History, Criticism and Theory in Architecture: Built Accidents

Abstract

The accident as a sudden and unforeseeable event contradicts the rational aspirations of modern architecture, even if with every new invention its failure is simultaneously designed. How does modernity deal with its accidents and what explanatory patterns are used to place the disastrous events back into a structure of meaning?

Objective

1. Learning from accidents: As a first step, the analysis of accidents enables us to better understand the functioning of systems, devices and techniques. For on the one hand, faults and malfunctions in technological ensembles refer to the intended mode of operation, which is now absent. On the other hand, accidents occur suddenly and unexpectedly, so that their course of events must be reconstructed through subsequent investigations and expert reports. Tools of the theory and critique of architecture sharpen our view to trace a learning process of architecture along the discussion of accidents in the professional journals. 2. Explaining accidents: In a second step, accident scenes from literary and cinematic narratives are examined. In them, attempts to explain the cause of unfortunate coincidences and man-made accidents can be found. These are an expression of the attempt to cope with inexplicable events by transferring them into known patterns of meaning. The analysis of the explanatory patterns in turn sharpens the eye for their rhetoric and narratives, which can then also be recognised in the discourse of architecture.

Content

The built environment in Europe (and beyond) has undergone major changes in the course of industrialisation. Rationalised production processes, scientific expertise, targeted materials research and technological as well as infrastructural developments, testify to the attempt to regulate the environment in a targeted manner through a series of systems, devices and techniques. Not only do technical objects move into the architecture, the buildings themselves become technological ensembles that are connected to infrastructure networks via lines, cables and electromagnetic waves and are thus interconnected. Building on the seminars and lectures on the "things of modernity", this course asks about the consequences and concatenations of unfortunate circumstances when these "things" fail and refuse to serve. As the technical complexity and infrastructural interconnectedness of the built environment increases, so does the vulnerability of these technological ensembles. The unforeseen accident runs counter to the purposefully planned technology and manifests itself in a long list of industrial accidents, technological disasters and maximum credible accident (MCA). Together we trace the shift within modernity from calculating and regulating potential hazards of the environment to anticipating and safeguarding against the hazards of technology. In this course, we work both with investigative reports that seek to reconstruct, on a factual level, how an accident occurred, and with literary and cinematic works that construct explanations for the unpredictable events on a narrative level.

Resources