Deviations – A research project on the theme of architectonic normality – Architecture of the everyday

The history of architecture is to a large degree the history of housing the human body. This has always been connected with the setting of a type of norm, which – passed on partially from generation to generation – has usually never been questioned. Positively argued, this norm can be seen as a guarantor of a cultural tradition or of stability; negatively, it can at the same time be regarded as hindering the process of architectural renewal, leading to stagnation – which nearly all scientific disciplines are trying to avoid in favour of permanent renewal processes.

Accordingly, since Winter Semester 2002703 the Chair of Architecture and Design has offered architectural norms as a research theme in the first year of studies, encouraging their investigation and questioning.

The currently large numbers of students – ca. 300 students and 10 design assistants per semester – and their own experiences with daily norms will be activated as a potential source of material. Instead of working at the edge of the discipline, a bottom-up process will be deployed to attempt to understand elementary architectural settings in a new way and subject them to critical analysis. Via this investigation of the conditions of normality in our discipline we want to test. A new understanding of practice will be conveyed, architecture will be decoupled from typologies and redefined as an arena for social, political and aesthetic rule systems.