Architecturewriter

Critical Void encapsulates everything the Nexialist Organization set out to do: create projects at the intersection of architecture, music, and visual design through shared creative methods and theoretical inquiry.  A site-specific audio analysis and performance, Critical Void examined the planning crisis of Munich’s MaximiliansForum through sound, dialogue, and documentation. Critical Void performance, MaximiliansForum München. Photos: Andreas Graf  Critical Void is an analytical audio work based on an urban study of Munich’s MaximiliansForum and its complex planning history. Developed by Z’EV and Mark Kammerbauer, the project combined interviews, archival research, and live performance into a sonic investigation of urban transformation. The MaximiliansForum, located beneath the intersection of Maximilianstraße and Altstadtring, was originally conceived as a traffic tunnel but repurposed as a pedestrian underpass and later as an art space. Its ambiguous spat...

Urban Evolution was a key performance that materialized the ethos of the Nexialist Organization as a transdisciplinary platform connecting architecture, music, and visual design through shared creative methods and theoretical inquiry. A public-space performance in Weimar, Urban Evolution visualized cycles of construction and destruction to explore the city as a living, self-transforming system. Cities embody the continuous processes of building, destruction, and renewal — processes triggered by crisis, politics, or market forces. Urban Evolution sought to make these transformations visible and experiential through a live performance on the Theaterplatz in Weimar, Germany. Developed within a research project at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, the work reimagined urban history as a performative cycle of creation, collapse, and rebirth. Temporary structures made of wooden frames and cardboard (3.5 × 3.5 × 7 feet) were moved by individual performers across the square. As they...

The Mimesis Operation was a true manifestation of what the Nexialist Organization was about: a transdisciplinary platform connecting architecture, music, and visual design through shared creative methods and theoretical inquiry. A site-specific sound operation conducted within an architectural space, Mimesis transformed a building’s pneumatic facade into a resonant instrument, revealing the acoustic identity of architecture itself. Nexialist Operation Mimesis was realized with technical assistance from N. Tezkosar.   On May 15, 2004, the Nexialist Organization conducted an operation in the studio building Mimesis in Putzbrunn, near Munich, designed by architect Peter Haimerl. The building itself — two cube-shaped structures approximately six meters per side — served as the sound creation device. One of these cubes featured two pneumatic transparent vinyl facades that became the focus of the experiment. The operation used electroacoustic, digital-acoustic, and video recording m...

On 29 August 2005 Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana. The storm caused catastrophic flooding in New Orleans as the flood protection system failed. Nearly all residents evacuated, not all returned. The recovery was complicated by disparate planning attempts. In 2019 TOPOS published my series on snapshots of the city, slightly edited for this presentation.        Lower Ninth Ward floodwall. Kammerbauer, 2017 New Orleans, the „Crescent City“, the „Sliver by the River“: on August 29th Hurricane Katrina triggered a catastrophic disaster in the city, followed by a dysfunctional response and a flawed recovery. Before Katrina, New Orleans was already scarred by racial inequality and social vulnerability that can be retraced within the urban fabric, indicating who lives in which neighborhood and why. The flood evacuation and resulting nationwide diaspora led to a dramatic decline in the number of residents. Eventually the city reached 90 percent of its pre-Katrin...

Katrina at 20: For German architecture magazine BAUWELT, I reviewed the situation in New Orleans ten years after the storm. Despite the difficult recovery, the hurricane inspired new approaches to environmentally sound urban planning ("Dutch Dialogs") and corresponding water-sensitive planning projects in the city (the Urban Water Plan and the Mirabeau Water Gardens). Figurehead of these initiatives is the office of Waggonner & Ball Architects. I had the opportunity to speak with David Waggonner in person and remotely on the firm's inspiring projects aimed at living with, and not against the water. On 29 August 2005 Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana. The storm caused catastrophic flooding in New Orleans as the flood protection system failed. Nearly all residents evacuated, not all returned. The recovery was complicated by disparate planning attempts.

Nearly 20 years ago, Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. Ten years later, I had been researching the outcomes for some time and published "Adaptive strategies of urban disaster recovery planning" as a book chapter in a volume titled "Cities at Risk", edited by G. Sands, P. Filion, and M. Skidmore. Around the same time, I was interviewed by a committee of very high-ranking German academics on the topic and one of them suggested that there had been no planning at all in New Orleans. Based on my research I was necessitated to politely disagree, and explained why – which actually caused agitation in my interviewer. The book chapter shows that the problem wasn't the absence of planning, but instead, its ad-hoc character and the circumstance that it neglected the situation in the city before Katrina – shrinkage, inequality, uneven development, and vulnerability. So, what does the book chapter say? When disaster impacts cities, planners are required to address tw...

