anticipatory architecture of a politicised society

Our project is based on the belief that architecture and society’s political reality are in a permanent interdependency. The work is divided in two parts - a research catalogue to identify significant architectural expressions within their political context and two architectural proposals to rethink our way of educating, discussing and living.

In the form of a catalogue we compare 71 governmental-funded buildings which where build in Germany in the 20th century. Our goal is to discover specific architectural language in order to the six different political systems during that time. By scrutinising 13 different typologies of buildings and their urban context, main entrance, programme organisation, proportions, details, materials and the architect’s political embeddedness we gain the fundamental knowledge for the following two experimental buildings. Our experimental projects start with a conscious cut to historic social norms of living, education, and political spaces. With two methods of drafting we approach to a new spatial connection between the most human basic need of living and the collective spaces of education and political exchange. We create an architectural shift of the limits of the private and the common. The first concept defines education as a lifelong process, directly connected to living and no longer situated in separated institution buildings. It firstly interdigitates the human’s private retreats in a nearly chaotic way. This reveals to the individual’s uniqueness of the human being. The common spaces, that are larger and higher, clear this chaotic privateness towards the public space – an off-centred rotunda. In the second building political spaces like discussion rooms, are merged together with living areas. The concept is based on the division of squares through diagonal and straight walls in living units to first of all guarantee the same space for every habitant. The variety and complexity is created by turning and multiplying this pattern of living-units. Thus the area for each person is the same, but the architectural form of the room is individual. \nWe see these two pieces of architecture as a starting point for breaking the process of reproduction of forms and norms in architecture and our socio-political thinking.