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Dissertation
Pruitt-Igoe: Icon of Failure? Planning
paradigms, modes of regulation and the perception of the US-American
public housing project
The 1972 demolition of the
US-American public housing project Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis, Missouri,
is still a central reference in the current architecture and urban
planning discourse. Following the interpretation of the architecture
theorist Charles Jencks, who pinpointed the death of modern
architecture as the moment of the buildings’ blast, it became the
symbol of the failure not only of the architectural project of
modernity but also of public social welfare policies. Despite its high
degree of popularity and symbolic content, any first-hand information
or contemporary witness reports on the housing project are rare. Few
know that more than 30 years after its demolition, hundreds of former
inhabitants meet annually and still commend its social cohesion. The
project’s usual reading still follows the interpretation coined by
the 1970s discourse; Pruitt-Igoe, today as well as then, serves mainly
as a blatant illustration or projection screen, an iconic unmistakable
evidence of failure. Yet, from a current critical perspective, it
becomes obvious how many blind spots and omissions underlay this
attribution: Neither the social conditions of its design and
implementation, nor the collective actions of the tenants or the
attempts to remodel and renovate the housing complex undertaken in the
last years of the project became part of the debate.
Against this background, the dissertation aims at a critical
rereading of the public housing complex by (re)investigating its
social context and the conditions of its planning process as well as
the daily life and grass roots activities of the tenants through the
analyses of historical documents, interviews with people and
institutions involved. Assuming that a differentiated approach to this
housing project will lead to other conclusions than the predominant
assumptions and representations, the research focus will be on its so
far underrepresented aspects, and relate those to Pruitt-Igoe’s
function in the planning discourse as well as to the project’s
political instrumentalization.
Questioning Pruitt-Igoe’s
role in the urban discourse also aims to explore the reasons and modes
of the recurrent talk of its outright failure and – in a more
general sense – the apparently strong need for unambiguous images
and lines of argumentation not only within the architectural debate. A
repoliticized interpretation of this housing project also implies
reconsidering the central assumptions concerning the failure of the
modernist project to question the basis for and self-conception of
post-modernism as well as the corresponding questions of the role of
the state, the aesthetic production and the corresponding urbanization
processes.
Curriculum Vitae
EDUCATION
since 2008
DFG Fellow at
the Transatlantic Graduate Research Program, Center for Metropolitan
Studies, Technical University Berlin, Germany
2002
Diploma in Architecture, Thesis: “Codification and Recodification
of Urban Space and Architecture”
1996 – 2002
Studies of Architecture, Technical University Berlin
Student
assistant at the Department of Planning and Architecture Sociology,
Prof. Bodenschatz (1999 – 2002)
1994 – 1996
Studies of Sculpture, Academy of Fine Arts, Berlin Weißensee
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
since 2002
Founder,
publisher and member of the editorial board of the Berlin based
journal An Architektur; within this context: participation in and
organization of various international events, conferences, lectures
and workshops, initiation of the “Camp for Oppositional
Architecture”
www.anarchitektur.com
since 2000
Work in various architectural and town planning offices
Participation in international workshops, research projects and
thematic exhibitions (e.g. Projekt Migration, Liminal
Spaces)
Publications, Lectures etc.
PUBLICATIONS
2007
“Spatial justice
for Ayn Hawd”, in: Critical Planning, Issue 14, Los Angeles**
An Architektur 18: Camp for Oppositional Architecture: Theorizing
Architectural Resistance*
2006
“Camp for
Oppositional Architecture”, in: Archis / Volume 10. Agitation,
Amsterdam*
An Architektur 16/17: Material on: David Harvey,
Flexible Accumulation through Urbanization / Material on: Manuel
Castells, The City and the Grassroots / interview booklet: Quarries of
Theory Construction. Manuel Castells, David Harvey and the Resistance
in the Capitalist City*
2005
“Sangatte:
géographie de la frontière”, in: Franck Düvell (ed),
“Politiques Migratoires, grandes et petites manoevres”*
“Palastparken”, in: Philipp Misselwitz, Hans-Ulrich Obrist,
Philipp Oswalt (eds), “Fun Palace Berlin 200X”*
“Oppositional Architecture”, in: Bartolomeo Pietromarchi (ed),
“The (un)common place. Art, Public Space and Urban Aesthetics in
Europe”*
“Charter for Oppositinal Architecture”, in: 32BNY,
New York*
An Architektur 15: European Migration Geographies,
