Architecture Theory

The processes that shape large-scale built environments require critical analysis. Read through their social impact, bureaucratic and (proto-)digital design processes are understood in a multi-layered and intersectional way. This includes the critical examination of technophilic rhetoric of efficiency, rationalization, precision or function as well as the widening of actor circles or the consideration of consequences of architectural action. The urgent questions of our discipline concerning sustainability (also beyond technicist belief in progress) or diversity (as a real change of perspective, scientifically as well as in practice) are in the foreground. The questions that concern us are therefore the following: who produces which architectures with what (social, political or aesthetic) intention? At whose expense are they produced? Who and what is included or excluded? Which societal images are constructed, and what architectures are projected by societies? In teaching and research, we deepen selected questions methodologically and thematically, always closely linked to reading and writing practices through iterative text production and by approaching multi-perspective bibliographies and formats. Architectures, or better, spatial practices, shape environments in the midst of communities and societies. The responsibility this entails makes informed critical historical and theoretical engagement urgent.

Prof. Dr. Anna-Maria Meister, 2023