Volume 10, No.
2
September 2006
|
|
From Outer Space:
Architectural Theory
beyond the Discipline (Part 2) |
|
|
|
Conceptional design
and editing: |
|
Katharina
Fleischmann,
Eduard Führ |
Organisation: |
|
Katharina
Fleischmann |
Editorial assistants and layout:
|
|
Heidrun Bastian,
Ehrengard Heinzig
|
Katharina Fleischmann
|
|
Editorial
|
|
|
Art History |
Christina
Threuter |
|
Metabolism:
Modern Architecture as Image |
Wolfgang Sonne |
|
The Birth of Urban Design History
out of the Spirit of Multidisciplinarity |
Regina Göckede |
|
Colonial Le Corbusier.
Algiers Projects in Postcolonial Version |
|
|
Geography |
Werner Bischoff |
|
"Boundless"
Spaces - About the Relation of Architecture and Urban Spaces of Odour |
Jürgen Hasse |
|
Der Mensch
ist (k)ein Akteur - Zur Überwindung szientistischer Scheuklappen in der
Konstruktion eines idealistischen Menschenbildes |
|
|
History |
Thomas Adam |
|
Nineteenth-Century
Housing Reform and Family
Structure
in a Transatlantic
Perspective |
|
|
Political Science |
Helga Fassbinder |
|
On the
Reflexive Planning of Urban Beauty |
|
|
|
|
abstracts: |
|
|
|
Art History |
|
|
|
___Christina
Threuter
Trier |
|
|
In
this article on three examples of modern architecture for residential
houses - the ‘Haus Bloemenwerft’ (1896) by Henry van de Velde, the
design for a residential house for Josephine Baker (1927) by Adolf Loos
and the residential house ‘E.1027’ (1929) by Eileen Gray – the
production and functionality of the image of architecture is analysed.
Starting point for this analysis is the question of power of
architectural images and the discourses connected to them. The term
‘image of architecture’ hereby is not referring to the understanding of
image as an authoritative sign of significance but it implicates the
question of its status in architecture. Connected to this is the
postulation for a critical analysis concerning mythic constructions of
modern architecture and space, that is to work on strategies of visual
representations like they are caused by the perception – contemplation,
discourse and writing about architecture – of images produced by
architecture. The author especially deals with the questions of
imaginations of the body and its sex/gender as an effect of the image as
medium.
|
(Paper in German) |
|
|
|
|
|
___Wolfgang
Sonne
Strathclyde |
|
|
Urban
design history did not emerge as a strictly disciplinary project of art
history. Even if the first general urban design history was published in
1920 by art historian Albert Erich Brinckmann, a disciple of Heinrich
Wölfflin, it took at least as much inspiration from architectural
theories as Camillo Sitte's Städtebau (1889). Furthermore, the
first general urban design histories had not been published as separate
history books, but appeared as substantial chapters in planning
literature as in Daniel Burnham's Plan of Chicago (1909) or
Rudolf Eberstadt's Handbuch des Wohnungswesens und der Wohnungsfrage
(1909). The analysis of further urban design histories not only reveals
that the authors came from such different disciplines as architecture,
history, art history, economy, or politics, but also dealt with a
variety of disciplines and factors for interpreting the evolution of
cities. Despite this broad multidisciplinary approach, these authors
never lost their focus: to interpret the urban form.
|
(Paper in German) |
|
|
|
|
|
___Regina
Göckede
Cottbus |
|
|
Among the
so called pioneers of the modern movement few figures can claim to have
influenced city planning on a truly global scale. There is no doubt
about that Le Corbusier was a sole figure concerning the way he managed
to place himself as a world architect.
This study focuses on his earliest, largest, and most ambitious
projects, ever designed for a non-European urban space. Starting in the
early 1930s the Algiers-project kept him busy for nearly twelve years.
While no part of his numerous plans has been ever built, mainstream
architectural historiography represents Le Corbusier Algerian oeuvre as
a phase of searching for new architectural and urban forms beyond the
stylistic canon of early continental modernism. Neglecting its specific
historical, political and cultural contexts and emphasizing its
sculptural-poetic qualities Le Corbusier's Algiers plans are reduced to
an experimental turning point for the artist's humanistic practice.
Rejecting this interpretation my study aims to situate Le Corbusier's
architectural and urban forms in the history of French colonialism,
particularly in the history of French colonial urbanism in Algiers.
