Mediality
Seminar Architecture and the City II / IV (056-0002-01)
Organizer: MAS
Lecturers: Dr. André Bideau, Marie-Anne Lerjen
Time: 2.00–5.30 pm
Location: HIT H 42
Does architecture have transformative potential? Is a building capable not only of reflecting change, but also of sparking it and promoting profound transformations in a society? Is architecture a "programmatic medium of the social" (Heike Delitz)? What or who enables a building to organize collectives, for example? With which political or economic constellations is this potential connected? For an increased degree of effectiveness, buildings are dependent on mediality–mediality understood as immediacy: as a potential inherent in architecture that triggers affects. This communication, its structural causes and effects are the subject of the semester. As a term, mediality is not to be confused with the far more familiar mediatization of architecture– mediation that relies on an external agency. Rather, we will address architecture in its concreteness: how it communicates by itself and in its own materiality. Of course, it does not do so in a vacuum–even a self-referential, "mute" architecture is highly medial and does not exist in a state of conceptual autonomy. Closely linked to codes and processes of reception, architecture can never be separated from its audience and from the context of its creation. What happens, in turn, when the context of a building's meaning changes and its message loses its original effect? The transhistorically structured seminar examines a range of situations. The focus is on working with texts in order to get to know different perspectives on the object of study. Guest lectures will illuminate aspects of architectural mediality on the basis of concrete case studies, thereby presenting various research approaches.
Public lecture series of the seminar "Mediality".
Image: Weber, Brand & Partner, B. Schachner: Uniklinikum RWTH Aachen (1971–83), Condition in 2022 (Photo: A. Bideau)
Organizer: MAS
Lecturers: Dr. André Bideau, Marie-Anne Lerjen
Time: 2.00–5.30 pm
Location: HIT H 42
Does architecture have transformative potential? Is a building capable not only of reflecting change, but also of sparking it and promoting profound transformations in a society? Is architecture a "programmatic medium of the social" (Heike Delitz)? What or who enables a building to organize collectives, for example? With which political or economic constellations is this potential connected? For an increased degree of effectiveness, buildings are dependent on mediality–mediality understood as immediacy: as a potential inherent in architecture that triggers affects. This communication, its structural causes and effects are the subject of the semester. As a term, mediality is not to be confused with the far more familiar mediatization of architecture– mediation that relies on an external agency. Rather, we will address architecture in its concreteness: how it communicates by itself and in its own materiality. Of course, it does not do so in a vacuum–even a self-referential, "mute" architecture is highly medial and does not exist in a state of conceptual autonomy. Closely linked to codes and processes of reception, architecture can never be separated from its audience and from the context of its creation. What happens, in turn, when the context of a building's meaning changes and its message loses its original effect? The transhistorically structured seminar examines a range of situations. The focus is on working with texts in order to get to know different perspectives on the object of study. Guest lectures will illuminate aspects of architectural mediality on the basis of concrete case studies, thereby presenting various research approaches.
Public lecture series of the seminar "Mediality".
Image: Weber, Brand & Partner, B. Schachner: Uniklinikum RWTH Aachen (1971–83), Condition in 2022 (Photo: A. Bideau)
