Housing has been a central ingredient in planning and ordering the city, particularly in modern urban planning. The lecture series adresses the function of housing in Europe as a governmental device and the role of functionalist thought for architecture over the course of the 19th, the 20th and the early 21st century.

Housing is, as this course will show, far more than the mere provision of shelter. It is what Michel Foucault called an „apparatus“ a heterogeneous ensemble consisting of discursive and non-discursive aspects that served as a device to implement different programs: from hygienics to national policies, from social rights to strategies of exclusion. The course adresses a series of such examples all over Europe: from Italy, France and Spain, to Central and South-East Europe.

While housing concerns a prior need and therefore has been thought of as a social right it is currently above all considered as a tradable commodity. The course introduces into this antagonism and how it was taken up in political thought – in the emerging welfare state, in the socialist systems of Eastern Europe and in the neoliberal conception, which predominates the contemporary political practice in Europe.

Dates:

09.04.2019, 16-18.00 EI10

14.05.2019, 16-18.00 EI10

21.05.2019, 16-18.00 EI10 CANCELLED! 

28.05.2019, 16-18.00 EI10

04.06.2019, 16-18.00 EI10

18.06.2019, 16-18.00 14A

A) exam or B) written research work on selected topics (around 10 pages)