Architecturewriter

Resilience: Did you ever use the word and wonder what it actually means? Truth is, it means many things to many different people. Personally? Stress is all around us and it is worthwhile to ask, if I change something, will stress go away? Think of the variables, the things you can adapt to let the stress pass, and keep the invariables. Socially? It means engaging with the people affected by stress in order to figure out a consensus on which variables can be adapted and which can't, in a manner that integrates different perspectives. For planners, I looked at the term, its various meanings, and its interrelations with other key planning topics, sustainability and vulnerability. The essay was published five years ago; I need to translate it for upcoming talks, and I need to amend it (with insights from the Memorandum Urbane Resilienz and related policy documents). Until then, here is the preprint of the version published by Topos in 2021. Planners aim at making cities and their popul...

One might think that settling wherever one desires corresponds to the American dream of shaping one’s own destiny. Tragically, this dream is fragmented by the structural inequality that pervades US society, resulting in unequal opportunity and uneven development. This becomes a matter of life and death in a disaster and shapes who can respond and recover and who can’t. The 2020 California wildfires are a case in point, compounded by the coronavirus pandemic. How did institutional modernization within a postmodern urbanized region facilitate this disaster, and what can be done to remedy such a perfect storm? Wildfires rage in California and its neighboring states time and again. Since climate change contributes to an increase in the frequency and intensity of these wildfires, more communities are impacted in heavier ways and more firefighters need to be on duty for longer periods of time across ever greater stretches of land on fire. The people of the American West deal with massive dis...

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...

The Nexialist Organization, founded in 2000, was intended as a transdisciplinary platform connecting architecture, music, and visual design through shared creative methods and theoretical inquiry. One of its key projects of the early years was Torso. I recorded and produced material extensively for this project. This blogpost deals with one set of recordings in particular: An experimental study in sonic architecture, Generating Space transformed digitally processed sound into an exploration of imaginary spatial perception. Generating Space is an experimental audio–spatial study in which generated and processed sonic environments serve as perceptive catalysts for the creation of imaginary architectural spaces. The process reverses conventional creation: imagined structures become the origin of the sounds, forming the tectonic substrate that defines the audible phenomena. The compositions employ a minimal, industrial, and digital ambient aesthetic — clicks, noise, an...

While predating the founding of the Nexialist Organization, Fragment King represents its concept as a transdisciplinary platform connecting architecture, music, and visual design through shared creative methods and theoretical inquiry.  Fragment King is the musical persona of Mark Kammerbauer — a synthesis of human and mechanical sound, lyrical defiance, and conceptual critique developed through decades of evolving production and performance.   Fragment King is a fictitious persona created by Mark Kammerbauer for music production and live performance. FK’s work can be understood through three interwoven aspects: roots, methods, and aims. The roots trace back to the 1980s, influenced by early hip-hop, metal, and industrial pioneers such as Public Enemy, Big Black, and Godflesh. Their hybrid sound — a fusion of electronic and conventional instruments — reflected both the political dimension of noise and the cultural anxiety surrounding technology’s dehumanizing...

While it predates the founding of the Nexialist Organization, the Xenakis Emulator encapsulates its core intention as a transdisciplinary platform connecting architecture, music, and visual design through shared creative methods and theoretical inquiry.  An audiovisual homage to architect–composer Iannis Xenakis, the Xenakis Emulator recreated the structural logic of his composition Metastaseis and Le Corbusier’s monastery facade La Tourette through synchronized digital sound and animation. The Xenakis Emulator is a digital reinterpretation of these two key works. The project transformed the mathematical and musical relationships underlying both works into a synchronized audiovisual experience. In the 1950s, Xenakis collaborated with Le Corbusier on La Tourette, developing the rhythmic spacing of the vertical facade elements. These intervals mirrored the glissandi patterns of Metastaseis, composed at the same time. The Nexialist project translated this relationsh...

Before the Nexialist Agency, there was the Nexialist Organization, a platform for my media projects. It all began 25 years ago ... The Nexialist Organization was conceived as a transdisciplinary platform connecting architecture, music, and visual design through shared creative methods and theoretical inquiry.    Astronaut logo created by Liis Roden Nexialist was founded to establish a platform for creative enterprises located between tangible architecture and audible music, with visual text as the binding element. Hence our motto: sound as architecture, architecture as text, text as design, design as sound. The nexus between these disciplines also inspired the tri-head — the un-copyrightable emblem of the Nexialist Organization. Rooted in methodologies derived from architectural and media theory, Nexialist applies these principles to projects spanning audio and visual production, design, text, action, and live performance.  The platform Nexialist.com was crea...

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: The failure of initiative in Katrina's wake was also due to the dysfunctional response on the part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Today, there is even talk of dismantling FEMA completely. The performance of the agency is related to the performance of responsible actors. Under James Lee Witt, FEMA performed exceptionally well, under Michael D. Brown, the agency failed abysmally. This is why research is important: it can analyze and reflect on the institution's activity in disaster management. An international comparison offers further context. I compared the US, Australia, Germany, and the Philippines and their institutions and recovery plans for a publication of the German Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning (BBSR). 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 rec...

Katrina at 20: Evacuation is a common strategy to protect populations from the impact of disasters. This was also true in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. The big problem was that evacuation was contingent on car ownership, leading to highly stressful post-landfall search-and-rescue and evacuation procedures. And while many long-term evacuees eventually found a new home and a new job in cities they were displaced to, Houston being the most significant destination, the process raises serious planning questions. In particular, vulnerable New Orleanians were left with little to no choice regarding their displacement. Is it possible to "design" such a process, by giving people a choice which way forward they prefer once they have been evacuated to safe havens in the surrounding region? My contribution on "Schismourbanism as Design" was published in Yana Milev's extensive edited volume "Design Anthropology". On 29 August 2005 Hurricane Katrina made lan...