One of the most unexpected things that developed in the course of my research on environmental change and cities was that I started analyzing how insurance facilitates adaptation – or fails to do so. Together with my research partners, I published my results based on various case studies. State institutions or private market corporations can provide insurance against natural hazards, they can offer incentives for adaptation (cf. through the NFIP provided by FEMA in the USA), and they sometimes demand that their insurance holders rebuild the status quo ante (cf. Ahrtal, Germany). The latter neither reduces risk nor vulnerability, both key tenets of the Sendai Framework. Now, a Member of the Board of Management of German insurance company Allianz SE posted a startling article at Linkedin on the possible impact of climate change not only on insurance companies, but the entire global economic system. In the article, the alternative to reducing or avoiding climate impacts, i.e. "busine...

Urban Evolution was a performance in public space in Weimar, Germany. Our intention was to address the phenomenon that new urban quarters lack atmosphere or "patina" due to their newness. In other words, they can't tell you a story related to their history or milieu, stories which can be appropriated, stories which give people a sense of belonging or identity. In new developments such stories have to be written first. So, we decided to playfully write a synthetic urban history, with boxes operated by individuals that would represent three different developmental steps. Prior to each step and resultant movement of the box, the individuals would mark up traces with chalk on the paving. The boxes represent phases in urban development, the movements indicate where temporary and permanent structures succeed each other, and each step was represented by different colors. The steps all leave traces behind that can be perceived by observers and users of public space ...

Wildfires in California, again. Posting my 2020 article for TOPOS on conflicting issues of urban development and disaster management and how to live with "mutating" disasters for your perusal here.

About one third of the texts featured in my book "Bavarität – Krisenbewältigung im baukulturellen Raum" are based on previously published contributions of different kinds. When I began working on the book concept, I had a much larger selection of published and unpublished texts that I considered including in the book. This was also the case for a group of texts that dealt with the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on the way we inhabit the built environment of Bavaria (and elsewhere). They are good, but they didn't fit into the book. And a blog is a great place to make them available. So I begin today with a brief series of outtakes. The first one is in English and essentially a photo report: De­ser­ted Ci­ti­es of the Heart For a long time, world city with a heart – “Weltstadt mit Herz” – was the official marketing slogan of the city of Munich. Nowadays, like any city subject to a stay-at-home-order aimed at mitigating the impact of the Corona pandemic, it is more akin...

Time flies when you're having an insightful and fun discussion with colleagues on issues you care about. This was the case at the 8th University Day for National Urban Development Policy on „Shaping the Future in Uncertain Times - Paving the Way for a New Planning Culture“, 2nd and 3rd June 2023. Hosted by János Brenner, Detlef Kurth and Silke Weidner, Bohdan Cherkes, Stefan Greiving and I had the opportunity to propose a number of talking points for discussion with the audience, under the watchful eye of the witty Julian Wékel. Our forum topic was "Rethinking Resilience – Security and Critical Infrastructure as Planning Tasks." A key takeaway was that it is entirely justified to talk about destruction to cultural landscapes and cities due to either war, environmental disaster, or both in a joint manner – since the impact of each of them has become ubiquitous due to rapid changes to political and natural contexts. Posting the four related pages from the pdf documentation ...

In "Bavarity", one footnote deals with phenomena that are evoked in the context of architecture and urban planning time and again. These phenomena are of central importance to chapter five and the "Space for Visionary Things" it focuses on. Aura and atmosphere – both are ephemeral, even elusive. We can feel them, but they remain intangible. Nevertheless, they are important to how we perceive the built space of architecture and the city. Footnote number 23 on page 102 indicates that there are pioneers of this mode of perception. They are commonly known as "flaneurs": "Hassenpflug (2006) points out that the aura and what is considered auratic comprise phenomena that can trigger an emotional response. In this manner, they can also serve as basis for creating the atmospheric character of a space – and how to recognize it. The capacity for recognizing auratic phenomena is, in return, a core characteristic of urban actors known a...

One thing I enjoy about footnotes is that they can serve to deliberate on certain topics beyond the scope of the book they are included in. As an urbanist, this refers to all terminology in use to describe the city, the urban way of life, the architecture as its facilitator, as well as the open and public space of cities. This is also the case in the footnote on page 83 of "Bavarity". The chapter on "Space for Housing" it is featured in deals with the housing crisis in cities and how to solve it. For this purpose, a basic understanding and differentiation of cities in history is foundational: "As Hassenpflug (2006) states, the synecism of the historic European city can be understood as cooperative settlement of long distance traders, merchants and craftspeople (p. 41) with the aim of forming a fraternity based on self-rule and the avoidance of a central authority. This notion is typical to European urban culture and the way it avoids central auth...

