City Metaphors. How Architects and Urbanists Conceptualize Cities

Sonja Hnilica is an architectural theorist and historian. She currently holds the professorship of Modern Art History at the Institute of European Art History at the University of Heidelberg and is a private lecturer at the TU Dortmund University. Since completing her doctorate at the TU Wien in 2006 on urban metaphors under Camillo Sitte, she has returned to the subject of metaphors time and again. In recent years, she has published numerous publications on the subject and has participated in exhibitions, including “Der Glaube an das Große in der Architektur der Moderne. Großstrukturen der 1960er und 1970er Jahre” (“The Belief in the Great in Modern Architecture: Large Structures of the 1960s and 1970s”) (Zurich 2018) and “Metaphern für die Stadt. Zur Bedeutung von Denkmodellen in der Architekturtheorie” (“Metaphors for the City: On the Importance of Models of Thought in Architectural Theory”) (Bielefeld 2012).

The presentation will be held in English and takes place in the context of the annual theme “Architecture as Metaphor”.