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Dwelling With Class – Building Structures of Classism in Architecture

02.11.2024

Dwelling and class are interrelated and have been mutually dependent since (at least) the formation of a discourse about dwelling in modernity. The distinctions between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ forms of dwelling and ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ ways of living are part of a (modern) aesthetic tradition that is intertwined with both moral principles and a significant production of images in art and architecture. This can be critically questioned from a class-conscious perspective: to what extent are economic and social structures made in/visible here? How are class relations re/produced in images of dwelling, floor plans, interior design, architecture and urban planning? We encounter the imperative of a supposedly ‘correct’ way of living and dwelling in both, idealized images in art and architecture as well as in lifestyle magazines and home journals, TV series and on Instagram. Here, ideas of class relations are perpetuated. The models of bourgeois dwelling as an unmarked norm continues to shape the common notion of this ‘proper’ dwelling, which is usually identified as heteronormative, small-family and white. This talk aims to bring together various perspectives that critically examine dwelling in terms of class relations. Through examples from the history of art, architecture and design as well as (current) artistic and activist practices, it aims to put aesthetic, social and political interrelationships between dwelling and class into perspective. What role do art, architecture and (social) media play in conveying images of dwelling and class relations? How can gender differences, racism and class hierarchies be analytically intertwined, both historically and currently? What proletarian, revolutionary or emancipatory housing designs have existed and why are they rarely part of the discourse? 

Housing and co-participatory design: the Collegium Academicum IBA Heidelberg

19.10.2024

This lecture intersects questions of housing, sustainability and co-participatory design, while reflecting on a selection of projects, including the Collegium Academicum IBA in Heidelberg.
 

Urban Habitats and Multispecies World-building

16.10.2024

Cities have always been and are growing more and more into a home and a refuge for diverse species who found in the urban settings conditions for their survival, as shelter and food. Due to the expansion of human-made, profit-oriented extractivist and colonizing practices, diverse natural habitats were reduced, became endangered or destroyed: HABITAT LOSS became a planetary major problem. In the face of these multiple planetary crises and climate emergencies, many current urban policies are trying to protect, restore, repair, and recreate their natural ecosystems. Cities’ relation to nature is being interrogated and reshaped.

In this context, the current exhibition in Graz Museum entitled Habitat Graz examines how the entanglement of anthropo- and non-anthropogenic agency can be visible in the formation and development of the city itself. By acknowledging the complexity and interrelatedness of urban ecologies, the curatorial approach focuses on the city as an ever-changing multi-species Habitat, an ever-changing organism where diverse life forms flourish and decay. It navigates the historical, ecological and poetical layers of interdependence among species by showcasing stories of the reciprocity that animates the world in the selected urban case studies.