Inhabited Machines: Architecture and Operativity 1800–1850

The research project examines the emergence of the concept of the “architecture machine” in England and France between the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. Within this notion architecture – this is the project’s central thesis – experiences a redefinition as an operative assemblage, i.e. as an assemblage directly and actively involved in various natural and social processes, as well as in domestic and societal practices. By analysing the history of discourse, architecture and technology at the three thematic levels of climate, comfort and reform the project aims at a genealogy of this operative understanding of architecture and its consequences.