studio raumkultur department
Studio RAUMkultur also operates as radikalRAUMkultur - it advocates a "radical architecture" or "radical: architecture!" beyond the misuse of architecture in the construction industry (keeping fools at court) and building culture indulgences (promoting events as sedatives).
In this sense, it wants to understand and create spatial quality as a condition for the quality of life of people, animals and plants, be it in deconstruction, conversion, further construction or the creation of intermediate space - and only marginally in new construction (such as gaps between buildings in the city), because this must be stopped. Such "radical architecture", which consistently cultivates its roots in the literal sense of the word, seeks quality in the spatial and especially in the interstitial.
If, on the one hand, architecture is to find itself (turn to space), a relentless historical self-reflection would be necessary (what have we messed up?). On the other hand, architecture must become "dangerous" again if it wants to influence a greater proportion of decisions and share responsibility for what has been created. It must constantly question culturally established political and economic routines in order to arrive at the next developments or to promote or support them. A "radical architecture" in this sense would then have to be consistently formulated as "radical: architecture!".
In this context, the attribute "radical" can be more meaningful or more constructive than much-used terms such as "experimental" or "social" to include the essential demands of contemporary architecture. At the same time, "radical" may, indeed must, always be linked to "here" and "now", because it is precisely in this connection that architecture is "dangerous", that it is present. This architecture therefore seeks qualities in the concrete, in every corner of the space, in every span in between, in every situation of an everyday life, for all life on the planet. It does not lose itself in formal gestures, academic discourses, unworldly spectacles or recurring fashions.
Accordingly, students at Studio RAUMkultur have been practising almost exclusively as agents of the Bauwende since 2018. By accompanying our students in concrete design, we want to make them aware of how imperative it is for them to incorporate their homework (learning the craft: hand-sketching, model-building, spatial-doing, book-reading). Because if we enable them to act in a reflective, committed and compassionate way, then the likelihood of their resilience in dealing with global crises and their own "species protection" increases ... The latter should also be animated as "species protection" (this is our political task).
Such a "radical architecture" would thus be armed against any abuse of politics and the economy, not least because it has learned to reflect on itself and its role. Its own resilience can then become a role model for other disciplines beyond the specialist field (but that is a dream of the future!). This architecture will want to be effective, it will want to turn to the world in the sense of a prudent and compassionate relationship. Such an architecture will contribute to social aspirations and concrete research and have the effect of transforming the excessively irrelevant into something appropriately meaningful. It will pursue radikal RAUMkultur.
Team radikalRAUMkulturalphabetically:
Forster Antonia - Assistant Professor
Gernbeck Marion - Student Assistant
Kraus Siegfried - University Assistant
Thompson Natalie - University Assistant
Zinner Michael - University Professor
