Technische Universität Wien – Stummes Erbe

Project participants:
Theresa Knosp (Art History Research), Thomas Moser (Art History Research), Julia Nuler (Interior Design and Drafting Research), Sophie Stackmann (Preservation of Historic Monuments and Building in Existing Contexts Research)

Program:
EXCITE 2024

Duration:
2024-2025

Since its inception, the architectural-historical canon has referred to the ideal of the architect as an ingenious creator who solves a design task through inspiration. In architectural practice, too, the achievements of individual white men continue to serve almost exclusively as role models. This narrowed focus of the canon has consequences for both the professional self-image of architects and their understanding of design. With our research project, we want to counter this imbalance with an approach that explores the potentials of a queerfeminist building culture in terms of architectural history and asks how an anti-hegemonic historiography and knowledge production can contour architectural practice as queerfeminist care work.

We aim to develop a new set of tools that builds on existing architectural research and offers an alternative to the traditional tools of the canon. Our focus is on the future handling of existing architecture. In this way, we would like to work on a historically sensitive understanding of design that develops a queer-feminist practice of architectural conservation from the theoretical critique of the canon.