Did I already mention that I'm a big fan of footnotes? "Bavarity" features a number of footnotes that I enjoyed writing. They offer room for detail and the opportunity to clarify things, based on available literature. They also allow authors to make a statement. In chapter three on "Space for Building Culture", the footnote on page 43 presented here allowed me to harmonize different understandings and conceptualizations of different forms of culture. All of them are relevant to an understanding of building culture that is fundamental to the book. The fact that I refer to the great structuralist, Claude Lévi-Strauss, shouldn't come as a surprise to readers: "I propose a notion of building culture that is based on the idea of culture as proposed by Lévi-Strauss (1977): "Culture consists of intrinsic forms of exchange (such as language)" as well as "rules that are applicable to all kinds of 'games of exchange', whether...

Certain books feature footnotes – that is no secret. I like them, as a reader and as an author. I use them in order to offer an additional level of detail or to point out something interesting. In the case of the footnote in "Bavarity – Coping with Crisis in the Space of Building Culture" presented in this post, I elaborated on a certain notion that I have been working on for quite some time. When crisis occurs, there is often talk of a desired "return to normal". The question is whether that is actually desirable. Was there a condition in place prior to the crisis that can be defined as "normalcy" or "normality" for all impacted populations? And, is this condition worth recreating? Quite a number of assumptions are tied to the notion of "returning to normal". From the perspective of planning, they require critical inquiry. The footnote on page 28 of the chapter on "Space as Crisis" states accordingly: "The...

Every scientific book features footnotes. This is also the case for "Bavarity – Coping with Crisis in the Space of Building Culture". In fact, I actually enjoy footnotes. They expand the horizon, they offer room for elaboration and they are fun. This also applies to the footnote in chapter one on "Space as Text" selected for this post. I am fascinated by the notion that the city is a phenomenon that can be "read" like a book. Reading the city opens the door to understanding what is read in a qualified manner. Readers find the following footnote on page 6: "The notion that cities permit reading them is an invention of 19th century feuilleton writers. It is rooted in the idea that nature and the world itself can be read, similar to a text. The urbanist perspective advanced in this book views the city as a system that is embedded in the natural environment. Its built subsystems and units are represented by architecture. Partial to the urba...

The theme of chapter five of "Bavarity" is "space for envisioning projects" and once more features some of my own photos. The image presented in this post shows how an existing building was envisioned anew, thereby connecting the past, the present and the future. The timber house is located in the city of Landshut in the region of Lower Bavaria and was built in the 15th century. Munich-based architect Markus Stenger carefully revived it in the 21st century by use of sustainable materials. The structure offers an answer to the architectural question on "what if?" by the way the changes it experienced throughout the centuries become partial to its architectural expression. This includes, but is not limited to, a change in context from rural to periurban to urban. Thus, it reflects the theme of chapter five in an exemplary manner. The featured projects ask "what if?" in relation to architecture, urban design, urban planning and landscape architectur...

Chapter four of "Bavarity" focuses on space for housing, illustrated in color photographs, some of which I specifically created for the book. In particular, this refers to the housing association project "wagnisART" in Munich. It was established by the wagnis housing association for its members only a few years ago and was designed by bogevischs buero, SHAG Schindler Hable Architekten, Ingenieurbüro EST, auböck/káráz and bauchplan. I had previously reported on this project and how it was planned and designed for the architectural press. In the summer of 2023 I revisited the housing complex and received friendly permission to use the new images in the book. Why housing associations, one might ask? I was interested in the way they facilitated participation within the planning and design of the project. As it turns out, this occurred similar to a game, with rules established and implemented by the designers and the users together – in a shared space and with the shared...

The photos featured in "Bavarity" include many I captured myself. This post presents an image for chapter three, showing the New City Hall (Neues Rathaus) in Nuremberg, designed by Kurt Schneckendorf. It represents what the chapter on space for building culture is about: the past, present and future of building in Bavaria. The structure occupies a historic site bordering the Main Market Square (Hauptmarkt) in Nuremberg. It was designed in the era of postwar modernism, which continues to architecturally contour the cityscape of the present. As the photo shows, it is used for media installations, which underscores its capacity for transformation and, hence, its future-proof character. In a corresponding manner, the book chapter features essays on the past, present and future of building culture in Bavaria. For this purpose, I employ the motif of the mirror in order to allow readers easy access to the topics and examples described in the chapter. The essay on the past begins one...

The photographs selected for "Bavarity" are featured in color in both the digital and print editions of the book. Chapter two deals with "space as crisis" and includes an image from the recovery and reconstruction process in Deggendorf after the 2013 floods. I took the photo in 2014. "Space as crisis" in intended to provide architects, urban designers, urban planners and landscape architects with an interdisciplinary understanding of crises and disasters. Such an understanding is aimed at providing a knowledge base for the creation of sustainable and resilient means of adaptation to future crises and disasters. One poignant example is the intersection between building and dwelling, where it is necessary to transcend off-the-shelf ideas and products. Correspondingly, the individual, socially and psychologically informed perception of risk plays an important role in terms of how people respond to crises. This is also relevant to a culture of rem...