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Volume 8,
No. 2
(March 2004) |
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Edited by: |
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Claus Dreyer,
Eduard Führ,
Susanne Hauser |
Organisation and Layout:
Document
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Heidrun Bastian,
Ehrengard Heinzig
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Walter Gropius
1. Ansprache zur Eröffnung der
Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm vom 02. Oktober 1955.
Stream
mit freundlicher Genehmigung der 'Bauwelt'. |
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(Download
of the Player)
Eduard Führ |
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'Baukultur' (Architecture
and Culture)
–
Questions and Questions Again |
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Campaigns |
Ray Huff |
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Necessity of Architecture |
Matthew Hardy |
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The Programme of the International Network for Traditional Building,
Architecture & Urbanism (INTBAU) |
Ulrike Rose
& Ullrich Schwarz |
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Moving towards a Federal Foundation for Building Culture |
Stephan Willinger |
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The
Building Cultures of the Society – Prerequisites for an Effective
Architectural Policy |
Christine Edmaier |
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"...but
who
can say what beauty is" |
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Discourse |
Max Bächer |
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Much Ado
about Nothing |
Hermann Hipp |
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Perspectives
of Building Culture for Hamburg |
Walter Nägeli
& Gudrun Sack |
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Seven Questions
Concerning the Production of Architectural Space
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Claus Dreyer |
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Architecture as Everyday- or High-Culture ? |
Joachim Ganzert |
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About
the Context of Meaning of ‘Culture’ and ‘Building Culture’ |
Ursula Baus |
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Two
Aspects of Dealing with ‘History’: Commercialization and Ideological
Exploitation |
Christine Dissmann |
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Building Culture
- the
Manifestation of Power Structures? |
Jörn Köppler |
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Building Culture and
Reconciliation |
Oxana Makhneva |
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Society in the Art of Claude-Nicolas Ledoux |
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Uwe Altrock |
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City Building Culture - Trendy Expression or Innovative Programme? |
Friedhelm Fischer |
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Building Culture, Urban Design Culture,
Planning Culture
Dimensions |
Ulf Matthiesen |
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Building Culture in Suburbia –
Perspectives and Suggestions how to Proceed |
Jürgen Hasse |
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Landscape Culture - Integral Motive of Building,
Urban
and Living Culture |
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Katja Pahl
& Silke Voßkötter |
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Building Culture as Process |
Andrea Haase |
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Culture
of
Establishing
and Using
Space |
Walter Prigge |
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Atmospheres
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List of links on the subject 'Baukultur'
at the website of the "Architecture and Building Culture Initiative"
launched by the Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Housing
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abstracts: |
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___Eduard Führ
Cottbus |
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Editorial
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Paper also in German
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Campaigns |
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___Ray Huff
Charleston |
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How would the painter or poet
express anything other
than his encounter with the
world?
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Signs
The
lecture will be in two parts, first, an overview of the Design Excellence
Program in the US, secondly, a polemic entitled “Necessity of
Architecture” illustrated by two recent projects by Huff + Gooden
Architects.
The production of architecture can be situated
between two (sometimes dialectically opposed)
positions. On the one view, architecture is
borne of social or economic need, reflective of the
values of a cultural or political situation. On
the other view, architecture is generated as an ideal
of pure conceptualization or with an internal
hermetic logic that is already complete but can be
programmed or not.
Our work seeks to engage the production of
critical architecture while simultaneously employing
revolutionary drives and evolutionary movement.
At a fundamental level, the necessity of
architecture in our work is about experience of architecture to move one
intellectually, spatially and spiritually. |
Paper in English |
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___Matthew Hardy
London |
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INTBAU
is the international sister organisation of The Prince's Foundation,
London, and seeks to promote the traditional crafts of building,
architecture and urbanism.
In most countries traditional design is suppressed by a dominant culture
which seeks to promote Modernism. Traditional cities are threatened by the
spread of multinational architectural styles originating in the major
economies of the industrialised world. Traditional craftsmanship is
endangered by building designs in which construction is reduced to
repetitive assembly of industrialised components by unskilled workers.
