Architektur/Maschine

The term “machine” generally refers to a material ensemble whose parts operate in a predetermined and coordinated manner to perform certain functions. In this sense, machines have been supporting architecture for millennia, whether in the form of construction equipment, service plant or aids to composition and design. Only since the end of the eighteenth century, however, have buildings and projects been consistently conceived, described, configured or designed as machines. The research project is concerned with the history and theory of this complex, multi-layered relationship, and it encompasses not just physical apparatuses but also imaginary mechanisms.

One central hypothesis of this research is that the use of machinic concepts must be understood in a much more comprehensive sense than the deterministic reading that has prevailed since the coining, in the 1920s, of the term machine à habiter. Through different eras and in the context of changing technologies, describing architecture as a machine has primarily entailed a focus on its performative properties within certain processes and procedures, ranging from design and construction to use. These performative qualities can be expressed in spatial dimensions or relations, technical devices, or other physical conditions. But when we talk about the machinic in architecture, we are not referring merely to a context of production or a normative mechanism; we are also describing a place from which to conceptualise the fundamental connection between the architectural object and the natural, cultural or social processes related to it.

The research project consists of the book projects of the participants (Laurent Stalder, Moritz Gleich, Cameron Macdonell). In addition, since the 2012 spring semester, the “Seminar for the History, Criticism and Theory of Architecture” offered by the chair has addressed different aspects of the subject. In January 2015 an international conference sponsored by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) took place at ETH Zurich, the results of which were published in the first issue of the magazine gta papers in September 2017. An exhibition on the concept of the architectural machine is also in planning to do justice to the diverse visual and figurative aspects of the project.