11. Internationales Bauhaus-Kolloquium 2009

Stanford Anderson is Professor of History and Architecture and was Head of the Department of Architecture from 1991 through 2004. He was director of MIT's PhD program in History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture, Art and Urban Form from its founding in 1974 to 1991 and in 1995-96.
Anderson's research and writing concern architectural theory, early modern architecture in northern Europe, American architecture and urbanism, and epistemology and historiography. He has organized numerous professional conferences and served on the editorial boards of Assemblage, Journal of Architectural Education, Places, and The MIT Press. 


In addition to numerous articles, his books are Planning for Diversity and Choice, On Streets, and Hermann Muthesius: Style-Architecture and Building Art. He is co-author of Kay Fisker. Peter Behrens and a New Architecture for the Twentieth Century  appeared in 2000 and Eladio Dieste: Innovation in Structural Art in 2004. In 1997, The MIT Press published a collection of essays in his honor, edited by Martha Pollak: The Education of the Architect: Historiography, Urbanism, and the Growth of Knowledge. He was a Fulbright fellow at the Technische Hochschule in Munich and subsequently a fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies.


Anderson received his bachelor's degree from the University of Minnesota, his master's in architecture from the University of California at Berkeley, and his doctoral degree in the history of art from Columbia University in New York City.

Rational reconstruction and architectural knowledge

Imre Lakatos’ distinction of rational reconstruction versus history is well demonstrated in Peter Eisenman’s 1979 reading of Le Corbusier’s 1914 Maison Dom-ino as self-referential. I accept Eisenman’s reconstruction as a contribution to architectural knowledge in 1979, but not as an account of the 1914 project. Further, it was Le Corbusier’s own rational reconstruction of the Maison Dom-ino in 1925 that first gave the project a significant place in architectural knowledge. With these examples and others, I argue that architecture does possess quasi-autonomous knowledge that gives uniqueness to this discipline.
This position allows a bridge to a question put in the call for papers: Can theory “assume a more constructive, projective role of influencing future [global] practice”?
Ready to join in severe criticism of what the Colloquium has termed “Empire,” we may nonetheless recognize some promising conditions. Do our patterns of global activity provide also a positive breeding ground: conditions and opportunities that facilitate interchange, learning and understanding, that, whether observed at the level of individuals or societies, nurture a robust form of cosmopolitanism?
    If so, then, in the realm of architecture, one might share the fruit of our rational reconstructions: quasi-autonomous architectural knowledge that is not local in concept but capable of acting locally and responsibly.

M. Christine Boyer is an urban historian whose interests include the history of the American city, city planning, preservation planning, and computer science. Before coming to Princeton University in 1991, Boyer was professor and chair of the City and Regional Planning Program at Pratt Institute. She has written extensively about American urbanism. Her publications include Dreaming the Rational City: The Myth of American City Planning 1890-1945 (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1983), Manhattan Manners: Architecture and Style 1850-1900 (New York: Rizzoli, 1985), The City of Collective Memory (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1994), and CyberCities (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996). She has also written "Approaching the Memory of Shanghai: the case of Zhang Yimou and Shanghai Triad" in Mario Gandelsonas (ed.) Shanghai Reflections: Architecture, Urbanism, and the Search for an Alternative Modernity (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2002); "Meditations on a Wounded Skyline and Its Stratigraphies of Pain," in Michael Sorkin and Sharon Zukin (eds.) After the World Trade Center: Rethinking New York (New York: Routledge, 2002), and "Chasing the Arrow of Time: Cities, Cinema and Motion" in Fast Forward, a driving perception (International Design Seminar, TU Delft, 2003).  She was a visiting professor in the Ph.D. program at TU Deflt School of Design for Spring 2005.

Collective Memory under Siege in the age of Empire

The more that collective memory is threatened by modernization, urbanization, and globalization the greater the frenzy of commemorative activity. Paradoxically the two go hand in hand: In a world of ceaseless movement, there appears no object that can not be collected and place in a museum, no heritage site not a tourist destination, no old building not a preservation resource, no group memory not included in the proliferation of memory sites and celebrations. Exploited by tourism and property interests, branded as a city’s identity or marketed as a spectacle, the collective memory under siege has been thoroughly commercialized. In tandem as identity politics occurred throughout the globe, memory lost its collective nature splintering into so many cultural, ethnic, religious fragments. The recent wars on memory are wars of identity, genocide, culture and ethnic cleansing. If one controls memory, one controls a group’s experience, their knowledge, and their actions. The multiple ways that memory has been mobilized in the age of Empire and the role that architecture may hold will be discussed.

Hermann Czech studierte Architektur an der Technischen Hochschule und in der Meisterschule von Ernst Plischke an der Akademie der bildenden Künste in Wien. 1958 und 1959 war er Seminarteilnehmer bei Konrad Wachsmann an der Sommerakademie in Salzburg. An der Akademie für angewandte Kunst in Wien war er von 1974 bis 1980 Assistent bei Hans Hollein und Johannes Spalt, 1985/86 Gastprofessor an derselben Hochschule. 1988/89 und 1993/94 war er Gastprofessor an der Harvard University in Cambridge/USA, 2004-07 Gastprofessor an der ETH Zürich. Sein ungleichartiges architektonisches Werk umfasst Planungen, Wohn-, Schul- und Hotelbauten ebenso wie Interventionen in kleinem Maßstab und Ausstellungsgestaltungen. Seine Projekte haben starken Bezug zum Kontext und beinhalten bewusst die vorhandenen Widersprüche. Ab den 1970er Jahren (»Architektur ist Hintergrund«) wurde Hermann Czech zum Protagonisten einer neuen, »stillen« Architektur, die »nur spricht, wenn sie gefragt wird«.
Er ist Autor zahlreicher kritischer und theoretischer Publikationen zur Architektur. In seiner Theorie spielen die Begriffe Umbau und Manierismus eine zentrale Rolle.
Veröffentlichungen (Auswahl): 'Zur Abwechslung. Ausgewählte Schriften zur Architektur. Wien', Wien 1996, 'Das Looshaus', Wien 1976, 'Komfort – ein Gegenstand der Architekturtheorie?', in: werk,bauen+wohnen, Zürich, 3/2003, S. 10-15

Kann Architektur von der Konsumtion her gedacht werden?