Instead of cultural and contextual sensitivity we see senior Modernist
practitioners attempt to create what amounts to globalised or 'branded'
architectural styles.
Careful maintenance of traditional buildings is a central strategy for
many successful cities and regions distinguishing themselves in the new
global economy. Wise city authorities know that traditional buildings help
to create an environment that attracts highly mobile skilled labour, and
provides flexibility for adaptation and change to accommodate the networks
of small inter-related enterprises that characterise successful economies.
In less successful regions, traditional building, architecture and urban
design skills are urgently needed to repair and maintain historic cities,
towns and landscapes. Tradition also offers a means of maintaining the
individuality and strength of local economies in the face of economic
pressure to lower the cost of production.
Tradition is not a static or fixed idea. Traditions can be modern, and
new ones can be invented, as Hobsbawm's seminal 1983 work "The Invention
of Tradition" made clear. Traditions enable the definition of cultural
difference. Tradition offers individuals an identity and a means of
defining their own culture. Traditions are constructed as part of group
identity, providing a meaningful point of differentiation for local
regions. However, in Modernist-dominated architectural schools, history is
taught as dead material not a resource for design.
INTBAU pursues its cause by linking together both interested
individuals and existing national organisations, and by a series of
activities including conferences, design workshops and outreach. |
Paper in English |
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___Ulrike Rose
&
___Ullrich Schwarz
Berlin |
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How did
it start? The beginning of the Initiative Baukultur 2000. Persons
responsible and previous activities of
the Initiative (examples). The idea of the foundation. Why an additional
institution? The institutions/initiatives have so far not been able to
achieve sufficient results. Chambers and associations have to satisfy the
needs of the lobbies, they cannot criticize. Who is behind the idea of the
foundation? The four moderators. The founding circle
and its composition.
Which tasks does the foundation want to deal with?
(‘Experiment Baukultur’; Competition ‘Bundeshauptstadt Baukultur’;
‘Schwarz-Weiss-Buch’; ‘Netzwerkgespräch’; ‘Qualitätsoffensive Baukultur’;
‘Bericht zur Lage der Baukultur’).
The convention of the building culture. The present and future role of the
convention. The First Convent of Building Culture in Bonn in April 2003.
The newly elected presidency of the convent.
The financing of the foundation. Who sponsors the building up of the
foundation? How big is the
required budget? Generation of the foundation’s funds. The
100-Euro-Campaign: procedure and interim result. The speech towards the
economy.
Further steps: Report to the Federal Government. Procedures of
legislation. Planned formation of the foundation: 2005. |
Paper also in German |
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___Stephan Willinger
Bonn |
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The aim
of the speech is to stimulate a cultural theoretical reflected use of the
notion ‘building culture’ and to develop potentials for an effective
policy from that. Therefore the introduction sketches functional
principles of semantic codes (like
building culture) in the communication society. It is against this
backdrop that the use of the term by the ‘Initiative Architektur und
Baukultur’ of the Bundesbauministerium will be described and its
effectiveness analyzed. The underlying theory is that the openness of the
notion has allowed a penetration into fields whose programs are actually
oriented toward other aims. The current challenge is to develop arguments
and instruments which are worth discussing for these protagonists. |
Paper also in German |
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___Christine Edmaier
Berlin |
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"Who can
say what beauty is" – this was last year’s topic of the seventh Berlin
talk of the BDA managing committee.
This formulation aims at reflecting the historic and present role of the
BDA in the development of architectural models. As an elitist institution,
the BDA is duty-bound to a continuous legitimization of the selection of
new members and of its responsibility for the building culture in times of
many competing initiatives. The validity of the respective esthetic
judgments can be depicted and questioned with the help of examples.
Is a union which is organized in the similar way as a medieval guild ("The
Mastersingers of Nuremberg") able to support or even recognize an esthetic
avant-garde? Are there objectivizable criteria for a seal of quality which
the membership in the BDA is often considered as? Do we need accepted
guidelines or regulations in order to judge architectural quality of
buildings? |
Paper also in German
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Discourse |
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___Max Bächer
Stuttgart |
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This
contribution criticises fundamentally the official and crypto-official
activities around a construction culture in Germany and would like to
provoke a rethinking process.
