Reference and Contemporaneity in Architecture: Techniques for Designing the Present Needs - Paperback

by Dietrich Erben (Editor), Carsten Ruhl (Editor)

Starting from the fundamental premise that references are essential for all cultural techniques, the contributors to this volume elaborate architecture's ambivalent tension between reference and contemporaneity, its central role in both architectural production and discourse. The issues surrounding contemporaneity do not pertain to a condition, but to an agenda - one where references are selected according to interests and adapted to present needs. This perspective enriches existing conceptions of references as tools of design economy, imitation, and historicization by tying them more explicitly to contemporary agendas than has been done before.

Author Biography

Dietrich Erben (Prof. Dr. phil. habil.) is a professor of theory and history of architecture, art and design at Technische Universität München. His fields of research are political iconography, baroque art in its international relations, as well as architectural history and architectural theory.

Carsten Ruhl is a professor of architectural history at Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, a founding member of the Center for Critical Studies in Architecture (CCSA) and one of two directors of the DFG research cluster »Organizing Architectures«. He specializes in the history and theory of architecture, emphasizing interdisciplinary connections between architectural and social history, sociology, media studies and philosophy.