D 2 – Discourses on Masculinity in Architecture between Art and Technology

The subproject “Discourses on Masculinity in Architecture between Art and Technology” focuses on the gendering of the modern architect. With gender as a category of analysis, it is not only about processes of exclusion of women, but also about a gendered order of subject formation. This subproject examines the cultural gender orders in the historical development process of modern architecture from a sociological-genealogical perspective that has until now been lacking in the field of architecture. The interface between architect and engineer and art and technology is particularly revealing because it considers the historical process of differentiation. In the course of this process, architecture developed as a primarily artistic activity out of the art of building and distinguished itself from technical civil engineering. Using historical crystallization points, such as the founding of the Deutscher Werkbund, we will investigate which specific orders of the subject of architecture, in contrast to the rationalistic-technical concepts of masculinity of the civil engineer, have established themselves over time, and how this has been done in a gender-coded manner. For the present, references arise here concerning the question of digital or algorithmic practices of order in which the relationship between the artistic and the technical continues to be debated.

Publications on the project topic (selection):

Paulitz, Tanja: Mann und Maschine, Eine genealogische Wissenssoziologie des Ingenieurs und der modernen Technikwissenschaften, 1850-1930. Bielefeld: transcript, 2012.