Past Lectures

25.01.2022

Stephanie Herold (Berlin): What remains of the coming? Home and transformation.

The political scientist Parag Khanna 2021 sketches possible future scenarios of global migration in his widely acclaimed work “The Age of Migration”. At the same time he points out that migration is a multifaceted and spatially defining phenomenon of great historical continuity. In Europe occurred the major migration movements after the Second World War. Places of arrival for the refugees were often improvised. It was common to use existing camps or land used for military purposes further on by pragmatical reasons. These places often developed contrary to the original idea of temporary interim uses and stabilized to permanent settlements.

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18.01.2022

Niloufar Tajeri: Whose heritage, whose identity, whose architecture? Or the necessary complication of history, culture and form

Stuart Hall discusses cultural heritage as hegemonic, national narratives that map a cognitive knowledge system in museums, cities and books of the Global North via assignments of meaning such as collective “values”, “national identity” and social group affiliations. Hereby he continually refers to a simple question: “Whose heritage?” In the lecture, the question “Whose heritage?” is expanded to include the questions “Whose identity?”, “Whose knowledge?” and ultimately also “Whose spaces?” and “Whose architecture?” in order to further complicate the question of belonging, meaning and power.

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11.01.2022

Alexandra Staub (Pennsylvania, USA): Whose Architecture? Whose Identity? Examining Ethics and Stakeholder Theory as a Framework for Architectural Production

Cultural production finds constant reinforcement through the built environment yet defining what “culture” is has become an increasingly contentious in recent years. Despite social problems such as economic stratification and social intolerance, few architects and planners have addressed how the accompanying cultural paradigms are related to the production of the built environment, as well as the architect’s role in this process.

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14.12.2021

Alfred Hagemann (Berlin): A new building with a history. On dealing with the site’s history at the Humboldt Forum

The ground where the Humboldt Forum was built has been the clashing point of heated architectural debates in recent decades. At its core the discussions focused the question of what role architecture plays in the construction The ground on which the Humboldt Forum was built has been the hotspot of heated architectural debates in recent decades. At its core, the discussions focused on the question of the role architecture plays in the construction of identity(ies) in societies and of the interactions that exist between the form and use of a building, also on a symbolic level.

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07.12.2021

CANCELLED: Johan Lagae (Gent): “Sorry Congo !?” On the positionality of architectural history in dealing with Congo’s colonial past

THE LECTURE IS CANCELLED AND WILL BE POSTBONED TO THE NEW YEAR! In the last couple of years, the debate on “Decolonizing Belgium” has been thriving. It was triggered by several contestations of colonial monuments in various cities in Belgium, by the long-awaited re-opening in December 2018 of the renovated Africa Museum in Tervuren, and, more recently, the international restitution debate.

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01.12.2021

Marco A. M. Gabriel (Milano): Transnational architectural identities. The role of Fachwerk in the valorization of the German-Brazilian Cultures in the Itajai Valley brazil from the 1970s onwards

The talk explores the patrimonialization and touristification of the fachwerk architecture produced by German Immigrants in the Itajai Valley, Santa Catarina, Brazil – and how contrasting perceptions of German-Brazilian transnationalism influenced the resignification of fachwerk from a functional architecture to a highly valorized symbol of Germanness in Brazil from the 1970s onwards. Particular focus will be given to the case of the Pomeranian Immigrants in Pomerode.

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16.11.2021

Götz Aly (Berlin): Crazy about history. The Germans – A Nation Without A Centre

German history is characterized by the division into Carolingians and ‘Ostelbier’, Bavarians and Prussians, Protestants and Catholics, Social Democrats and ‘Bismarckjaner’, it is shaped by the divisions during the Thirty Years’ War, during the napoleonic occupation and finally during the Cold War. Since the beginning of the 19th Century, there have been repeated attempts to overcome internal divisions in democratic-nationalist, state-authoritarian and identitarian nationalsocialist ways.

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02.11.2021

Heike Becker (Kapstadt): Falling Monuments, Rising Memories: The Politics and Aesthetics of Postcolonial Memory Cultures and Urbanscape in Southern Africa.

Even after the end of apartheid the public space of Southern African cities like Windhoek and Cape Town remained dotted with monuments that celebrated colonial triumphalism. South African and Namibian urban landscapes obliterated a painful history until the early years of the 21st century.

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26.10.2021

Ingrid Scheurmann (Dortmund): Continuity or Change Management? Historic preservation in times of climate change

The climate crisis is the challenge of our time. It affects people worldwide and does not stop at cultural heritage. Historical gardens and cultural landscapes are at risk, as much as architectural monuments and archaeological sites. Due to this development conservation issues are gaining new importance and urgency. The advice of heritage conservation is necessary as never before.

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