On the one hand, we create a very direct, almost affirmative contemporary (Zeitgenossenschaft). This method goes hand in hand with the provocative claim of the universality of architectural language. Just like a salesman of contemporary industrial products we suggested a kind of global universality. All of that basically didn’t play a role. At first no matter for which program, irrelevant for which place or site and no matter for which budget. In the design project itself we started with a contemporary glass-holding detail and treated this detail as a non-negotiable principle and specification of the project. The selection itself represents a hypothesis.

The resulting fragments do not claim to be statistically significant. Similar to the art itself, it is up to the observer and the discourse to draw conclusions, to establish or reject relationships, to formulate criticism or to set up a cognitive hypothesis. The research seminar operates with a hybrid scientific-artistic method: through technical and artistic visualization, fragments of reality are placed almost associatively next to each other. The “Typologische Schnitt“ follows a cut through time, 1960 – 2000, and gives a precise framework to our consideration of the topic “Transparency in Architecture and Society of the Federal Republic of Germany from postwar to today”. But also not excluded.Īs part of our semester theme „Stadt aus Glas“ / “City of Glass” at Uni Kassel we have made a journey into the recent past of the Federal Republic of Germany: to various institutions, museums and companies and their buildings. We would therefore refer to our research method as a sort of “Typologischer Schnitt” / “typological section” – not to be confused with the research of typologies. Our research interests lie in the combination of design methodological issues and their analysis on the basis of specific figures, positions and built examples – all against the background of their underlying social and technical conditions. All of our built projects so far base on highly precarious starting conditions and apparently unsolvable contradictory demands.

In this sense our teaching is closely related to essential questions, with which we are confronted within our own architectural practice.

This teaching method follows an (artificial) restriction or, to a certain extent, a distortion of the starting point. These gaps create friction and demands for answers of their own, which cannot lie in the mere imitation of references, but provoke students to own answers right from the first day of their studies. We understand the teaching of design, at least in parts of it, as the creation of connections and relationships where one doesn´t suspect them at first or where they do not even exist.

City of glass theme