is developed to observe and describe a phenomenon coined as World Trade Centerness, not only as a series of buildings, but as dissemination of multiple effects concerning the cultural, political and economic realm. In three main chapters, this dissertation first examines the relevant conditions and features of the Twin Towers which enabled their specific agency. Second, it makes the largely unknown multiplicity of World Trade Centers visible by mapping and contextualising them. Third, by elaborating elements of World Trade Centerness, qualitative aspects of the proliferation and repercussions of the Twin Towers are formulated.
At the case of the World Trade Center Twin Towers and its repercussions, this dissertation demonstrates how architecture is stabilising the unstable global system as it exists since the 1970s. It shows how the agency of architecture enables the instrumentalisation of buildings within this global system. By describing architecture’s embeddedness in political and economic conditions, it provides knowledge about architecture as a cultural technique and about mechanisms of the global system itself: how it organises, operates and maintains itself.
Status: completed 2021
Dipl. Ing. Elena Markus (PhD at TU Munich):
(DIRTY) REALISM: ANALOGUE ARCHITECTURE 1983-1987
Analogue Architecture was developed at ETH Zurich with the assistance of Fabio Reinhart, Miroslav Šik and Luca Ortelli. With the travelling exhibition of the same name, the images found much resonance in the European architectural discourse for a short time. In the 1980s, these images represented a particular architectural concept that made visual the fragile "dirty" reality of the post-industrial era as well as the unique urban reality of Switzerland in that time. In the following work, Analogue Architecture is considered in the socio-cultural context of dirty realism and discussed in relation to the politicised concept of realism in 20th century architectural discourse.
Status: completed 2022
Martin Murrenhoff (TU Berlin; PhD at TU Munich):
DIE TIEFE STADT. ARCHITEKTUR- UND INFRASTRUKTURGENESE IN PARIS UND MÜNCHEN. EINE MODERNISIERUNGSGESCHICHTE
Die „historischen“ Zentren europäischer Städte unterliegen im Verlauf des 20. Jahrhunderts einer weitestgehend unsichtbaren Transformation. Im Querschnitt betrachtet zeigen sich ihre Anlagen als nahtloser Zusammenschluss historischer und moderner Strukturen. Unterirdische Infrastrukturen – Bahnhöfe des Nah- und Fernverkehrs, Parkhäuser, technische Anlagen zur Ver- und Entsorgung und weit vernetzte Untergrundpassagen – gehen eine vielschichtige Verbindung mit der historischen Substanz ein. Das Dissertationsprojekt untersucht, wie die hybriden Komplexe entstanden sind und wie sich die historische Stadt im Zuge ihrer Entwicklung veränderte. Die These ist, dass die moderne die historische Stadt unterwandert hat. Unter dem Einfluss restriktiver Baugesetzgebung führten Wachstums- und Modernisierungsprozesse zu einer weitgehend unbemerkten, inwendigen Expansion architektonischer wie infrastruktureller Dimensionen, und damit zu einer tiefgreifenden Veränderung der Zentren. Die Arbeit verfolgt diese allgegenwärtige, bisher jedoch weitgehend undokumentierte, Entwicklung vergleichend am Beispiel der Städte Paris und München. Während Architektur- und Städtebaudiskurs sich in der Regel mit dem Hochbau befassen, geht es im hier vorgestellten Promotionsvorhaben um die Beziehung von Stadt, Architektur und Infrastruktur, das Verhältnis von Gestaltungs- zu Ingenieurdisziplinen, die Dimension des Unsichtbaren und letztlich um die Verhandlung von Bewahrung und Veränderung.
Status: ongoing