Teaching Approach
Research and teaching aproach of the department.
The teaching model of the Department of Architectural Theory at TU Berlin can be described by the term "short-circuiting the newest with the oldest". It aims to bind the classical, i.e. the valid, with the emerging, i.e. the contemporary, into a creative unity. With Walter Benjamin, one can speak of the unification of the "actual with the ephemeral" or of "historical with aesthetic experience".
Final Theses
The Department of Architecture Theory congratulates the students on their successful theses:
Typologies of Transformation: Mosques in Berlin (MA)
On 6 October, Gizem Asici successfully defended her Master's thesis in Milan. The Master's thesis was written as part of the Alliance 4Tech co-operation between the TU Berlin and the Politecnico di Milano. Her supervisors were Prof. Arian Heidari (Politecnico di Milano) and Prof. Dr Jörg Gleiter (TU Berlin)
Dogma and Practice (BA)
On 17 October, Anika Gercke successfully defended her Bachelor's thesis. This was the first joint Bachelor's thesis in architecture between Politecnico di Milano and TU Berlin. The thesis was supervised by Prof. Alessandro Rocca (Politecnico di Milano) and Prof. Dr Jörg Dr Gleiter (TU Berlin)
Digital Archive. Reusing a former Hennebique grain silos in Genoa. (MA)
Fedor Torgashev successfully defended his Master's thesis on 4 October. It was supervised by Prof Dr Rainer Hehl (TU Berlin) and Prof Dr Jörg H. Gleiter (TU Berlin).
The Panorama and its Promise of Objects
On the occasion of the 100th birthday of the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the very readable essay "Das Panorama und sein Gegenstandsversprechen" by Prof. Gleiter was published in 2010. Panoramas, as one can observe with Maurice Merleau-Ponty, practise a very own "magical theory of seeing" (AG 284), at the centre of which is the "metamorphosis of being in its appearance" A(G 285). Perceiving here is an independent transcending and interlocking of the world of images and bodily being ...."
German Architecture Award 2023
On behalf of the Federal Chamber of Architects and the Federal Ministry of Housing, Urban Development and Construction, the Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning cordially invites all students to the announcement of the winners of the German Architecture Award 2023 and the award ceremony. The exhibition and award ceremony will take place on Thursday, 28 September 2023, at 6 pm in the Pierre Boulez Saal, Französische Straße 33d, 10117 Berlin; admission is from 5 pm.
A4Tech Workshop
The A4Tech Workshop will be held in the week from 4.-10.September 2023 at the Department of Architectural Theory. The workshop is organised by Klaus Platzgummer. It is the second annual workshop of the Alliance4Tech Cooperation between TU Berlin, Politecnico di Milano and ETSAM Madrid.
Surplus of Form. Architecture and the Status of the Object
The article „Surplus of Form. Architecture and the Status of the Object" of Prof. Gleiter is out. It is published in the Journal Aesthetic Investigation and available online. The article is the first of a series of articles on architecture aesthetics by Prof. Gleiter.
Location: https://tu-berlin.zoom.us/j/62775159741?pwd=aFNKbDNFV1NmYnZ2dkZGaXpaRVgzdz09#success
Meeting-ID: 627 7515 9741
Code: 113426
Time: Friday, 04.08.2023, 10:30 (17:30 in Tokyo)
Masterthesis of Claire Kaiser
„Between Memory And Transformation - Landscape And Settlement Resilience In The Air Valley"
Alliance4Tech Polimi x TU Berlin
Workshop der Alliance4Tech Kooperation
From 4 - 10 September 2023, the Department of Architecture Theory will host the annual workshop of the Alliance4Tech cooperation. Klaus Platzgummer is organising this year's workshop under the title 'Wires, Waves, Data: Excavating Berlin's Urban Media', in which 25 students from the Politecnico di Milano, ETSAM and TU Berlin will go on excursions to explore Berlin as a medium - a storing, transmitting and processing carrier of historical traces of geopolitics. In accompanying seminars, the media-theoretical postulate "The city is a medium" (Kittler, 1986) is discussed and the workshop results in an exhibition at the Institute of Architecture at TU Berlin.
Caption:
Berlin-Altglienicke, 1956, Berlin Spy Tunnel. The tunnel was part of the joint intelligence operations of the American CIA (Operation Gold) and the British MI6 (Operation Stopwatch) in the 1950s – built to wiretap the military landlines of the Soviet Army headquarters in Berlin. On April 24 1956, after the spying operation became public, representatives of the international press visited the tapping point in the tunnel.
Source: Berlin-Altglienicke, 1956, Berlin Spy Tunnel (Peter Heinz Junge, Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-37695-0020) / Wikicommons
Towards an Architectural Theory for Sustainability
Prof. Gleiter will participate in the international conference Towards an Architectural Theory for Sustainability at the University of Lancaster on July 5, 2023 with a keynote lecture.
Khorein: Journal for Architecture and Philosophy
On 18 May 2023, at the 18th Biennale di Venezia, the new journal (open source) Khorein: Journal for Architecture and Philosophy was presented. The journal is online.