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Paper also in German |
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___Hermann Hipp
Hamburg |
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Construction culture presents arguments on an architectural and everyday
level, but at its core it is a political concept.
This is demonstrated by a referring back to the discussion near the turn of
the 19th to the 20th century on a ‘harmonious culture’ in architecture,
which was more often than not connected to explicit authoritarian ideas of
society.
The cultural quality of realised architecture on the other hand was at that
time created as a compromise between the design of the architect, municipal
requirements and interventions of the municipal master builder. Especially
Hamburg is renowned for such compromises (e. g. the Chile Building). The
down to earth Hamburg citizens, oriented on the commonwealth and social
welfare, together with their city master builder Fritz Schuhmacher were
always more interested in processes, confrontations, and the constant search
for new compromises and consensus rather than in a harmonious end result.
Therefore contemporary construction culture can only consist of a system
with open rules and as little as possible basic values, which is played
pluralistically without the influence of experts or construction culture
advisors.
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Paper also in German |
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___Walter Nägeli
&
___Gudrun Sack
Karlsruhe |
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Paper also in German |
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___Claus Dreyer
Detmold |
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Ordinary
architecture of Middle-Europe is hard to characterize from a philosophical
point of view: there are so many different ideas and strategies for the
production of ‘Heimat’ for people (Bloch) as there are social groups und
geographical regions. The simplifying and uniforming power of
building-economy and –industry shall be left out of consideration.
Besides that exists a level of ambitious and exposed building projects,
private or public which is international and intercultural orientated, and
whose forms and structures seem to speak a common ‘language’. This is
guaranteed by the small group of international star-architects who are the
most wanted for representative architectural projects: Libeskind, Eisenman,
Koolhaas, Nouvel, Gehry.
If there exists something like a Euro-American architectural high-culture,
the question is, what are their characteristics and what do they mean. |
Paper also in German |
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___Joachim Ganzert
Hannover |
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A Speech for a Perception of Appropriate Dimensions of Complexity
The notions ‘culture’ and ‘building culture’ are in fashion. A summarizing
look back on the 20th
Century, its zeitgeist and the herein
included search for a new world view lead to the
question of the envisaged and expected form of such a world view, to the
question of the herewith associated (new) definition of a notion of
‘culture’, ‘building culture’, respectively. And here, the search for an
‘entirely new’ seemed/seems to want/have to defeat the search for a ‘new
entirety’. This touches upon the
relations of the old with the new, as well as the relations of the part
with the whole, i.e. especially the relations of man with
nature/world/universe and its new definition. And this is a question of
balance of power.
A reduction of complexity is the result of the oversizing of ahistorical
feelings of being incomparable
and of the idea of being unique, i.
e. a
partial
perspective, a making of the worldly part into
an
absolute in contrast to the universal entirety. This reduction of
complexity favors an inclination towards inadequacy and excessiveness (a
typical modern problem) which is asking the question of legitimacy for one
or another direction of search and its horizon of perception. Hopefully,
the notions ‘culture’ and ‘building culture’ are in fashion because
one feels the loss of the parts which are missing to form a real entirety. |
Paper in German only |
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___Ursula Baus
Stuttgart |
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1.
Traditionalisms as commercialization of history.
2. Dehistoricization of buildings and events as a basis of the ideological
exploitation of history.
Both hypothesis’
are to be shown on the basis of examples and key questions in their
relevance for building culture. Based on the state of philosophy of
history and the theory of history, it can be shown how alleged knowledge
of history is misused in contemporary debates on architecture and urban
development - ‘reconstruction’, ‘historic town centers’ and ‘former glory’
are exemplary catchwords. What kind of alternatives are there?
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Paper in German only |
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___Christine
Dissmann
Berlin |
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It is
impossible to analyze building culture in a one-dimensional way. Even the
laying down of
"compulsory" criteria of quality for building culture cannot
deceive the fact that how and what is built is always and foremost a
statement of existing cultural and professional territories and therefore
prevailing power structures.
