Author: Fabian Wessels

Metaphors are diversly and intricately embedded in architectural practice and discourse. Precisely for this reason, this volume argues and sets out to explore, how they can be engaged to critically interrogate architecture’s social, cultural and political dimensions – past and present – and to productively challenge and intervene with established perspectives, debates and practices.

Mapping out not just potentials but also addressing the challenges, limitations and dangers inherent in using metaphors in architectural research and practice, the volume prominently illustrates the ambiguity and contradictoriness inherent in both metaphors and the process of engaging and exploiting them. Covering a broad range of historical and geographical cases and concerns, the contributions illustrate effectively that metaphors can expand or narrow our engagement with architecture, and consolidate or legitimise but also destabilise and challenge established social, cultural, disciplinary and political structures, concepts and categories.

With its aim to explore metaphors as both subject and method to critically challenge and expand established practices, perspectives and standards in architectural research and practice, the volume will be of interest for scholars working across the architectural humanities, including architectural history, theory, culture, design and urbanism, as well as for researchers concerned with architecture and the city from fields such as cultural, visual and area studies as well as art history.

At the end of the LOEWE research project, scholars from the fields of architecture, sociology, history and media studies, and legal history will present their research results in the form of a diverse exhibition and event program at the Deutsches Architekturmuseum Frankfurt a. M. (Interim), Henschelstraße 18 in Frankfurt a. M., at the TU Darmstadt, Department of Architecture, El-Lissitzky-Straße 1, and at the Audimax Kino Cinema, Karolinenplatz 5 in Darmstadt.

The critical concern of the book “Utopia Computer” is the euphoria, expectation and hope inspired by the introduction of computers within architecture in the early digital age. With the advent of the personal computer and the launch of the Internet in the 1990s, utopian ideals found in architectural discourse from the 1960s were revisited and adjusted to the specific characteristics of digital media. Taking the 1990s discourse on computation as a starting point, the contributions of this book grapple with the utopian promises associated with topics such as participation, self-organization, and non-standard architecture. By placing these topics in a historical framework, the book offers perspectives for the future role computation might play within architecture and society.