Architektur war weithin eine Rechtfertigungskunst: Warum haben Sie das so gemacht, Herr Architekt; was haben Sie sich dabei gedacht? Eingeschlossen in diese Frage war die Vorstellung, dass der Architektur eine autonome Entscheidungsreihe zugrunde läge, auch wo sie äußeren Bedingungen, profanen Zwecken folgte. Einerseits nun erscheint die Rechtfertigungsfrage immer weniger angebracht; das „Warum?” wird immer öfter mit „Warum nicht?” beantwortet. Andererseits genießt die architektonische Leistung immer weniger Respekt und wird zu einem Mittel für andere Ziele. Der News-Wert der Stararchitektur als Qualitätskriterium einerseits, das Aufspalten von Architektur in Consulting-Dienstleistungen andererseits — Theming / Branding / Imagineering, überhaupt der Eintritt der Architektur in die Kulturindustrie, all die damit verbundene Blödmacherei — schließlich die theoretischen Begründungen von Ornament, von Atmosphäre: Ein gemeinsames Kennzeichen vieler dieser Erscheinungen dürfte in der Versuchung liegen, Architektur nicht von der Produktion, sondern von der Konsumtion her zu denken — und es erhebt sich die Frage, ob das, ohne den Konsumenten und sich selbst zu belügen, möglich ist.

Keller Easterling is an architect, urbanist, and writer. Her latest book, Enduring Innocence: Global Architecture and Its Political Masquerades (MIT, 2005), researches familiar spatial products that have landed in difficult or hyperbolic political situations around the world. Her previous book, Organization Space: Landscapes, Highways and Houses in America, applies network theory to a discussion of American infrastructure and development formats. Ms. Easterling is also the author of Call It Home, a laser disc history of suburbia, and American Town Plans. She has recently completed two research installations on the Web: “Wildcards: A Game of Orgman” and “Highline: Plotting NYC.” Her work has been widely published in journals such as Grey Room, Volume, Cabinet, Assemblage, Log, Praxis, Harvard Design Magazine, Perspecta, Metalocus, and ANY. Her work is also included as chapters in numerous publications. She has lectured widely in the United States as well as internationally. Ms. Easterling’s work has been exhibited at the Queens Museum, the Architectural League, the Municipal Arts Society, and the Wexner Center. Ms. Easterling taught at Columbia prior to coming to Yale.

Extrastatecraft
Some of the most radical changes to the globalizing world are being written, not in the language of law and diplomacy, but rather in the language of architecture, urbanism and infrastructure. Armand Mattelart argues that global infrastructure is a field that is “young and uncharted” largely because it is often still considered in terms of national rather than international histories. Moreover, the political instrumentality of these increasingly familiar global spheres is still frequently theorized in terms of militarization or universal rationalization, when they might really be agents of more discrepant or obscure forms of polity. The notion that there is either a dominant logic or a proper forthright realm of political negotiation usually acts as the perfect camouflage for parallel political activity— the medium of subterfuge, hoax and hyperbole that actually rules the world. New objects of practice and entrepreneurialism, redefined in a relational register, reflect the network’s ability to amplify structural shifts or repeatable moves. If icons of piety, collusion or competition often escalate tensions, might alternative design ingenuities distract from them? Having customarily absented itself from official political channels, architecture, as extrastatecraft, finds itself in an unexpectedly consequential position, manipulating codes of passage and points of leverage in the thickening back channels of global infrastructure.

Frank Eckardt has professional educations as Export trader and psychiatric therapist. He worked years as a free journalist for radio, television and newspaper, where he gave reports from Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe. He studied Political Science, Contemporary History and German Philology at the University of Kassel, and holds a Ph.D. in Political Science. Since 1999 he is a researcher, lecturer, and junior professor for Sociology at the Department of Architecture, Bauhaus Universität Weimar.
Overarching research theme: the change of urban societies. Special research interests: social and ethnic segregation, social policies and urban governance.
He has literally held dozens of positions as coordinator for research and teaching projects.
In 2002, he recieved the award for the best scientific contribution regarding the issue "The Future of the City" from the Hanns Martin-Schleyer Foundation.

No place for Good People?
The Empire diagram enters the Gutleutviertel Frankfurt
In Foucault’s analysis of the relationship between space, knowledge and formations, the change between different state of diagrams have been formulated as an innovative approach to point at formations of space and society which are not related by any kind of relationship at all. Instead of isomorhic or semantic linkage, the diagram looks at constellations where knowledge and power bridges the apparent gap between the 'visible' and the 'speakable', les choses et les mots.
Taking in account the new situation that globalisation and the new 'culture of capitalism' (Boltanski) have brought to urban life, processes of gentrification, segregation and renewal are indicating the significance of a new diagram which we might call Empire diagram. As an example for the appearance of this diagram, the transformation of the Gutleutviertel in the city of Frankfurt will be discussed. Being a place for the underpriviliged from the beginning and thus for more than seven centuries, it is now including the most expensive housing estate in Germany. In the reshaped and rebuild West Harbour, an attractive and exclusive space has been constructed which exercises power in the fine web of social relations in the Frankfurt neighbourhood.
This contribution will present a discussion of the Foucault approach to space and urban development by critically looking at the relationship between the architecture of the Westhafen, the bridging knowledge of urban planning and the economic discourse on globalisation.
 

Peter Eisenman is an internationally recognized architect, educator, and theorist. In 1967, Eisenman founded the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies (IAUS), an international think tank for architecture in New York, and served as its director until 1982. He received a Stone Lion (First Prize) for his Romeo and Juliet project at the Third International Architectural Biennale in Venice in 1985, and was one of the two architects selected to represent the United States at the Fifth International Venice exhibition in 1991. The firm’s City of Culture of Galicia project was shown in the Eighth and Ninth International Biennales in 2002 and 2004, and the railroad stations for Pompei at the Tenth Biennale in 2006.
Mr. Eisenman has received numerous Grants and Prizes. Educated at Cornell and Columbia Universities, Eisenman holds a Ph.D. from Cambridge University (UK), and three honorary Doctorates of Fine Arts fromthe University of Illinois, Chicago, the Pratt Institute in New York, and Syracuse University, as well as an honorary Doctorate in Architecture by the Università La Sapienza in Rome.
Mr. Eisenman’s academic career includes teaching at the universities of Cambridge, Princeton, Illinois, Ohio State, Harvard, The Cooper Union, and he is currently the Louis I. Kahn Visiting Professor of Architecture at Yale.
Peter Eisenman has published widely and written several books, including  Ten Canonical Buildings: 1950–2000. (Rizzoli, April 2008);  Written Into the Void: Selected Writings, 1990-2004. (Yale University Press, 2007); The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture. (Dissertation 1963, facsimile. Lars Müller Publishers, 2006); Eisenman: Inside Out, Selected Writings 1963-1988 (Yale University Press, 2004); and Giuseppe Terragni: Transformations, Decompositions, Critiques (Monacelli Press, 2003), Ten Canonical Buildings: 1950-2000 (Rizzoli, 2008).

