Positions

The Wednesday evening lectures in the winter semester 2022/23

2022/10/14

This year's guests are Volker Staab (Staab Architekten, Berlin), Alexander Römer (ConstructLab, Berlin), Peter Kulka (Peter Kulka Architektur, Dresden), Daniel Barber (University of Technology Sydney), Carles Oliver Barceló (IBAVI, Mallorca) and Francisco Cifuentes Utrero (Aulets Arquitectes, Mallorca) as well as art historian Horst Bredekamp (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin).

The Pecha Kucha lectures will kick off the lecture series on 2 November 2022 as part of the 25th edition of our annual student-curated exhibition “Sichten”.

About the event

The Department of Architecture has been organising the Wednesday evening lectures since the 1970/71 winter semester. The series was initiated by Max Bächer, Professor of Design and Interior Design from 1964 to 1993, who, thanks to his good contacts, succeeded in attracting internationally renowned architects such as Louis Kahn, Jörn Utzon, Paul Rudolph and Zaha Hadid to give lectures at the department. As a result, the series, which was unique in Germany in its format at the time, gained importance beyond Darmstadt from the mid-1970s onwards. Since then, the Wednesday evening lectures have been the most-attended public lecture series at the Technische Universität Darmstadt and thus make an important contribution to knowledge transfer.

Since 2008, the series has been conceived and organised for the department by Prof. Wolfgang Lorch (Department of Design and Building Design). As in its early days, the series under his direction follows the claim to present current positions that go beyond the narrower specialist context of architecture and reflect the generalist orientation of the department.

Participation and training:

The events are open to the public and free of charge. They take place in person and are also streamed via Zoom.

Participation is recognised as further training by the Chamber of Architects and Town Planners of Hesse.

Information on participation on site and online as well as on the recognition of continuing education points can be found at: https://www.architektur.tu-darmstadt.de/mittwochabend

The lectures in the overview

02 November 2022: Pecha Kucha Lectures

As part of Sichten 25 – Annual Exhibition of the Department.

Pecha Kucha is Japanese and means “confused chatter”. And there's a reason for that: in this entertaining lecture format, each speaker is allowed to show 20 images, each of which can be seen for 20 seconds and then change automatically. So there is no chance of boredom.

09 November 2022: Volker Staab

Staab Architects, Berlin

“Form follows…?”

Volker Staab founded the office Staab Architekten in Berlin in 1991. The focus of their work is on public buildings for culture, education and research, often located in sensitive, listed urban and landscape spaces. After guest professorships at the TU Berlin, the FH Münster and the Art Academy in Stuttgart, he took on a chair for design at the TU Braunschweig in 2012.

16 November 2022: Alexander Römer

NOTE: Unfortunately, the lecture cannot take place on 16.11.2022 as planned. It will be held at a later date.

ConstructLab, Berlin

“A convivial ground”

“ConstructLab is the description of a collaborative building practice that works on both short-lived and permanent projects. Unlike the conventional architectural process where the architect designs and the client builds, constructLab brings together the design and construction of the project. The designer continues to build and design on the site.”(Source)

Alexander Römer is an architect and carpenter, currently living in Berlin. He initiated Constructlab as a platform for artistic action research, constructive experimentation and interdisciplinary design. Constructlab's projects are both temporary and permanent architectures, combining design and fabrication with participatory processes.

The focus is on collaboration with local communities and the know-how of each individual. Architecture and design becomes a means of social intervention to create spaces for dynamic exchange. He has taught, among other things, as a visiting professor space and design at the art academy in Annecy, France, industrial design at Burg Giebichenstein, Halle, scenography at HFG Karlsruhe, environmental design at UQAM Montreal, Canada and space&design STRATEGIES at UFG Linz, Austria.

30 November 2022: Peter Kulka

Peter Kulka Architektur, Dresden

“Borderline Cases and Transformations between Tradition and Modernity”.

Peter Kulka completed an apprenticeship as a bricklayer and then trained as an engineer specialising in architecture at the building trade schools in Görlitz and Gotha. He then studied architecture at the HBK in Berlin-Weißensee from 1959 to 1964. After working with Hermann Henselmann and Hans Scharoun in Berlin, he founded his office in Cologne in 1979 and in Dresden in 1991. From 1986 to 1992 he held a professorship for constructive design at the RWTH Aachen. His buildings include the Campus University in Bielefeld, the redesign and extension of the Königsmünster Abbey and, currently, the renovation and extension of the Saxon Parliament.

