«We want to establish architectural studies as a field of research»

Lore Graf: Hello, you two. What is it about «Organizing architectures» that excites you?

Carsten Ruhl: I’m excited that the topic offers the opportunity to take a broader view on architectures than it would normally be the case in architectural history. It allows us to include many different disciplines and to look at architectural processes in a novel way. Indeed, we focus less on what is built and more on the architecture’s processuality.

Sybille Frank: What fascinated me from the start was the interplay between the social and built structures, which is also reflected in the title of the research training group. The title can be understood in two ways. On the one hand, it means architectures organize something – here, society – but also that architectures need to be organized.

How did the idea for the Research Training Group come about?

Carsten Ruhl: The project was preceded by years of preparation. Our goal was to work interdisciplinarily, therefore, we considered which actors and institutions in the Rhine-Main region could be brought together to investigate architecture in a new, multifaceted way.

What do these collaborations look like in the Rhine-Main region?

Sybille Frank: Thanks to the collaboration between Goethe University, the Technical University of Darmstadt, the University of Kassel, the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory, and the Deutsches Architekturmuseum, we pool different areas of expertise. The Max Planck Institute, for instance, offers perspectives that we don’t have at our universities. The TU Darmstadt, on the other hand, is predominantly technically oriented and has an architecture faculty, which in turn does not exist in Frankfurt…

Carsten Ruhl: … and Frankfurt’s expertise is in the cultural sciences and humanities. These different perspectives can enrich each other and enable us to understand architecture as a social endeavor.

Which subject areas are to be investigated within the framework of the Research Training Group? What research projects have been initiated so far?

Sybille Frank: The research training group has three main areas of work: Institutions, networks, and discourses. We have several research projects that deal with the creation of buildings and their reception. These include parliament buildings in Brazil, but also playgrounds in Frankfurt. How did these built structures come about, how are they used and how are they perhaps also changed by such uses? We also have works that deal with border architecture and prisons, where architectures are supposed to isolate and divide.

Carsten Ruhl: We are also involved in research projects that investigate how people continue their lives in moments of crisis by using material objectification and architectures. It’s a broad spectrum. In addition to Germany and Europe, the RTG conducts research in Sri Lanka, Brazil, Japan, the United States and Russia.

What is unique about the Research Training Group «Organizing Architectures»?

Carsten Ruhl: Currently, there is no comparable RTG, at least with such an interdisciplinary orientation and such a focus on practical issues. Structurally, it is unique because it involves such different institutions. That is a challenge, both organizationally and contentwise.

In the project, professors, doctoral students, and postdocs from various disciplines are taking part: architecture, political science, geography, law, art history, sociology, and others. How do you envision the interdisciplinary work and what do you hope to gain from it?

Sybille Frank: The individual research projects should be supervised on an interdisciplinary basis. We believe that different disciplinary perspectives not only advance the projects themselves, but also our research group as a whole. We have exchange formats in which we present our work to each other. As a research group, we want to establish architectural studies as a field of research by bringing together cultural studies, planning sciences and social sciences. This does not yet exist in this form, especially in Germany

Carsten, as an art historian specializing in architectural history, what do you think about the question of how the organization of architecture has changed?

Carsten Ruhl: I think that our general understanding of architecture has changed dramatically with globalization. Caused by the globalization of supply chains, infrastructures, and the star architect system emerging in the 1980s, we no longer see architecture as something that is strongly linked to a specific location, but rather as a global phenomenon with all the political, economic, and social effects that this entails. At the same time, we have seen just how important architecture is as a site of political debate in recent years. Protests and demonstrations do not take place in a vacuum. They use, address, occupy, or destroy urban spaces and their architecture. The attack on the U.S. Capitol in Washington or the invasion of the Three Powers Plaza in Brasília in particular have shown to what extent this is primarily about creating powerful images.

Sybille, you are a sociologist specializing in spatial sociology. How does society organize architecture?

Sybille Frank: Society delegates such tasks to groups of experts, to architects, to urban planners, to city administrations. There is a network of specific groups that have become professionalized, for example in chambers, cooperatives, investment funds, and so on. We also see more and more participation processes in the production of architecture, which as a result has become highly politicized as a whole. What should architecture achieve? This has become a social question. Nowadays, you have to build in a climate-friendly way. Architecture should enable new family models through flexible interior design. And what we have observed with Black Lives Matter, for example: Architecture can be offensive in its symbolism for certain social groups and is possibly smashed, or at least reinterpreted. A lot is going on at the interplay between society and the built environment.

How can people find out about the discussions and research results from the research group?

Carsten Ruhl: There will be public events and exhibition projects at the Deutsches Architekturmuseum and beyond, where we also want to start a conversation with practitioners. It is important to us to be in contact with the public, because the topic is highly relevant. Moreover, there will be a website with a blog. Additionally, we would like to create a series of publications that will be available free of charge on the website.

What do you personally hope to gain from the Research Training Group?

Sybille Frank: I consider it a great gift to be able to accompany so many projects that deal with architecture from different perspectives. I can learn from this as an academic. I myself have dealt with the subject of heritage. This interface, the culture of heritage and remembrance and architecture, has not yet been sufficiently researched. The TU Darmstadt also has an interdisciplinary focus on urban research, which I am in charge of. The architecture focus of the RTG is a great addition to this. We are also trying to make this accessible to students. Further, we are planning a Master’s course in Urban Studies, in collaboration with the University of Frankfurt.

Carsten Ruhl: In art history, I sensed a certain intellectual restlessness when dealing with architecture and this has driven me quite a bit in recent years. What interests me is that people come together who are open to thinking about architectures together beyond their horizons and who are able to accept each other’s perspectives. I have already benefited from this in our collaboration so far. It helps me to keep challenging myself.