Architecture and Building blocks

01.03.2001 - 28.02.2003
Research funding project
Architecture and building blocks / Abstract (english version) This research project examines building blocks from the following perspectives: pedagogical-psychoanalytical, architectural-historical and architectural-theoretical. The set of building blocks is treated in a number of different ways, as an instrument of aesthetic and social training, as a framework-based deductive planning principal in the teaching of architectonic design and as a visualisation aid within the architectonic design process. The psychoanalytical examination focuses on the role of building blocks within the ¿International scene of toy guns, cuddly toys and Barbie dolls¿ (G. Didi-Huberman). Playing with building blocks is examined here as an early childhood phenomenon. Along with an outline of the play process and its material preconditions, playing, learning and working activities is differentiated in the light of the pedagogical theories of Friedrich Fröbel and Maria Montessori, predominantly. With reference to the psychoanalytical interpretation of early-childhood play of M. Klein, D. W. Winnicott, H. Segal and S. Freud, it is argued that play-building in the context of transitional phenomena is to be seen as an appropriation of the world and the establishing of an ability to act. Architecture is sometimes the result of an abstract play with modules. The basic units out of which the design process arises are either practical building elements (e.g. bricks) or the product of an abstractive process of analysis (building parts). From an architectural-historical perspective, an attempt is made to discover the design teachings systematised during the course of the academisation of architectonic practice, which proceed from the framework as design and drawing aids. J. N. L. Durand¿s standardised process of architectonic composition is compared in a concrete manner with E. Neufert¿s building design and building planning teaching. This allows the essential features of the Taylorised modern age to be identified during the very beginnings of institutionalised architectural education in France. An empirical study contextualises questions of module-based and new-media-based design processes in the sphere of design teaching. At the heart of the third approach lies an examination of the set of building blocks as a special form of architectural model and the relationship between model and built architecture. The originality of the hypothesis presented here lies in the fact that the received notion of the relationship between architectural model and finished building is reversed. The hypothesis is illustrated with three examples (Bruno Taut¿s Glass Building Blocks, the New-City Ingenius by Wilhelm Kreis and Walter Gropius¿ Baukasten im Großen) that at the same time reflect three different approaches to 20th-century architecture (Expressionism, Functionalism, Classicism). This result is a step towards a generally applicable theory that does not make demands about how buildings should be built, but shows how buildings are built.

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Grant funds

  • FWF - Österr. Wissenschaftsfonds (National) Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

Publications