07 December 2022: Daniel Barber

University of Technology Sydney
„Thermal Practices“

Daniel A. Barber is Professor of Architecture and Environment in the Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and a Research Affiliate at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. His research and teaching follow two trajectories: an archival exploration of environmental histories of architecture, and conceptual frameworks to cultivate designed pathways to a post-hydrocarbon future.

His most recent book is Modern Architecture and Climate: Design before Air Conditioning (Princeton University Press, 2020). His 2019 essay “After Comfort” (Log 49, 2019) is the basis for an exhibition at the 2023 COP meeting in Dubai, and for an ongoing series of essays and projects on the e-flux architecture online platform. His activities are increasingly focused on amplifying the climate-relevant work of colleagues and practitioners, and on developing concepts and frameworks for architects, policy makers, developers and others to engage the climate emergency. Daniel was recently a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies at Universität Heidelberg, and received a 2022-2023 Guggenheim Fellowship. He is co-founder of Current: Collective on Environment and Architectural History, and co-editor of the annual Accumulation series on e-flux architecture.

https://profiles.uts.edu.au/Daniel.Barber

https://twitter.com/DanielABarber

11 January 2023: Carles Oliver Barcelo and Francisco Cifuentes Utrero

IBAVI, Mallorca
Aulets Arquitectes, Mallorca
„Stone, earth and wood“

Carles Oliver studied architecture at the Barcelona School of Architecture (ETSAB). In 2009 he was hired at the Balearic Social Housing Institute (IBAVI), where he has been the director of the Life Reusing Posidonia project, funded by the European programme LIFE+ for Nature Conservation & Climate Change Adaptation Projects. Currently, he is the Head of Technical Department. …

He has given lectures around Europe. His work has been extensively published and exhibited. He received some awards that facilitate his credibility when he explains that things can be done differently.

https://www.instagram.com/carlesoliverbarcelo

https://www.instagram.com/ibavi.goib/

https://twitter.com/ibavi

Francisco Cifuentes is an architect and partner at Aulets Arquitectes, which he founded in 2012.Aulets is a studio that dedicates to projects and research on the architecture, landscape and territory. They understand the profession of the architect as a work that gives answers to a community in a particular trritory using materials and crafts linked to this territory. Each project proposes an alternative of how to inhabit the territory with local resources.

Cifuentes studied architecture at ETSAB in Barcelona (2002) where he also received a PhD in architecture in 2015. He has been General Director of Housing of the Palma City Council, 2015–2018 and a professor at the EAR in Reus (2008-2015), at the ESARQ UIC in Barcelona (2008-2009). Since 2020 he is a professor at the La Salle School of Architecture, Barcelona. He has given lecture around Europe and his work has been widely published and exhibited.

In 2021 he initiated the Amarar project, which develops a new production model to use Majorcan wood in buildings and at the same time to take care of our forests. He also undertakes the research on the sandstone in Majorca (culture and new construction strategies) together with the Aarhus School Architecture (Denmark) and on the projects of Jørn Utzon in the island.

https://www.instagram.com/aulets_arquitectes/

18 January 2023: Horst Bredekamp

Humboldt University Berlin

“Image and iconoclasm as a mutual form of overwriting”.

Horst Bredekamp received his doctorate in 1974 after studying art history in Marburg. After working in a museum at the Liebieghaus in Frankfurt, he taught as an assistant from 1976 and as a professor of art history at the University of Hamburg from 1982. Since 1993, he has been a professor at the Institute for Art and Image History at the Humboldt University in Berlin and, since 2019, senior co-speaker of the “Matters of Activity” cluster of excellence.

He is a member of four scientific academies as well as the Order Pour le mérite. The author of more than thirty books and over 700 articles, he has received numerous awards, including the Sigmund Freud Prize (2001), the Aby M. Warburg Prize (2005), the Max Planck Research Prize (2006) and the Schiller Prize (2017).

The Wednesday evening lectures are an event in the sense of the xchange strategy of the TU Darmstadt