Panel Discussion
Peter Eisenman has been requested to participate in the panel discussion with Rem Koolhaas and other lecturers of the colloquium.
 

Douglas Graf received an A.B. in architecture and urban planning from Princeton and a M.Arch. from Harvard and currently teaches courses in design and architectural theory at the Knowlton School of Architecture at the Ohio State University. His teaching career has included the Kentucky, Washington, and Yale, as well as positions in Britain, Germany, and Finland, where he first went on a Fulbright to study the work of Alvar Aalto. He has received five teaching awards.

His interest in design theory has a primary focus on formal analysis, which is applied not only to architecture but also to urban form, landscape, photography, painting, product design, and graphics. One of his signature investigations has been into the structure and use of diagrams as tools for ‘close reading,’ beginning with an article in Perspecta. Many of his investigations have explored ‘metaphoric time’ as a central design strategy with essays on buildings as diverse as the Sancturary of Aesklepios, Ronchamp, Villa Mairea, and Vaux-le-Vicomte. He has also written about the idea of the ‘encyclopedic set’ as a persistent means of modeling complexity and the use of ‘fictive landscapes’ to derive narratives for the city.

He currently divides his time between Columbus (the one in Ohio) and London (not the one in Ohio), where he has been researching the design strategies in English gardens and the formal structure of the pre-industrial village. He is one of the principals in Mid-Ohio Design, a firm of architects and urban designers whose work elides from the real to the academic and who have won a number of urban design competitions.

Form’s Fallow Function
As architecture marches on with the progress of time, several questions might be raised with regard to its fundamental relationships.  First of all, what is the nature of its relation to the past?  Does it build on the past, supersede the past, negate the past, ignore the past, repeat the past, repackage the past, etc.?  Secondly, what is its relationship to things which aren’t particularly time related, like the presumedly constant ‘laws’ of perception and their connections to basic cognitive functions?  Do these things continue to operate or are they also superseded or negated, or is that even possible?  This paper will look at these questions through the investigation and analysis of a select group of 20th and 21st century buildings with regard to three particular issues:
1. The degree to which visual structures such as those promulgated by Gestalt psychology continue to operate in modern architecture and, if so, is their function central to the production of meaning?
2. …And if perceptual structures continue to operate in the same way then the question turns to the continued use of conceptual structures.   To what degree do basic geometrical conditions continue to have organizational significance?  For example, what is the role of the motif in contemporary practice? 
3. …And if motif is still an operative concept, the question then becomes what is the nature of the connection between contemporary work and that of the past?  To what degree are current architectural practices are engaged in thematic concerns which connects them to a wider historical continuity? 
The paper will argue that with regard to certain conceptual organizations, it is possible to find strong fundamental connections in terms of basic compositional strategies between projects that might  normally be regarded as seemingly unrelated in terms of program, culture, or time, which perhaps raises the question as to where the particular locus of progress in architecture can be found and will also make the argument that to a certain degree the properties of form are essentially "hard-wired" and inalienable.
 

Bill Hillier is Professor of Architectural and Urban Morphology in the University of London, Chairman of the Bartlett School of Graduate Studies and Director of the Space Syntax Laboratory in University College London. He holds a DSc (higher doctorate) in the University of London.

As the original pioneer of the methods for the analysis of spatial patterns known as ‘space syntax’, he is the author of The Social Logic of Space (Cambridge University Press, 1984, 1990) which presents a general theory of how people relate to space in built environments, ‘Space is the Machine’ (CUP 1996), which reports a substantial body of research built on that theory, and a large number of articles concerned with different aspects of space and how it works. He has also written extensively on other aspects of the theory of architecture.

Space Syntax as a Thinking Machine for Architecture

Eymen Homsi has degrees in architecture from the Ohio State University and biology/botany from the University of Southern Colorado. He taught design and theory at the Ohio State University (1991-99), worked at the Atelier Jose Oubrerie (1991-1995), and was Director of Design at the Columbus Neighborhood Design Centre (1998-99), where he developed public projects such as the Salvation Army Transitional Housing and Friends of the Homeless Dormitory.  He established Studio Noni in Helsinki, Finland, (2000-04) for experimental works and competitions.  In 2004 he became coordinator of Habitation Studio at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he continues to teach studio and architectural history/theory. He plans to move to Istanbul, Turkey, in 2009.  His research investigates the relationship between the rites of worship in Islam and the architecture of the mosque.  He has also written about Aalto and Abstract Expressionism.

Genuflection and Empire

The advent of Empire brings with it a new conception of space in Islam.  The old space of worship, product of traditional empire, is supplanted by elements from cyber worship, commercial enterprise, and nostalgic form.  While the formal gestures of worship, the genuflections, remain the same, the space they engender and the meaning they emphasize are changed in important ways.  As a ritual of submission and obedience, genuflection serves the ascendancy of Empire, augmenting its global form and revealing its shape.  And yet, as an act of homage to chthonic forces, to the leveling effect of the ground, to what is immanent and perishable, it becomes a mode of resistance to that same Empire. The paper investigates this dual aspect as it might apply to the production of space. Hardt and Negri’s framework of biopower, multitude, and the cyclical crisis of Empire proves useful in this analysis. The paper discusses the recent expansion of the Mecca Mosque by the Binladen Group, mega-developers, as an example of the new spatial condition and its far-reaching social and political implications

Kari Jormakka has been teaching architectural theory at the Bauhaus University in Weimar since 2007 and is director of the 11th International Bauhaus Colloquium. In addition, he has been an Ordinarius Professor of architectural theory at Vienna University of Technology since 1998. Previously, he has taught at the Knowlton School of Architecture at the Ohio State University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Tampere University of Technology as well as Harvard University.  Author of ten books and many papers on architectural history and theory, he studied architecture at Otaniemi University in Helsinki and at Tampere University of Technology, as well as philosophy at Helsinki University.