With
the help of specific examples, the contribution aims at pointing out how
building culture in its essence is the result of a conflict between
different cultures about the pushing
through of their respective interests and views. This interplay of forces is
about acquisition and claim of space for oneself and about creation and
granting of space for others – in the direct and figurative sense. As a
result, subculture climbs into the ring versus high culture, i.
e. different
national and ethnic cultures as well as different professional cultures
(politicians, investors, building-owners, planners, users, historians etc.).
If building culture wants to do justice to its great responsibility for the
quality of our social culture, it must not be prescribed by dominant social
groups as
"exhilarating architecture" with pedagogical claims. It should
rather be a framework providing set of rules which supply as much limitation
as necessary and as much freedom as possibly, and which should also permit a
democratic and in the best sense a constructive culture of debate for the
arrangement of our living space. |
Paper also in German |
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___Jörn Köppler
Graz |
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If one
described building culture as spatial art to construct reality for a
beautiful existence, one could get to the paradoxical conclusion, that we
late-modernists don’t need or better: cannot need such kind of art. Let’s
assume, culture was – following the Latin origin of the word ‘cultus’ –
poetically spoken, the big consolation of division into subject and
object, which has been handed down by generations. Let’s further assume,
culture, during the Enlightenment, was described as self-knowledge of the
intellectual and as non-identity with the physical world. If we base the
definition of ‘culture’ on these two assumptions, one could consider
architectural culture as the spatial attempt of the mentioned poetry. This
would mean that the human being who has got out of world (once described
in the sublime) would be offered a perspective of reconciliation by way of
cognition of his reason as moral talent. The good realization of the
reconciliation in the work is characterized by beauty and in the Kantian
meaning of beauty, by an appearance of a possible being in the world.
However, today, such human variety of world seems to be lastingly torn
from the consciousness by the sound-proofing of the omnipresent technical
apparatus which accommodates us instead of architecture accommodating us.
But where one is so well looked after by technology and therefore has not
got out of world, a reconciliation in terms of culture, building culture,
respectively, is not necessary. Leave alone beauty, which, looked at it
this way, is an absolute impossible of our times, although it surely is of
greatest importance to the inhabitants of architecture. But in order to
manage to get hold of the beauty as possibility again, would that not be
the actual task of architecture - prior to all debates for a better
building culture in terms of forms and methods?
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Paper in German only |
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___Oxana Makhneva
Yekaterinburg |
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On an
example of treatise ‘Architecture as regarded in relation to art, customs
and law’ we come to understand how deep the interrelation is between
society and architecture. What must and can the culture of construction do
for the culture of living?
It is this question that the French architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux asks
himself. In his treatise he discloses an inseparable link between a
society and a construction. It is the architect who must become a teacher
of life, and his constructions must help fill one with disgust to vice and
respect to virtue.
An architect acts as an enlightener speaking in terms of geometrical
symbols. Ledoux reminds that most insignificant of constructions is
capable of becoming a model of true proportion. The life of society
governs the Architect’s creative urges. For Ledoux, the future is a way to
ennoble the society, and the Architect is in the forefront of this
process.
Ledoux attaches a great importance to the link between the Architect and
the works of his art. But the creator is part of a society. The meaning of
Architecture as a chronicle of mankind is described by the Architect as
follows: ‘Remember that Achilles would have been unknown without Homer,
and the greater part of gods would have been forgotten without the marble
allegories gathered by an Architect’. Ledoux underscores the importance of
architectural creation, its priority over policy. He studies human
weaknesses and proposes to use this knowledge to educate through
architecture. Claude-Nicolas Ledoux makes sketches from life of the society, which
then become a source of his inspiration. He describes the hardships of a
creative architect living in an imperfect social system climate. Ledoux
sees in architecture a means to organize the life of a society, to educate
people. Even today this treatise dedicated to the Russian Emperor
Alexander I remains a source of ideas vitally important for the modern
society. |
Paper in Russian only |
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___Uwe Altrock
Cottbus |
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The great
response that is presently aroused by the debate on the notion ‘City
building culture’ on the one hand promises the time and again reminded
development of the daily planning routine and on the other hand is
confronted with forces of persistence which are inherent to most fields of
politics. The talk wants to give a hint for the realistic assessment of
the possibilities of a social
"City building culture movement" and its
effective action.
