On an Architectural Medium of Spatial Exploration
Are you a model? A questionable start to a conversation one might think, and yet, architecture does beg the question. What does it mean to call something a model? Which implications, projections or desires are called to the table? Architects do not build buildings, they draw plans, they model structures or produce objects; all practices with a longstanding tradition in architecture—be they analog or digital. As a discipline working with substitute media and through displaced methods, we might ask of objects indeed: Are you a model? More than a pickup line, we want to put the model front and center in an assessment of architectural thinking and doing. We aim to explore the role architectural models play in professional and societal processes, as referents not merely of scale or form, but of architectural knowledge.
In nine moderated sessions and two keynotes over the course of three days, we will investigate together how architectural models are constructed or destroyed, how they operate, what they promise––and if that promise holds––, and which kinds of knowledge they produce. We hope to uncover new approaches and diverse takes on the model as both instrument and phenomenon in architecture and its history.
Keynote by Annabel Wharton and roundtable with Thomas Demand, Annabel Wharton, and Anna-Maria Meister (digital)
About the Organizers
The Chair for Architecture Theory and Science at the Department of Architecture at TU Darmstadt (ATW) organizes the conference jointly with the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt am Main (DAM), the LOEWE cluster of excellence “Architectures of Order” and the DFG-funded FID BAUdigital. The TU and the DAM are both part of the CCSA (Center for Critical Studies in Architecture), a research cluster of the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main (Art History Department), the Technische Universität Darmstadt (Architecture Department) and the Deutsches Architekturmuseum that is dedicated to a critical perspective on theory and history of architecture and, importantly here, its mediality.
Contact
Mail: model@architektur.tu-…
Website: architektur.tu-darmstadt.de/are-you-a-model
Architekten- und Stadtplanerkammer Hessen (AHK) accredited professional training