The Empire and its Amazing Technicolor Dream Clothes

In The Last Chrysanthemum, Thomas Hardy suggests that this mysterious flower, in bloom when other flowers are in their tombs, “is but one mask of many worn by the Great Face behind.” It may not impossibly be that the same could be said of architecture – that our architectural avantgarde and its theory merely represent a form of ideology masking the great face of the global Empire.
 
Although modern architecture – or at least the heroic functionalism of the 1920s – is often seen as cultural critique, doubting Thomases have been around from the beginning. As early as 1910, Karl Kraus declared that “modern architecture is a superfluity created out of the correct perception of a lack of necessity.” For Kraus and Adolf Loos, Jugendstil and the German Werkbund were part of a giant confidence trick, a desperate attempt to save a profession that was dying out for a very good reason. For these critics, the theoretical themes of the art nouveau generation – issues such as ornament or mood – were non-issues diverting the public’s attention from the real economic, political and structural questions of the day.
 
Today, some of the same issues have resurfaced, enhanced by colorful new technologies. In the last few decades, architecture has dropped the postmodern agenda of designing „dissenting buildings“ and moved on to the deconstructivist questioning of the very possibility of communication, to the Deleuzean notion of asignifying signs, to the negative theology of the virtual, and further to the creation of effects and affects, or ornaments and atmospheres that cancel criticality at the outset. Has the new avantgarde reduced architecture to an apolitical aesthetization of everyday life – or has it unleashed a regime of abstract machines capable of reorganizing multiple economies, ecologies, information systems, and social groups into radically new forms of performance?

Leslie Kavanaugh is both an architect and a philosopher. She is a registered architect in both America and the Netherlands. She is a member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). She holds not only degrees in architecture but a B.Phil., M.Phil., and a Ph.d. in Philosophy from the University of Amsterdam. At present, she is a Senior Researcher specializing in the philosophy of space and time at TUDelft, and Program Director of the Ph.d. School, the Delft School of Design (DSD). Kavanaugh recently published: The Architectonic of Philosophy: Plato, Aristotle, Leibniz (Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 2007). Other recent publications include “On the Aggregation of Bodies and the Unity of Monadic Substances: The Problem of Cohesion” for the International Leibniz Conference Proceedings, Hannover; and “The Ontology of Dwelling: Heidegger and Levinas” in Hauptmann, Deborah (ed.); Bodies in Architecture (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2006). Forthcoming is the volume entitled: "Chrono-topologies: Hybrid Spatialities and Multiple Temporalities" with contributions from esteemed international scholars exploring the consequences of time, and its relationship with space through a multi-disciplinary approach, including the philosophy of space and time, social geography, economic theory, post-Marxian social theory, new network theory, philosophy of art and culture, musicology, evolutionary biology, historiography, psychoanalytic theory, and global-local urbanism debates.

Toward a Post-Marxist Theory of Spatio-Temporality
Most of the theorizing about territories, boundaries, and the status of the Nation State in Europe after the war was highly influenced by Marxist philosophers, historians, and urban theorists.  Yet with the effective collapse of communism, how do we think our way forward out of the impasse?
Upon first glance, the network might be taken as a model of the interface or interaction between diverse territories, crossing all spatio-temporal boundaries.  Of course, all sites are deflected not only by self-generation, but also by interaction with other sites, yet how can wedescribe the relational dynamic?
With a spatio-temporal conception beyond borders, new structures can be explored. In Empire by Negri/Hardt, a new sort of socio-political structure arises.  For them, the old framework of social and political relations no longer applies.  However, this new network neither arose spontaneously, nor transcended the old by singular powers.  Rather a paradigm shift has taken place, constructing Empire, a hyper-capitalistic conception of global order arises bringing together various strands of power, both economic, social, and political. Nevertheless, just because this system lays itself out horizontally rather than vertically does not mean that the capacity to domination and repression is any less potential.
Global Empire employs strategies of intervention that do not necessarily include waging war in a traditional sense.  Indeed, war is no longer´localized, rather also a layer of immanence that slips through any kind of determination of sanction and repression.  For the most part, strategies of empire rely on techniques of command over global space. As Negri and Hardt state: "Empire is emerging today as the center that supports the globalisation of productive networks and casts its widely inclusive net to try to envelop all power relations within its world order….Empire is born and shows itself as crisis." (Negri/Hardt;E;20).
But, is Empire really new?  In Grundrisse, "The Rise and Fall of Capitalism", Karl Marx had already diagnosed the evolution of capitalism: “There is nothing which can escape, by its own elevated nature or self-justifying characteristics, from this cycle of social production and exchange….But because capital sets up any such boundary as a limitation, and is thus ideally over and beyond it.”(Marx;SW;398). Negri and Hardt propose the thesis that "Empire" is an emerging form of sovereignty, a new logical order and structure of power.  Yet within this network of power is also the means to continue oppression of all kinds, perhaps other advantages emerge.  The network of political power incorporates and "manages hybrid identities, flexible hierarchies, and plural exchanges". Globalization is not fixed or unified or univocal; rather ubiquitious. In this way, Negri and Hardt can be said to be ¬ not the fruition of global hyper-capitalism ¬ but the denouement of Marxist capitalist production.

Rem Koolhaas founded the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in 1975 together with Elia and Zoe Zenghelis and Madelon Vriesendorp. He graduated at the Architectural Association in London and in 1978 published Delirious New York, a Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan. In 1995, his book S,M,L,XL summarized the work of OMA and established connections between contemporary society and architecture. He heads the work of both OMA and AMO, the conceptual branch of OMA focused on social, economical and technological developments and exploring territories beyond architectural and urban concerns. Rem Koolhaas is a "Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design" at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, where he conducts the Project on the City. In 2005 he co-founded Volume Magazine together with Mark Wigley and Ole Bouman. In 2000 Rem Koolhaas won the Pritzker Prize. In 2008 Time put him in their top 100 of The World's Most Influential People.

Panel Discussion
Koolhaas has been invited to participate in the panel discussion, together with Peter Eisenman and other lecturers of the colloquium.

