The Meaning of Architecture Today

Carsten Ruhl & Daniela Ortiz dos Santos

What type of narratives do we want to pursue while judging about the meaning of architecture today? Which Histories shall be celebrated and constructed? Who is in Charge of Architecture? Although these may sound straightforward questions, answering them poses new methodological challenges. Our introductory course to architectural history adopts these interrogations as a point of departure for action.

If we accept the argument that architecture is the result of an intersection of cultural phenomena situated in space and time, this makes possible a series of critical positions towards the different dimensions and mediums in which architectural histories are constructed, celebrated, displayed, manipulated and forgotten.

The Meaning of Architecture Today aims at not only intersecting the several temporalities and spatial framings, but also examining the conditions of possibilities, power relations and competing world visions in which the architectural discourse operates.

By proposing a combination of synchronic and diachronic approaches, this course investigates to what degree the architectural narratives and operations have affected societies’ constructs of remembered experiences of the past in the current process of the architectural culture, as well as the society’s relation with the building environment at large.

Goethe University Frankfurt am Main

Art History Department

Propaedeutic Architecture

Summer Semester 2020

Lecturers

Prof. Dr. Carsten Ruhl

Dr. Daniela Ortiz dos Santos

Tutors:

Fiona Kania

Franka Schlupp

Lisa Chalco Bock