Therefore the talk analyses the backgrounds of the coming into being and
the social environment of such a movement as well as the trend of similar
movements in the past. In particular the talk proves that there have been
similar debates about
"Diverse use" and
"Sustainability" and points out
its chronological structure, the positions of the participating and
addressed actors, the argumentative foundation of the debate as well as
the occurring difficulties. It warns against excessive optimism and tries
to elucidate the threats and potentials of the vague formulation of
central notions which meanwhile become vogue expressions among experts. |
Paper in German only |
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___Friedhelm Fischer
Kassel |
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This
rather abstract title conceals a case study which illustrates
characteristic features of different building and planning cultures in an
unprecedented clear way.
It is the example of the Australian capital Canberra. The city’s 100 year
old planning history was first marked by authoritarian expert planning,
then by neo-liberal planning hostility and is nowadays characterized by a
process and participation oriented planning culture.
These are ways of how building and planning politics deal with the city
and the inhabitants or one could also say these are methods of planning
culture, non-culture
respectively which can be found in many cities.
The outstanding peculiarity of
Canberra lies in the extraordinary perfectionism with which – at least
during the first two of these phases – each followed role model has been
implemented. |
Paper in English |
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___Ulf Matthiesen
Berlin / Erkner |
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Historically and conceptually, discourse and practices of the building
culture are adjusted to the
"compact and thoroughly mixed city". The
other, more automobile texture of space in suburbia and in processes of
suburbanization asks for considerable rearrangements in the building
culture. Firstly, the speech examines the
"background encoding of compact
cities"
of building culture (perspective of a flaneur, readability axiom).
Secondly, questions of research about building cultural everyday
aesthetics of suburban spaces will be complemented by suggestions for a
participation of procedure for interweaving surroundings. Finally, the
guiding concept
"building culture within the scope of a learning city
region"
will be introduced by determination of its possible protagonist
groups and bodies responsible. |
Paper in German only |
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___Jürgen Hasse
Frankfurt am Main |
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The sciences
of space have relations rich of tension with the notion and phenomenon of
landscape. Whereas the difference between natural and cultural landscape
can be regarded as neutralized – in favour of a general consensual
understanding of cultural landscapes – the notion of cultural landscape
gives rise to dissents. Since Simmel, landscape (and therefore especially
cultural landscape) is considered as intellectual creation and mental
construction, enriched with ideologies and politically harnessed or even
harnessable. Landscape is considered as a matter of an
"inner worldly"
soul or as
"mood" that one interprets into an environment in a
projectionist way and one eventually experiences what has been culturally
pre-formatted ever since.
"Enlightened" Scientism dissociates itself from
notions, concepts and phenomena which have a worldly connotation. Only
recently, in the discipline of geography, the suggestion has been made to
completely (and eventually) eliminate the notion
"landscape" from the
scientific repertoire and reserve it exclusively for worldly affairs.
Unlike these antiquated scientistic fundamentalisms I would argue for a
more intensive reflection of the experience level of landscape already in
the moment of planning. The falling back on past phenomenological
traditions of thought is meant to help cultivate attention to the
Pathische (Straus) in the relation man – environment, in order to
intensify the discourse on the level of activity of architecture. This is
so to say a motive of a
"building culture" for those who are constructing,
a motive of a
"city culture" for those who are influencing the
politico-cultural discourse about the future of the city and eventually a
motive of a
"living culture" for those who use the city as urban space –
or turn their back on it. By way of explanation of the phenomenon
landscape, some examples of perception of rural environment will be
quoted. |
Paper in German only |
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___Katja
Pahl
&
___Silke Voßkötter
Dresden |
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"Building
and talking are (...) integral elements of a building culture. Their
cooperation for the purpose of the cultural public interest (...) would
often succeed in a better way, if the talking would be done before the
building more often."