Tomás Maldonado, born 1922, an Argentine painter, designer and thinker, is considered one of the main theorists of the legendary ”Ulm Model”, a design philosophy developed during his tenure (1955-1967) at the HfG Ulm (Ulm School of Design, the 'New Bauhaus'), which Maldonado oriented towards attaining a balance between science and design, and between theory and practice, incorporating planning methods, perceptual theory and semiotics. A description of the approach is his essay entitled, "Ulm, Science and Design".
In this early period he was invovled with the Argentine Avant Gardes, in fact, he was one of the founders of the painters' movement called Arte Concreto-Invención.
Between 1964 and 1967, in collaboration with his German colleague Gui Bonsiepe he created a system of codes for the design program of the Italian firm Olivetti and the department store La Rinascente. In 1967 he established himself in Milan, continuing to teach in the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature of the University of Bologna, working almost entirely now in philosophy and criticism influenced by semiotics. In one of his last essays, "The Heterodox", he claims that the role of the intellectual is to awaken or reveal the collective conscience.
Malodnado also taught at the Royal College of Arts, London, and at the Princeton School of Architecture, before he became Professor of Environmental Design at the University of Bologna.
His works include: Ulm, Science and Design (in: Ulm 10/11, 1964), Industrial Design reconsidered, Is Architecture a Text?, Towards an Ecological Rationalism, Technique and Culture - The German debate between Bismarck and Weimar, The Heterodoxo (1998), Digitale Welt und Gestaltung (2007, Hsg. Gui Bonsiepe).

Ist das Bauhaus aktuell?

geb. 1956 in Zürich; nach Berufslehre und -tätigkeit in der Chemischen Industrie Studium der Kunstwissenschaft, Geschichte, Ur- und Frühgeschichte und Mittelalterarchäologie.
1992 Promotion zum Dr. phil., danach Oberassistent am Institut für Denkmalpflege der Architekturabteilung der ETH Zürich, unterbrochen durch Forschungsaufenthalt als Mitglied des Istituto Svizzero in Rom. Lehraufträge an den Universitäten Basel, Bern und Zürich sowie an der ETH Zürich.
2000 Habilitation an der Philosophisch-Historischen Fakultät der Universität Basel, ebd. bis 2007 Privatdozent für Kunstwissenschaft.
Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter und Leiter von Nationalfonds-Projekten.
2003 Berufung auf die Professur für Denkmalkunde und angewandte Bauforschung an der Fakultät Architektur der Technischen Universität Dresden. Seit Januar 2008 Professor für Denkmalpflege und Baugeschichte an der Fakultät Architektur der Bauhaus-Universität Weimar.
Forschungen und Publikation zur Architektur- und Kunstgeschichte hauptsächlich des Mittelalters, zur Rezeptions- und Fachgeschichte sowie zur Geschichte und Theorie der Denkmalpflege.
(Mit-)Organisator zahlreicher internationaler Tagungen (Stifter und Auftraggeber in der mittelalterlichen Kunst, Basel 1995; Bauten und Orte als Erfahrungsräume und Erinnerungsträger, Zürich 1998; 3. Internationalen Kongresses für Archäologie des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit "Medieval Europe Basel 2002", Das Denkmal in der Stadt - die Stadt als Denkmal, Dresden 2004; Cultural Heritage and Natural Disasters, Leipzig 2006; StadtBild und Denkmalpflege. Konstruktion und Rezeption von Bildern der Stadt, Dresden 2007).
Mitglied zahlreicher Denkmalpflegerischer Arbeitskreise und Gremien.

'Multitude' versus 'Identität' ­
Architektur in Zeiten des globalen Städtewettbewerbs

Philipp Oswalt, geb. 1964, Architekt und Publizist in Berlin. 1988-1994 Redakteur der Architekturzeitschrift Arch+, 1996/97 Mitarbeiter im Büro OMA/ Rem Koolhaas, anschließend bei MVRDV. Seit 1998 eigenes Büro in Berlin, 1. Preis im Wettbewerb für das ehemalige Frauen-KZ Ravensbrück (1. Bauabschnitt realisiert).
Gastprofessur für Entwerfen an der Brandenburgischen Technischen Universität Cottbus 2000-2002. Initiator und Leiter des Europäischen Forschungsprojekt Urban Catalyst 2001-2003. Mitinitiator von ZwischenPalastNutzung und Künstlerischer Co-Leiter von Volkspalast 2004. Leitender Kurator des Projektes Schrumpfende Städte für die Kulturstiftung des Bundes 2002-2008. Autor und Herausgeber mehrerer Bücher und zahlreicher Schriften, u.a. Wohltemperierte Architektur und Berlin_Stadt ohne Form. Seit Herbst 2006 Professor für Architekturtheorie und Entwerfen an der Universität Kassel, seit Dezember 2008 designierter Leiter der Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau.

Prä- und Postarchitektur

Die klassische Berufspraxis des Architekten geht davon aus: Er gibt einen Bauherren, der für eine Nutzung ein neues Gebäude benötigt. Dafür hat er Geld und beauftragt einen Architekten, dies zu planen. Das ist aber offenbar nicht immer der Fall.  Zunehmend sind wir als Architekten und Urbanisten mit Aufgaben konfrontiert, die nicht mehr nach der Erstellung einer Architektur verlangen, sondern mit der Bearbeitung von Fragen, die vor oder hinter der Architektur liegen: Präarchitektur und Postarchitektur. Beides ist eng mit Architekturproduktion verbunden, aber liegt zunächst jenseits ihrer.
Postarchitektur umfasst die Aufgaben, die sich stellen, wenn die Architektur- das Gebaute schon vorhanden ist. Es geht hierbei etwa darum, wie das gegebene wahrgenommen, genutzt, verändert oder entfernt werden kann.
Präarchitektur befasst sich hingegen mit jenen Dingen, die einer architektonischer Praxis vorausgehen, diese überhaupt erst ermöglichen. Dazu gehört zunächst die Wunschproduktion, die Formierung von Nutzungen, Bauherren und Finanzierung.
Die Anzahl an architektonischen Entwürfen hat in den entwickelten Industrieländern in den letzten Jahrzehnten rasant zugenommen, während die Realisierungen eher rückläufig sind. Dies führt zu einer zunehmenden Irrelevanz der Großzahl dieser Entwürfe. Parallel hierzu wurde in fataler Weise das Berufsfeld des Architekten beschnitten.  Mit der Postmoderne wurde aus der Kritik am Techokratismus, Rationalismus und Utopismus der 60er und 70er Jahre die Schlussfolgerung gezogen, die Architektur wieder auf ihre eigene Disziplin zurückzuführen und die Fragen jenseits dieser auszublenden, da diese die Architektur unterminieren. Damit wurde eine wichtige Traditionslinie der Moderne gekappt: Das „Neue Bauen“ der 1920er Jahre wäre undenkbar gewesen ohne die Entwicklung eines ganzen Arsenals an neuen Werkzeugen zur Realisierung von Städtebau und Architektur.
Die zunehmende Reduktion des Architekturdiskurses auf Formfragen hat zu einer Ausblendung der Frage geführt, wie Architektur überhaupt entstehen kann. Doch der architektonische Entwurf kann nur dadurch Relevanz gewinnen, wenn er die Frage beantwortet, wie er entstehen kann. Dafür muss er das engere Feld der Architektur verlassen und sich Präarchitektonischen Themen zuwenden. Dies führt zu einer Repolitisierung der Debatte: Wer baut mit welchen Mitteln wofür?
Bauen wird bislang vorwiegend verstanden als Akt der Kolonisierung: der Erschließung und Überbauung neuer Gebiete. Doch nachdem die Industrieländer quasi vollständig urbanisiert sind und ihre Bewohnerschaft stagniert oder schrumpft, hat die Idee der Kolonisation ihre Legitimation verloren. Im „postkolonialen Zeitalter“ geht es eher darum, sich dem über einen langen Zeitraum akkumulierten Gebaute zuzuwenden. Es ist – wie gesagt - die Umkehrung des Blicks: das Gebaute ist nicht Ziel, sondern Ausgangspunkt.

