Lehrangebot

Do you think you know what architectural history is? Despite its received image, architectural history is not merely about describing archival documents. While archival work provides the foundation for historical analysis, writing histories is the work of interpretation. How we write affects stories and narratives as much as what we write about. The history of the discipline offers a rich variety of ways to write and think about architecture, and yet, many people, places and things are missing from its histories. How is one to find and to interpret an “archive”? How is one to know what to look for and to recognize what is missing? How does one add these missing stories, when conventional methods have failed to account for them? And finally, how does one write the history that these stories tell?

In this class, we will examine a variety of methods that contemporary historians use for analyzing designed or used spaces. These methods dictate what evidence is selected (and what is left out), which research questions are asked (and which are ignored), and what concepts and operations are employed to answer these questions. Each method has its potential and its limitations; always a product of its own time and place, each method might work for one history and not another; each method informs the object of its analysis as much as that object informs the method.

We will focus on six methodologies used by architectural historians: postcolonial studies; queer and feminist studies; alter-stories and new materialism; global history and its critical revisions; geomedia studies; oral history and critical fabulation. Meeting in six double sessions, we will discuss a text by a leading contemporary scholar or theorist of architecture that employs one of these methods, followed by an evening lecture and discussion session with the author of the respective text, inviting them to reflect on their techniques in writing histories.

The seminar will be offered in hybrid format in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Anna-Maria Meister, Lise Meitner Research Group Leader at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz - Max Planck Institute and the chair for Architecture Theory at KIT, and is open to Bachelor, Master, and doctoral students.

Meetings will be announced on Moodle, Monday 18:30-20:00 / Friday 10:00-11:30

Torhaus B, Universitätsplatz 9 Room 2110 / Online

Language: English

Instructor: Prof. Dr. Alla Vronskaya

Dieses Blockseminar wird sich auf das Werk des Architekten und Planers Alexander Klein (1879-1961) konzentrieren, der sich seinen Namen in Deutschland gemacht hat, nachdem er als Flüchtling vor der sowjetischen Revolution dorthin gekommen war, um vom Nationalsozialismus erneut vertrieben zu werden, diesmal nach Israel. Die Schwerpunktsetzung auf Kleins Arbeit in Deutschland zwischen 1920 und 1934 wird es möglich machen, sowohl seine verbliebenen Bauten und Siedlungen - Villen und Häuser in Berlin und die Arbeitersiedlung Bad Dürrenberg in Sachsen-Anhalt - zu besichtigen als auch die drei einflussreichen Methoden zu diskutieren, die er in dieser Zeit entwickelt hat: sein Studium und seine Verwendung der neoklassischen Architektur als generatives System von Proportionsverhältnissen; seine neuartige Methode, die Bewegungen der Bewohner in der Wohnung darzustellen, die er für die Entwicklung „minimaler“ Wohnungsgrundrisse nutzte; und seine Skalierung dieser Ideen für eine Anwendung im Maßstab der Siedlung. Das Seminar wird mit einem eintägigen Workshop mit eingeladenen Gastrednern abgeschlossen.

Passive Kenntnisse der deutschen und englischen Sprache sowie die Fähigkeit, in einer dieser Sprachen zu kommunizieren, sind Voraussetzungen.

Das Seminar findet während der Kompaktwoche statt Mo. 19.05.2025 - Fr. 23.05.2025

Torhaus B, Universitätsplatz 9 Raum 2110

Sprache: English/German

Dozentin: Prof. Dr. Alla Vronskaya

In a time that is often defined by rapid consumption and the production of waste, how do we understand and evaluate histories of the built environment? How do we preserve and access records when our object of study is constituted by a multitude of materials, by multiple actors, at multiple scales? This seminar introduces advanced undergraduate and masters students in architecture, urban planning, and landscape architecture to critical debates about archival work at a time of rapid social, political, and environmental change. We explore the history of the archive as a building and a site of institutional memory, as well as its capacity to erase and deny unpopular actors and objects that threaten its future. We engage with artists, community-based researchers, and professional archivists that are testing the limits of preserving, retrieving, and using material of historical interest. 

This is a reading and discussion-based seminar. All readings will be provided during the semester.

It is possible to write a Studienarbeit in connection to this class.

Dozentin: Megan Elizabeth Eardley

The Yenidze Tobacco Factory in Dresden (1909) is a building that invites multiple interpretations. Typically discussed in architectural history as an example of architectural advertisement and industrial innovation, it has also become a symbol of Dresden’s tobacco heritage and multicultural past. However, less attention has been paid to the social dynamics at play on the factory floor, where daily negotiations of class and gender unfolded.

This seminar will use the Yenidze as a case study to explore a broad range of themes, including orientalism, class, race, and gender, as well as the history of industrial architecture, architecture as image and advertisement, factories and the city, and heritage sites. Through weekly readings, discussions, and collaborative analysis, students will engage with historical and theoretical approaches that situate the Yenidze within larger architectural, cultural, and social contexts. The course will also address methodological challenges in accessing and interpreting social histories of the built environment.

The seminar will be conducted in English, and grades will be based on pre-class assignments and active participation in weekly sessions. One weekend field trip to Dresden will provide students with an opportunity to explore the Yenidze and its context firsthand and there is the potential for a second field trip. There is no final exam

Dozentin: Sarah Wheat