“It is the Acropolis that made a rebel of me. One clear image will stand in my mind forever: the Parthenon. Stark, stripped, economical, violent; a clamorous outcry against a landscape of grace and terror. All strength and purity.”
Le Corbusier, Fourth meeting of the CIAM, 1933
Built between 1979 and 1983 as part of the Internationale Bauaustellung (IBA) in Berlin, Oswald Mathias Unger’s housing block at Lützowplatz was finally demolished at the end of february 2013, after only 30 years of existance. In this building Ungers theory of the city as green archipelago - which based on a small but very influential study he developed in collaboration with Rem Koolhaas, Hans Kollhoff and others at Cornell University - became visible. The housing block at Lützowplatz was an unusual link between the academic discourse and ordinary building practice - but in the end not worth to be preserved.
Spanish Ruins
The global financial crisis and speculative construction in Spain, caused vast areas of land that are now occupied by abandoned construction projects.
All Images from: Ruinas modernas. Una topografía de lucro (2012) by Julia Schulz-Dornburg
Incredible oil-paintings (!) by Raphaella Spence
Empire State (2012), 115 x 160 cm
NYPD Skywatch observing the Occupy protesters during their stay in Zuccotti Park - a modern and mobile version of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon.
“Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary; that this architectural apparatus should be a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it;”
Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison
Triadisches Ballett (1922), Oskar Schlemmer. Reconstructed by Margarete Hasting in 1968
Die verhinderte Revolution
Der Architekt Gustav Friedrich von Hetsch kehrt nach vierjährigem Parisaufenthalt, mit Studium an der École des Beaux-Arts und Mitarbeit am Bau des Pantheon, im Jahre 1812 in seine Heimatstadt Stuttgart zurück. Wie bereits sein Vater, der am Hofe des Herzogs Carl Eugen als Hofmaler tätig war, beschließt Hetsch sich in herrschaftliche Dienste begeben.
Mutmaßlich verfertigt der Architekt zu diesem Zweck den Entwurf eines Justizpalastes. Ein Blick auf die Pläne verdeutlichen die Akribie und Sorgfalt mit der er sich seiner Aufgabe widmete. Und sie weisen ein weiteres Merkmal auf, die diese Arbeit zu etwas Besonderem werden lässt: Wiewohl die Ära der Revolutionsarchitekten Ledoux, Boullée und Lequeue während Hetschs Parisaufenthalt bereits zu Ende gegangen war, scheinen deren Entwürfe -und insbesondere die Arbeiten Claude-Nicolas Ledoux - gewaltigen Eindruck auf den jungen Stuttgarter gehabt zu haben. Vergleicht man die Entwürfe für Chaux mit denen des Stuttgarter Justizpalastes miteinander, dann sind Parallelen offensichtlich.
Wohl etwas zu offensichtlich für den potentiellen Arbeitgeber, den noch im tief im Absolutismus verwurzelten König von Württemberg, Friedrich I., den die republikanische Entwurfsprogrammatik eines Justizpalastes und der reduzierte Klassizismus wenig begeisterte und er an Stelle Gustav Hetsch Nikolaus Friedrich von Thouret zu seinem Hofbaumeister machte.
Alle Bilder des von Friedrich Gustav Hetsch entworfenen Justizpalastes © Institut für Architekturgeschichte, Universität Stuttgart
New Babylon - Architecture and Urbanism after Crisis
The global network between capital markets and the international distribution of risks has meant that the USA’s sub-prime crisis has become a global economic crisis. The automotive industry and the real estate sector have experienced a particularly dramatic decline, and vacancy rates and unemployment levels are rising. The global financial crisis has become an urban crisis. Our symposium would like to discuss its causes and repercussions and possible problem-solving solutions for the developments in urban planning and architecture. Where are the changes first perceived, and what is society’s response to this upheaval? Which positions are taken by the individual, by government policies, by designers? How must urban planning and architecture change in a positive and lasting way and how, in view of their tools, can they respond to this? What happens after the crisis?!
Dirk Baeker, Regina Bittner, Andrew Comer, Isabel Concheiro, Jón Gnarr, Dan Hill, Andres Lepik, Peter Mörtenböck, Sabine Müller, Klaus Overmayer, Freek Persyn, Muck Petzet, Stefan Rettich, Charles Waldheim, Michael Zinganel
Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT)
Gebäude 20.40
Englerstrasse 7
76131 Karlsruhe
31.01. – 01.02.2012
A Battleship, the Casa Mastroainni and d’Annunzio’s Vittoriale
Loos ornamental (2008), by Heinz Emigholz.
Emigholz (* January 22, 1948 in Achim, near Bremen, Germany) is a filmmaker, actor, artist, writer and producer. He is a Professor for Experimental film at Berlin University of the Arts and at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.