Drawing upon post-colonial theory with specific reference to recent
developments in the field of post-colonial urban studies my reading
seeks to demonstrate that Le Corbusier's ordering of Algiers physical
environment not only consolidates existing colonial power-relations but
also generates modernized spatial technologies of social control. Given
the continuing multidirectional dynamic of Le Corbusier's global impact
I finally try to challenge the binary between metropole and colony
asking for colonial origins in current conflicts over ethnic segregation
and social exclusion in European cities.
|
(Paper in German) |
|
|
|
|
|
Geography |
|
|
|
___Werner Bischoff
Frankfurt am Main |
|
|
Geographers
analyse urban spaces mainly by their visual forms and patterns. With this
concentration on the objective character of the environment the sensing
subject threatens to be lost out of sight. Despite the historico-cultural
founded concentration on the perception of the objective and visual urban
spaces are not only visible. Urban spaces are rather present in tactile,
auditory, olfactory and gustatory perceptions and sensations and reveal
themselves in different atmospheres. Especially the olfactory perception and
sensation is quite important for exploring the atmospherical effects of the
designed and built environment - not least because urban spaces of odour are
already in the focus of marketing strategians conceiving comfortable
atmospheres in office and shopping spaces as an instrument for customer
loyalty and coworker incentive.ro-
und Konsumräumen als ein Instrument zur KundInnenbindung bzw.
MitarbeiterInnenmotivation begreifen.
|
(Paper in German) |
|
|
|
|
|
___Jürgen Hasse
Frankfurt am Main |
|
|
The article
deals with a central concept of theory of acting; this is the idea of people
as an only acting human. This is conceptualizing man as a brain-machine. In
the focus of phenomenology and philosophy of life this fiction will be
criticized as an anthropological reductionism. There is no living life which
could be understood as an aseptic realisation of controlled cognitive
intentions. To ignore mans feeling and only semiconscious motives makes
sense in an ideological and psychological look at science. If mans doing is
conceptualized as a clean way from intellectual thinking to practical doing,
the scientist himself not will be discussed and criticized in his own
no-rational motives to do or not to do anything. The discussion leads to the
following question, which is important in the frame of theory of
architecture: How is the relationship between doing through acting and
through feeling? This question is important for the process of perception as
well as the process of production of architecture.
|
(Paper in German) |
|
|
|
|
|
History |
|
|
|
___Thomas Adam
Arlington |
|
|
Guided by the belief that the family is at the very heart of society and
that a stabilization of society cannot succeed without a stabilization
of its very basis – the family – German and North American
philanthropists who engaged in social housing projects dedicated much
time to the planning of apartment buildings. They believed that
intermixing of different neighbors in an apartment building caused a
breakdown of social rules and standards and was to blame for the
outbreak of infectious diseases. The open structure of families and
flats appeared to them in general, as a threat to the state. By
providing a building structure that allowed for the isolation of nuclear
families from each other and the outside world, nineteenth-century
architects and housing reformers believed that they had achieved a
healthy social basis for society. Housing reform thus became societal
reform. By making decisions about the architectural structure of
apartment buildings, philanthropists and their architects were in a
position to define the concept of “family.”
|
(Paper in English) |
|
|
|
|
|
Political Science |
|
|
|
___Helga
Fassbinder
Dresden |
|
|
Central
issue of the discussion about the “risk society” and “reflexive
planning” is the necessity of a new thinking about cities,
insufficiently covered by the term “sustainability”.
The preposition of the essay is: Sustainable planning and building will
only then be able to assert themselves when they are associated with a
new language of form, which makes the complex content tangible for all
engaged in urban affairs: the planners, architects, residents and
politicians. A language that, with a new beauty, makes visible which
world we move in; what is good and what is bad for the preservation of
environmental conditions.
The conception of ‚biotope city’ offers such an inspiring new vision of
the city, asking for a fundamental turnaround in thinking: the city is
regarded not only as a largely self-regenerating overall system with
minimal external effects, but also as a specific form of nature. This
concept incorporates also, logically, a new idea of beauty. As this the
conception of ‚biotope city’ integrates form and content anew.
|
(Paper in German) |
|
|
|
|
|
The editorial staff keeps all rights, including
translation and photomechanical reproduction. Selections may be reprinted with
reference:
(Wolkenkuckucksheim, Cloud-Cuckoo-Land, Vozdushnyj Zamok >http://www.cloud-cuckoo.net<)
if the editorial staff is informed.
|
Link to Part 1 (Issue 1/05) |
|
|