Symposium

IS THERE (ANTI)NEOLIBERAL ARCHITECTURE?

Free admission for all attendants

Conference language: English

Concept and organization: Ana Jeinic and Anselm Wagner

Institute of Architectural Theory, History of Art and Cultural Studies, TU Graz

Neoliberal ideology has irreversibly changed our political and economic reality: the utopia of a free global market has served as a foil for extensive restructuring affecting all scales of socio-spatial organization. Since the analysis of the complex urban systems seemed to reveal more about the process of neoliberal globalization than could be achieved by focusing on single architectural projects, many theorists have turned away from strictly architectural concerns to the more general issue of the city. The main goal of the symposium “Is There (Anti)Neoliberal Architecture?” is to redirect the focus of the recent debate on architecture and neoliberalism from the concerns borrowed from urban sociology, human geography and social anthropology towards the questions belonging more strictly to the thematic field of architectural theory. This goal arises from the hypothesis that the intertwining of architectural practice with the recent socio-economic transformations calls for accurate re-examination of some basic concepts and conditions characteristic of the discipline of architecture. These include: the architectural form (and its relation to socio-spatial process as well as its inevitable association with enclosure and control), the idea of architects’ agency, the media- and technology-based preconditions of the discipline, its integration in the processes of circulation and accumulation of capital and its relation to other disciplines and domains of production.

Program:

FRIDAY, 11.11.2011

09:30 Welcoming address
a representative of the Rector’s Office at TU Graz
09:40 Introduction
Anselm Wagner, Head of the Institute of Architectural Theory, History of Art and Cultural Studies at TU Graz

Panel 1
Labour and Technology
Chair: Anselm Wagner (Akk, TU Graz)
10:00 Arie Graafland (TU Delft): Technology, Science and the Urban
10:30 Andreas Rumpfhuber (Vienna): Framing the Possible. Architecture of Immaterial Labour
11:00 Maria S. Giudici (Berlage Institute Rotterdam): Education, Consumption, Reproduction: Three Cautionary Tales 1966-2011
11:45 Discussion

12:30 Lunch break

Panel 2
Criticality and Agency
Chair: Daniel Gethmann (Akk, TU Graz)
14:00 Rixt Hoekstra (University of the Arts, Arnhem): Neoliberalism and the Possibility of Critique
14:30 Ana Jeinic (Akk, TU Graz): Open Processes and Enclosing Forms. Rethinking Neoliberalism and Architectural Practice
15:00 Tahl Kaminer (TU Delft): Beyond Architectural Subservience
15:45 Discussion

16:30 Coffee break

Panel 3
Freedom and Control
Chair: Claudia Wrumnig (Akk, TU Graz)
17:00 Christiane Irxenmayer (Vienna): Secret Space
17:30 Ole W. Fischer (University of Utah): From Liquid Space to Solid Bodies. Architecture Between Neoliberalism and Control Society
18:15 Discussion

19:00 Reception by the Mayor of Graz followed by party

SATURDAY, 12.11.2011

Panel 4
Liaisons and Associations
Chair: Petra Eckhard (Akk, TU Graz)
09:30 Ana Llorente (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid): Neoliberal Liaisons. Interactions Between Architecture and Fashion in the Age of Creative Industries
10:00 Olaf Pfeifer (Bauhaus-Universität, Weimar): White as the Color of Neo-Liberalism
10:45 Discussion

11:30 Coffee break

Panel 5
Ideology and Practice
Chair: Ana Jeinic (Akk, TU Graz)
12:00 Oliver Ziegenhardt (Bergische Universität Wuppertal): "Baukultur" as a Neoliberal Project of Hegemony in Architecture and Discourse
12:30 Jeremy Till (University of Westminster): Scarcity Scares
13:00 Gideon Boie (BAVO, Brussels): Architectural Surplus Value: Production, Distribution and Consumption
13:45 Discussion

14:30 Conference closing

HS II – Rechbauerstraße 12 – TU Graz