Wolfgang Pehnt lehrt Baugeschichte an der Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Er hat zahllose Arbeiten zur Architekturgeschichte der Moderne veröffentlicht und Monographien über Baumeister wie Gottfried Böhm, Rudolf Schwarz und Karljosef Schattner geschrieben; er war Autor bei der Propyläen-Kunstgeschichte und Mitarbeiter von Fachzeitschriften, Katalogbüchern, Tageszeitungen und Rundfunkanstalten. Sein in vier Sprachen übersetztes Buch Die Architektur des Expressionismus gilt als Standardwerk. Er wurde unter anderem mit dem Kritikerpreis des Bundes Deutscher Architekten, dem Erich-Schelling-Preis für Architekturtheorie und dem Fritz-Schumacher-Preis ausgezeichnet.

Modellwechsel. Das Bauhaus und die Kunst des permanenten Neuanfangs

Die Besucher der internationalen Bauhaus-Ausstellung von 1923 in Weimar müssen sich die Augen gerieben haben. Aus der Werkstatt, in der die 'Wiedervereinigung aller werkkünstlerischen Disziplinen' gepflegt werden sollte, war ein Labor geworden, ein 'Versuchsfeld für die industrielle Produktion'. Die Erzeugnisse schienen 'für Marsbewohner' gedacht, Produkte der 'eiskalten Synthese', dem 'Künstlerischen, dem Handwerk Verbundenen ... in scharfer Dialektik' gegenübergestellt. Der schroffe Übergang vom Handwerk zur Technik blieb nicht die einzige Wendung. In den wenigen Jahren seiner Existenz schlug das Bauhaus mehrfach solche - wenn auch nicht ganz so spektakuläre - Kehren ein. Seine Meister und seine Direktoren haben die Technik der fortdauernden Revisionen perfektioniert. Vielleicht war der permanente Modellwechsel ein folgenreicheres Erbe als alle Versuche des Bauhauses, eine handhabbare Ästhetik oder - immer wieder geleugnet - einen erkennbaren Stil auszubilden. Ständige Neuerfindung der eigenen Ziele wurde zu einem Markenzeichen der jüngsten Vergangenheit und Gegenwart.

Jane Rendell BA (Hons), Dip Arch, MSc, PhD, is Professor of Architecture and Art and Director of Architectural Research at the Bartlett, UCL. An architectural designer and historian, art critic and writer, she is author of Art and Architecture, (2006), The Pursuit of Pleasure, (2002) and co-editor of Pattern (2007), Critical Architecture (2007), Spatial Imagination, (2005), The Unknown City, (2001), Intersections, (2000), Gender Space Architecture, (1999), Strangely Familiar, (1995). She is on the Editorial Board for ARQ (Architectural Research Quarterly) and the Journal of Visual Culture in Britain, a member of the AHRC Peer Review College and chair of the RIBA President’s Awards for Research. In 2006 she was a research fellow at CRASSH (Centre for Research in Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities) at the University of Cambridge and received an honorary degree from the University College of the Creative Arts.
Her work over the past ten years has explored various interdisciplinary intersections: feminist theory and architectural history, fine art and architectural design, autobiographical writing and criticism. Currently she is engaged in a project of ‘site-writings’. She gives talks at galleries such as the Barbican, the Hayward, the Tate and the Whitechapel, and has recently written essays for artists and architects, such as Jananne Al-Ani, Elina Brotherus, Hawkins/Brown, Sharon Kivland, Janet Hodgson, Tracey Moffatt, Sally Morfill, Jane Prophet, Adriana Varejao and Richard Wentworth and galleries such as the Serpentine, the Wapping Project and the BALTIC.

Trafalgar Square: Détournements
A Site-Writing

This lecture explores the position of the critic, not only in relation to art objects, architectural spaces and theoretical ideas, but also in relation to the site of writing itself. In order to explore how Jean Laplanche’s understanding of Copernican and Ptolemic movement informs the critique of architectural culture, this configuration explores site-writing’s key structuring mechanism – the tension between decentering and recentering – between the critic’s objective, as Ptolemic subject, to position the work according to his/her own agenda, situating it around the centre s/he occupies, and the potential Copernican revolution provoked by a work and its setting, which sends the critic off on new trajectories. Through a series of détournements the sculptures at the heart of London’s Trafalgar Square, including Mark Quinn’s Alison Lapper (2005) are decentered, relocating the critical gaze first to the ‘other’ within – the repressed acts of resistance which have taken place in this public place, then to the ‘other’ without – the sites of battle in colonial India to which a number of the sculptures refer, and finally to aspects of contemporary oil wars which are persistently being overlooked (the other without’s other within) – sites of destruction in Iraq.