Poland*
An Architektur 14: Camp for Oppositional Architecture*
2004
“R wie Raum” in: Mario Hohmann, Stefan
Rettich (eds), “Von A bis Z. 26 Essays zu Grundbegriffen der
Architektur”*
An Architektur 11-13: Theory and Practice of
Cartography. Material on: Brian Harley / Geography of the Departure
Center Fürth / Philippe Rekacewicz: Mapping the Globalization*
2003
“Burning Down the House: The German-Japanese
Village”, in: Cabinet. A Quarterly of Art and Culture, Issue 12, New
York*
“Retrorhethorik – Codierung von städtischem Raum und
Architektur”, in: zweifelsohne, archpluspreis 3
“Extra-territorial Spaces and Camps: Juridical-Political Spaces in
the War on Terrorism”, in: Anselm Franke et al. (eds),
“Territories – Islands, Camps and other States of Utopia”*
An Architektur 10: Community Spaces*
An Architektur 04-09: War
and the Production of Space*
2002
An Architektur
01-03: Material on: Lefèbvre, The Production of Space / Private
Property Protection for Rent / The Geography of a Border: Sangatte*
2001
“freies fach. Urban Action”, in: Jochen
Becker (ed), “Bignes? Size does matter. Image/Politik. Städtisches
Handeln”*
LECTURES / PANEL ORGANIZATIONS / WORKSHOPS
(Selection)
2008
“Real Estate Funds and the
Privatization of Public Property”, Right to the City workshop,
Mehringhof, Berlin**
“Community Design in the US”,
organization of public interviews/talks, arttransponder, Berlin*
“How much did you pay for this plot of land?”, Ydre Nørrebro
Kultur Bureau, Copenhagen**
2007
“Cartographic
Practice and the Production of Space”, as part of the Critical
Geography lecture series, HU Berlin*
“Spatial Justice for Ayn
Hawd”, City and Health Symposium, Nilüfer Municipality, Bursa,
Turkey**
“In Search for”, as part of the series: Free Space
for Culture and Living, Art Academy Copenhagen*
2006
“Camp for Oppositional Architecture. Theorizing Architectural
Resistance”, organization of an international conference on the
possibilities of oppositional architectural practice in cooperation
with Casco, Utrecht*
Starter-Workshop “Liminal Spaces”,
Qalandia, Ramallah, West Bank**
2005
“Städtisches
Handeln”, round table: An Architektur & Stalker, Galerie
Attitudes, Geneva, Switzerland*
“Oppositional Architecture”,
in the course of: On War and Peace. The Spatiality of Extreme
Phenomena, Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Vienna*
2004
“Cartographic Practice”, workshop: Mapping Europe, Konferenz
Transnational Europe I, Rethymnon/Crete*
“Camp for Oppositional
Architecture”, organization of an international conference on the
possibilities of oppositional architectural and planning practice*
“Selforganization and Institutionalization”, Freie Klasse
Projekt 2004, UdK, Berlin*
2003
“The Political
Project”, conference “Off-Architecture”, Akademie der Bildenden
Künste, Nuremberg*
“Cartographic Praxis” / workshop “Plans
to Abandon Oversight”, Ex-Argentinia, HAU 2, Berlin*
“New
Spatial Logic and Parallel Juridical Systems”, conference “Space
of Empire: Urbanism – Control – State of Emergency”, UdK,
Berlin*
2002
Workshop “Space // Trouble. City.
Economy. War”, ErsatzStadt, Prater, Berlin*
“Human Beings in
Camps. Berlin/Sangatte”, International Mobile Academy, Volksbühne,
Berlin*
PARTICIPATION IN EXHIBITIONS (Selection)
2008
“Community Design. Involvement and Architecture in the
US since 1963”, arttransponder, Berlin*
“Sozial Diagramme.
Planning Reconsidered”, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart*
2007
“Communal Spaces / Community Places / Common Rooms”, Common
Room, New York*
“Just Space(s)”, LACE, Los Angeles**
2006
“Architecture of Camps”, Casco – Office for Art,
Design and Theory, Utrecht*
“Liminal Spaces”, Gesellschaft
für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig**
“sadly safe, in
training”, Grazer Kunstverein, Graz*
2005
“Projekt
Migration”, Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne*
2004
“Now and Ten Years Before”, Kunst-Werke, Berlin*
“Territories”, Kunst-Werke, Berlin; Witte de With, Rotterdam;
Konsthal, Malmö*
2003
“8th Havana Biennial”,
Pabellón Cuba, Havana*
“Kiosk Info-Offspring”, Postplatz,
Dresden*
“radical architecture III”: processing
uncertainties, MAK, Cologne*
2002
“Violence is at
the Margin of All Things”, Generali Foundation, Vienna*
1998
“Supermarkt – money, market, gender politics”,
Shedhalle, Zurich*
TEACHING
VAI, Vorarlberger
Architektur Institut, Austria, 2008
sommer school, workshop:
property and divided inheritence in Vorarlberg*
Technical
University Delft, The Netherlands, 2007
international design
seminar, INDESEM*
University of Arts, Berlin, 2004
design seminar and practice project in relation with the “Camp for
Oppositional Architecture”*
a42.org / Master of
Architecture: Academy of Arts, Nuremberg, 2004
design seminar and
research on cartographic possibilities of representation*
Technical University Berlin, Faculty of Humanities, 2003 – 2004
seminars in architecture history and theory
*as part of
An Architektur
**together with Oliver Clemens
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