Produktionsbedingungen der Architektur: Zwischen Autonomie und Heteronomie

This edited book looks at the economic, social, and political conditions in which design and building processes take place. The contributions develop new insights into the freedom of action and into the restrictions that different actors in the production of architecture are subjected to during the financing, planning and execution of a building, thereby stimulating a broader theoretical discussion on the framework of architecture and building. The “external” factors such as capital and labour, laws and regulations, the influence of building standards and the properties of building materials, as well as the role of the building trades and the construction industry are here not understood as limitations of the work of those involved in building production, but they are considered as “internal” and thus constitutive, though in their consequences too rarely considered components of the multi-layered production process in which architecture emerges in the first place. The book however is only the beginning of further research, clearly indicated by the many overlapping points as well as by the temporal and thematic gaps between the individual case studies. The combination of the different modes and methods of research, ranging from aesthetic theory to the historiography of the thermal protection standards of bricks, and from the early Christian churches of Ravenna to the self-help of the users of the prefabricated housing of the late GDR and the urban development promotion laws makes this book, at least according to its editors, a relevant contribution to the architectural humanities, beyond the usual academic specialties.