The magazine An Architektur tackles the raisons d'étre and effects of buildings.
Each topical issue features particular political and social aspects of architecture and the city under current capitalist conditions. An Architektur considers the built environment to be determined by fundamental concepts inherent in society which frame and affect our lives.
An Architektur advocates a progressive, critical notion of architecture.
Architectural practice should include a concern with discourse on space and its use beyond planning and construction, as this is where social conceptions are being negotiated. An Architektur engages in the critical analysis of spatial relations as a form of political activism to reveal any underlying political order.
The approach of An Architektur is interventionist.
By analysing specific architectural situations and unveiling previously disonnected topical aspects, each issue of An Architektur attempts to re-examine the terms of spatial arangements and find new definitions.
An Architektur is looking for new options and alternatives.
Increasing social tensions, cultural capitalization, ethnic segregation, ubiquitous surveillance, and the privatization of public space within the context of urban re-development strategies dictated by neo-liberal economic thinking demand a new critical approach in spatial practice.
Upcoming:
Camp for Oppositional Architecture 2006 (Part II)
Theorizing Architectural Resistance
Utrecht, the Netherlands, November 10 – 11, 2006
An Architektur at Casco. Office for Art, Design and Theory
The small part of the built environment that is subject to planning at all is almost completely controlled by the claims of capitalist utilization: globalized markets and cultures ask for commodified spaces, nation states and corporations require spectacular architectures for representative purposes, the multitude of consumer subjects demands room for individualized privacy. What’s left to do?
Continuing the “Camp for Oppositional Architecture” this second congress again looks for possible ways of resistance within the field of architecture and planning. Having brought together practitioners and researchers in Berlin 2004 who exchanged approaches and developed a common basis of discourse on the open idea of oppositional architecture, we now want to further explore the theoretical grounds on which such projects could spread. As part of a series of future Camps each dealing with a specific issue, we this time would like to elaborate the concept of opposition within the field of architecture and planning. The Camp will focus on analytical approaches that invent, explore and reflect on possibilities of architectural resistance that withstand the demands of a capitalist production of space and try to develop a non-affirmative attitude within this powerful contiguity.
Camp for Oppositional Architecture (Part I)
Berlin-Wedding, Summer 2004
Polar Inertia: Report / Crosswalk: Report / An Architektur: 14 Camp for Oppositional Architecture
Under Fire @ UIUC
September 8 - October 7, 2006
The Under Fire exhibition at I space and series of events at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are a continuation of the international discussions and publications initiated by artist and writer Jordan Crandall. Under Fire presents a discursive engagement with global militarization and political violence, incorporating perspectives from multiple disciplines to explore the contemporary organization, representation and materialization of war.
Essays:
An Architektur: Exterritories and Camps: Juridical-Political Spaces in the "War on Terrorism"
Stuart Elden > There is a Politics of Space because Space is Political: Henri Lefèbvre and the Production of Space
Mark Gottdiener > A Marx for Our Time: Henri Lefebvre and The Production of Space
Interview with Eyal Weizman / An Architektur 06
An Architektur @ Territories (Witte de With, Rotterdam)
"Kartentisch" / An Architektur @ Projekt Migration