Essay Architecture and Philosophy: The Failure of Translation by Prof. Gleiter
Review of the book Introduction to Architectural Theory by Prof. Gleiter
Turning Back Inside? Ethnographies of Interiors
The recent pandemic and climate change with effects on a global scale overturn the logic of a clear distinction between outside and inside on a local level – which is one of the mainstays of housing the world. The conference Turning back inside. Ethnographies of Interiors aims to create a shared moment of reflection on the concept of interiors: are they only the spaces that human beings inhabit and that allow a certain degree of ownership, protection, intimacy? How are private and public workspaces being rearticulated? Or is it not the environmental and cohabited space, hitherto kept outside as nature, that critical zone that changes the very logic of the interior and re-appropriates it as the environmental space of multispecies relations? How do ethnographic methods draw the boundary between what matters and what does not, studying spatial realities from an ‘inside’ point of view versus critical distance, and their logics of tidiness and messiness? The conference aims to discuss these questions through the lens of ethnographic research applied to architecture, discussing the potential of ethnographic methods by accessing the most diverse interiors, investigating their structuring logics, and re-examining their relationships with the supposed exteriors.
Location: https://tu-berlin.zoom.us/meeting/register/u5crcOquqj0iH9yBNdwZrKOpGrbXimayiLrT
Code: 332255
Time: 28/02/2023
9.30-16.00 CET
Organizers:
Lidia Gasperoni (TU Berlin)
Julia von Mende (Bauhaus-Universität Weimar)
Brett Mommersteeg (HU Berlin)
and the Netzwerk Architekturwissenschaft e.V.
with the kind support of Sutor Stiftung.
Call for Papers
Together with Prof. Annalisa Trentin (Università Bologna), the Department of Architectural Theory invites interested architects, architectural historians and theorists, sociologists and art scholars to submit essays on Envisioning Tomorrow's Cities. O. M. Unger's Urban Reflections. Essays will be selected through a double blind peer review process. Deadline for submission: September 30, 2023.
Colloquium on the Aesthetics of the Future City
For February 9 and 10 the Department of Architectural Theory organizes an international seminar on the questions of the aesthetics of the future city. Co-organizers are Prof. Andrea Borsari (Universit'a di Bologna) and Prof. Denis Thouard (Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin).
Apply for the Alliance4Tech exchange program!
Apply for the Alliance4Tech exchange program until January 30!
More information
The Great Transformation
The conference/workshop The Great Transformation. Typology and Morphology in the Anthropocene takes a critical look at the changing conditions of typology and urban morphology as central architectural concepts for the creation of a meaningful human environment. It examines how and whether the changing concept of environment will lead to a typological transformation of existing urban morphology. Changing demographics, new concepts of living and housing, public transportation, biodiversity and human and animal conviviality are all factors that have an immediate effect on typology and urban morphology.
Online lecture on Dec. 1st at 6:15 pm
On Thursday Dec. 1st Prof. Gleiter will hold a public lecture at Politecnico di Milano. Il tema will be „Totally modern – Architecture and the Changing Concept of Time“. The lecture will start at 6:15 pm at the Building Trifoglio - Room T.1.2. It will be also streamed via Webex:
https://politecnicomilano.webex.com/meet/nicolo.chierichetti
Book launch of the book "Eastern European Modernism. Contributions of Jewish Architects" in the Bauhau-Reusen Pavilion on Ernst-Reuter-Platz. The book presentation is part of the Triennale der Moderne. The book was produced in collaboration between the Department of Architectural Theory and the Society for the Study of the Lives and Work of German-Speaking Jewish Architects.
The article "The Anthoprocene and the Historical Index of Architecture" by Prof. Gleiter has been published in the online journal CPCL (European Journal of Creative Practices in Cities and Landscapes) Vol. 5. no.1. https://cpcl.unibo.it/article/view/14865/14792
The journal can be found at: https://cpcl.unibo.it/issue/view/1089 as well as on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/cpcl.journal/
Symposium on 4 Nov 16:30
On the occasion of the 150th birthday of the Czech architect Jože Plečnik, the Institute of Architecture at the TU Berlin is organising the international symposium "PLEČNIK NOW! Exploring Public Space and Urban Porosity." It will be held in cooperation with and with the financial support of the Slovenian cultural centre SKICA Berlin. An accompanying exhibition of contemporary photographs by Czech photographer Adam Štěch will show the diversity of the architect Plečnik's urban interventions and his approaches in Ljubljana, Slovenia, one of his main places of work.
What actually is architectural theory? This volume introduces a neglected discipline. For architecture is by no means an activity that exclusively creates material things for practical use. On the contrary, it is a cultural technique that links theoretical knowledge, practical action and emotional experience in a complex way. How it does this and what principles it follows in the process is the subject of theory, which at the same time always pre-structures architecture. For the first time, this volume systematically presents architectural theory in its basic terms, such as sign, phenomenon, atmosphere, ornament, style, space, tectonics and form. In the age of the Anthropocene, architecture faces great challenges and therefore needs more than ever the reassurance of its theoretical foundations.