Richard Shusterman received a B.A. and M.A. in Philosophy from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and (after three years as an officer in the Israeli army) completed his doctoral studies in Philosophy at Oxford University. In Israel he taught at the Hebrew University and the University of the Negev, and then moved to the United States, where for many years he was Professor of Philosophy at Temple University, and chaired its department from 1998-2004. He was then was awarded the Dorothy F. Schmidt Eminent Scholar Chair in the Humanities at Florida Atlantic University, where he also directs the Center for Body, Mind, and Culture.  
Shusterman’s international academic career includes appointments as Directeur d’études associé at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and as Visiting Professor at the Université de Paris 1: Panthéon-Sorbonne; as Directeur de programme at the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris; as Fulbright Professor at the Freie Universität Berlin; and as Visiting Professor at the University of Oslo and Hiroshima University. His authored books include Surface and Depth (2002); Performing Live (2000); Practicing Philosophy: Pragmatism and the Philosophical Life (1997); Sous l’interprétation (1994), Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art (1992, 2nd edition 2000, and already translated into twelve languages); T.S. Eliot and the Philosophy of Criticism (1988); and The Object of Criticism (1984).  The editor of Analytic Aesthetics (1989), Bourdieu: A Critical Reader (1999), and The Range of Pragmatism and the Limits of Philosophy (2004), Shusterman is also co-editor of The Interpretive Turn (1991) and Aesthetic Experience (2008). His most recent book, Body Consciousness: A Philosophy of Mindfulness and Somaesthetics was published by Cambridge University Press, its French translation Conscience du corps appeared 2007. It provides the most detailed formulation of his project of somaesthetics. The French media, in reacting to this book that combines Western and Asian perspectives, describe him as a nomad philosopher and as a pragmatist thinker with a holistic orientation.
His many research awards include Senior Fulbright and National Endowment of the Humanities Fellowships, and a Humboldt Transcoop grant. Dr. Shusterman has worked with UNESCO on the topic of music and urbanism, and he has written art criticism for artworld venues such as Dokumenta.

Somaesthetics and Architecture: A Critical Option

Recent discussions in architectural theory have been concerned with the questioning of architecture's critical role, if not also the growing loss or erosion of this function. As one problematic dimension of these discussions is the confusion of competing models or conceptions of what architecture's critical function is or could be, so another part of the problem is the challenge of another architectural value, function, or effect that seems to be supplanting the critical – the notion of atmosphere.  This airy, elusive notion, moreover, seems especially opposed to critical analysis, because its essentially sensory and experiential character resists reduction to conceptual treatment through traditional discursive categories and methods. After briefly reviewing the array of positions on architecture's critical dimension, this paper suggests how the new field of somaesthetics, with its focus on heightening embodied sensory awareness, can present a new option for critically dealing with our perception of architectural atmosphere so that we can be freed from the influence that the unreflective, passive absorption of atmosphere can wield on us. Through its criticism of atmosphere and of the way architecture shapes our experience without our explicit awareness, somaesthetics thus provides a new alternative for understanding the critical in architectural theory and practice.

Michael Speaks is the dean of the University of Kentucky College of Design, former founding director of the Metropolitan Research and Design Postgraduate Program at the Sci-Arc in Los Angeles. Speaks also heads Big Soft Orange, a Dutch-American urban research group based in Rotterdam and Los Angeles. He was the founding editor of the cultural journal Polygraph and a former editor at Architecture New York and a+u (Tokyo), and currently serves as a contributing editor for Architectural Record.

An educator, researcher and editor, Speaks has served numerous institutions in the U.S. and abroad, such as the Technological University at Delft in the Netherlands, Yale School of Art, Harvard University, Columbia University, University of Michigan – Ann Arbor, The Berlage Institute in Rotterdam and University of California – Los Angeles.

Outside the classroom, the influential Los Angeles based writer and critic has published and lectured internationally on art, architecture, urban design and scenario planning. His essays and exhibitions in the 1990s were among the first to introduce a new generation of Dutch architects and planners to a broader audience in the U.S. Speaks has also played an important role in recent debates about city branding and alternative models of city planning, authoring a number of essays and advisory studies as well as overseeing scenario studies commissioned by city and regional governments in the Netherlands. More recently, Speaks has been at the center of debates about the role innovation and prototyping plays in design and has written a number of influential essays that argue for the importance of what he calls “design intelligence,” or the various forms of design knowledge generated during design but which are often overlooked in favor of “the design.” Such intelligence, Speaks argues, offers an important area for design research, especially in an increasingly knowledge-based economy.

Design Thinking

Stephan Trüby, geb. 1970, ist Architekt, Theoretiker und Kurator sowie seit 2007 Professor an der Hochschule für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe. Er studierte an der AA School in London, wo er auch lehrte. Zwischen 2001 und 2007 unterrichtete er Architekturtheorie und Entwerfen am IGMA der Universität Stuttgart. Er ist Herausgeber von "architektur_theorie.doc. Texte seit 1960" (Birkhäuser 2003, mit Gerd de Bruyn) und "5 Codes: Architektur, Paranoia und Risiko in Zeiten des Terrors" (Birkhäuser 2006, hrsg. von Igmade). 2008 erschienen von Trüby „Exit-Architektur. Design zwischen Krieg und Frieden“ (Springer) sowie „The World of Madelon Vriesendorp“ (AA Publications, mit Shumon Basar). 2009 veröffentlichte er "Hertzianismus. Elektromagnetismus in Architektur, Design und Kunst" (Fink). Trüby ist Gründer der Architektur-, Design- und Consultingfirma Exit Ltd.

Philip Ursprung ist 1963 in Baltimore, MD, geboren. Er studierte Kunstgeschichte, Allgemeine Geschichte und Germanistik in Genf, Wien und Berlin. Er wurde 1993 an der FU Berlin promoviert und 1999 an der ETH Zürich habilitiert. Er unterrichtete an den Universitäten Genf, Basel und Zürich, an der ETH Zürich, der Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weissensee und der Universität der Künste Berlin. 2001-2005 war er Nationalfonds-Förderungsprofessor für Geschichte der Gegenwartskunst am Departement Architektur der ETH Zürich. Seit 2005 ist er Professor für Moderne und zeitgenössische Kunst an der Universität Zürich. 2007 war er Gastprofessor an der Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation der Columbia University New York.

Er war Gastkurator am Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Basel, am Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal und der Graduate School for Architecture, Planning and Preservation der Columbia University New York. Er ist Autor von Grenzen der Kunst: Allan Kaprow und das Happening, Robert Smithson und die Land Art (München, 2003), Herausgeber von Herzog & de Meuron: Naturgeschichte (Montreal und Baden 2002), sowie Ko-autor von Images: A Picture Book of Architecture (München 2004), Minimal Architecture (München, 2003) und Studio Olafur Eliasson: An Encyclopedia (Köln, 2008). Zuletzt erschien Caruso St John: Almost Everything (Barcelona, 2008).