Is
building culture a foreign word in the new detached housing estates of
our urban outskirts? Or are exactly these housing estates manifestations
of the present building culture? - a culture which is characterized by
joint achievements of building owners and construction industry and
usually manages without the participation of an architect or planner.
Together with Prof. Hahn’s chair of theory of architecture we have tried
in a seminar to ask the question of participation in a new way: the
seminar focused on integrating - in addition to the user - the architect
into the construction team of the detached house. For building owners,
who (without the participation of architects) had built a detached house
in the Pesterwitz estate on the outskirts of Dresden, our students
planned an additional house - but on the basis of long discussions with
the building owners about their personal living experiences and desires.
In this project, the architect participated with the help of long
discussions in the life of the building owner and therefore the building
owner participated in the planning process. The results of this
cooperation are surprising and encouraging. They would have not been
possible without the respective
"participation" of the other. Is this a
way toward a better
"building culture", a
"building culture as process"
which orients itself by the user’s concept of life and interpretation of
values?
We want to report about this project in a progress report.
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Poster in German only |
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___Andrea Haase
Aachen / Dessau |
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This
contribution introduces into the subject of a “culture of establishing and
using space” by opening the view onto the various dimensions of the culture
of settling in terms of “establishing, working on, caring for, developing
and carrying responsibility for throughout the processes of development”
(lat. ‘cultivare’).
It raises the question, what building-culture can be today in the meaning of
a culture of designing and using spaces relative to the background of
industrial history. In order to follow this question, it sketches a
framework under the aspect “standards of living – quality of life” which is
based on the late industrial awareness about innovation theory (see Mensch,
G., 1975), modernization theory (see Berger, J., 1986) and systems theory
(see Luhmann, N., 1988). These theories are led together and confronted to
the present by the following thesis: “Throughout the processes of enfolding
industrial conditions of society and of the economy, the innovative values
of products (such as also space) decrease in total; this realizes their
conditions for selling, becoming more and more obsolete, on the markets. The
differentiation of conditions (such as also of space) goes along with the
exhaustion of innovative forces as long and as wide as there is no
introduction of new values to be reasoned by comprehensive structural
changes of social conditions and demands for new ways of thinking. This new
thinking needs comprehensive guidance through regionally effective
co-operations of the economy, of society and of policies.”
This thesis is related to “urban-restructuring-East (Stadtumbau-Ost)”, as in
East-Germany new demands for a culture of settling have become massively
obvious for late industrial development in Europe. Regarding theoretical
perspectives relative to needs for action in East-Germany under the aspects
of urban development, spatial planning, design and arts as well as sociology
provides for positions towards this thesis within the individual fields. A
critical-creative criticism
about tendencies of differentiations in society and space is
subject of the conclusions: Herewith the perspective is directed on the lost
possibilities of the Moderne to redefine values of use and form in terms of
their “value for use” contemporarily. On this basis, evolutionary changes
are set into relationship to innovations.
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Paper also in German |
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___Walter Prigge
Dessau |
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In
modification of Dieter Hoffmann-Axthelm’s question (How does history get
into designing?) – for all elements, be it history, city or
"the social",
the answer is the same: the elements are always inherent in the designing.
But they are not to be extracted by simple critique of ideology
of the designing process and its principles and they are not to be
criticized as such. ‘The social’ is no independent substance, no
sociological item per se that is facing architecture. Architecture is much
more independent, by way of its methods it is a socially accepted part of
the production of space in which the architectural design is mediated
together with social reality by the reference to town images
and spatial programs ("atmospheres"). Only this programmatic use of
atmospheric images of the town space determines the social dimension of
postmodern architecture. Therefore the discussion should first take place
within the architectural discipline – for example as inspection of
atmospheric design orientations of Postmodernism and Second Modern Age which
provided the possibility for the town concepts of urban space to realize
themselves within these two epochs. |
Paper in German only |
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