Mobile Architekturen. Projekte, Entwürfe und Programme der Groupe d'Etudes d'Architecture Mobile (GEAM) um 1960

Founded in 1958 as a group of young European architects, the G.E.A.M (Groupe d’Études d’Architecture Mobile) and its programme stand for mobile architecture which can be flexibly adapted to the needs of the residents on the crest of a wave of visionary architecture which reached its peak in the late 1960s. At the same time it is, similar to Team X, a product of the ‘crisis’ of modern architecture and the end of the Congrès Internationaux de l’Architecture Moderne (CIAM). Their criticism of modern architecture is initially less a break with its principles than an attempt to renew its flagging élan.

The G.E.A.M. thus assumes a pivotal position in which the visionary is formed from the modern. This process has hitherto hardly been researched: numerous sources, in particular of architects with less public appeal, have not been adequately included in the representations of the group. The current representations thus often assume contemporary interpretations which merge into the resulting ‘visionary discourse’ of the 1960s. But instead of becoming assimilated into discursive image production and architectural science fiction, the designs of the G.E.A.M should be understood as an attempt to locate architecture in a new context. Within the scope of the dissertation these designs should be examined to determine how contemporary models and metaphors from science and the arts penetrate into architecture, blend with the approach to modern architecture and help to re-design architecture and urbanism at a visual and conceptual level.