Out of Empire: Architecture and the Multitude

Otto Karl Werckmeister, 1934 in Berlin geboren, war, neben Forschungsaufträgen am Warburg Institute, London und dem Deutschen Archäologischen Institut Professor für Kunstgeschichte an der UCLA und der Northwestern University in Evanstown/Illinois, sowie Gastprofessor an den Universitäten Marburg und Hamburg. Zu seinen wichtigsten Veröffentlichungen gehören: Ende der Ästhetik (1971), Ideologie und Kunst bei Marx (1974), Versuche über Paul Klee (1981), The Making of Paul Klee's Career, 1914-1920 (1988), Zitadellenkultur. Die schöne Kunst des Untergangs in der Kultur der Achtziger Jahre (1989); Linke Ikonen: Benjamin, Eisenstein, Picasso - nach dem Fall des Kommunismus (1997), Der Medusa-Effekt - Politische Bildstrategien seit dem 11. September 2001 (2005). Daneben hat Werckmeister in zahlreichen einflußreichen Essays und Vorträgen (zuletzt etwa: Von der Avantgarde zur Elite: Bemerkungen zu Majakowski, Tatlin und Beuys, 2000) die Kunstwissenschaft seit den frühen 70er Jahren maßgeblich zu einer Erweiterung ihres Untersuchungsfeldes angeregt. Die Strategien von Künstlern des 20. Jahrhunderts auf dem Weg zum Ruhm hat er ebenso untersucht wie das Bildrepertoire frühmittelalterlicher Buchillustrationen oder der japanischen Manga-Comics. Walter Benjamins Forderung nach einer "Aktualität des Denkens" hat ihm als Motto seiner Untersuchungen gedient. Werckmeisters Position in der Kunstgeschichte wird in der Festschrift zu seinem sechzigsten Geburtstag erörtert: 'Radical Art History': Ein akademisches Gespräch über O. K. Werckmeister, In: Wolfgang Kersten, ed., Radical Art History: Internationale Anthologie—Subject O. K. Werckmeister. Er arbeitet an einem Buch mit dem Titel The Political Confrontation of the Arts: From the Great Depression to the Second World War, 1929-1939.
Otto Karl Werckmeister lebt nach langjähriger Lehrtätigkeit seit 2001 wieder in Berlin.

Hannes Meyers Lehren

Hannes Meyer war Direktor des Bauhauses in den Jahren 1928 bis 1930, das heißt während der ersten Phase der Weltwirtschaftskrise. Diese gab ihm die wirtschaftlichen, gesellschaftlichen und politischen Bedingungen für eine radikale Reduktion der künstlerischen Komponenten des Bauhausprogramms vor. Eine Architektur ohne baukünstlerische Typologie und ohne dekorative Ausgestaltung, dafür mit ausgeprägten sozialen und politischen Zielsetzungen für die Ästhetik ihrer Funktionen, war bereits 1926 in Meyers und Wittwers Entwurf für den Genfer Palast des Völkerbunds in Genf projektiert und wurde 1930 in Meyers Gewerkschaftsakademie in Bernau bei Berlin ausgeführt. Während Meyers Vorgänger Walter Gropius und sein Nachfolger Ludwig Mies van der Rohe baukünstlerische Traditionen begründeten, ist Meyers radikale Architekturlehre ohne Nachfolge geblieben, nicht weil er auf architektonische Ästhetik verzichtet hätte, sondern weil er auch sie gesellschaftlichen und politischen Zielsetzungen unterordnete, die historisch unerreichbar blieben. Indem ich Meyers Architekturlehre zeitgeschichtlich aus der Wirtschaftskrise zu begründen suche, verstehe ich sie als Präzedenzfall für eine politische Kritik der ästhetisch und dekorativ überdeterminierten Architektur der letzten Jahre. Diese verdankt sich einer defizitären Wirtschafts- und Finanzpolitik, die heute wiederum einer weltweiten Krise entgegensieht.

Dr. phil., geb. 1947; seit 2001 Professorin für Geschichte und Theorie der Architektur und der Stadt; zuvor Professorin für Kunstgeschichte an der TU Graz; Gastprofessuren für Kunst- Architektur- und Designgeschichte  an der UdK Berlin, Universität Kassel, Oldenburg und Bonn; Studium der Kunstgeschichte, Soziologie und Psychologie, und Philosophie. Karin Wilhelm ist Organisatorin mehrerer internationaler Ausstellungen zur modernen Architektur und zum Design (Berlin, London, Stockholm) und war wissenschaftlicher Beirat der Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau und des Deutschen Architekturmuseums (DAM).

Zahlreiche Veröffentlichungen, u.a.: Von der Phantastik zur Phantasie. Ketzerische Gedanken zur Funktionalistischen Architektur, in: NGBK-Berlin (Hg.), Wem gehört die Welt. Kunst und Gesellschaft in der Weimarer Republik, (1977); zuletzt: Bauhaus Weimar 1919 - 1924 (1996); Kunst als Revolte? Von der Fähigkeit der Künste, Nein zu sagen (1996); Visionen vom Glück - Visionen vom Untergang: Zeichen und Diskurse zur "schönen neuen Welt" (1998); Sehen - Gehen - Denken: der Entwurf des Bauhausgebäudes, in: 'Das Bauhausgebäude in Dessau 1926-1999' (1998); City-Lights - Zentren, Peripherien, Regionen: interdisziplinäre Positionen für eine urbane Kultur (2002), Idea and form: Häuser von Szyszkowitz + Kowalski (2003); Formationen der Stadt. Camillo Sitte weitergelesen (2005)

Territorialität und International Style.
Architektonische Wunschbilder einer fröhlichen Weltgesellschaft.

Die Durchsetzung des International Style in den Wiederaufbauprogrammen bundesdeutscher Städte, referierte auf Wunschbilder der Moderne vom gleichwertig guten Leben. Mit dieser Symbolik realisierte sich nicht nur eine Form der Territorialisierung durch die westlichen (vor allem US-amerikanischen) Siegermächte, sondern mithilfe der Architektur aus der so genannten 'Bauhaustradition' zugleich die kulturelle und politische Neuorientierung einer gespaltenen Nation. Die Architektursprache des aus den USA rückgeführten International Style war dabei gleichsam der weiche Faktor im harten politischen Geschäft der Konsolidierung der BRD, sie war aber auch die visuelle und räumlich erfahrbare Beigabe eines Versprechens.