The Museum für Angewandte Kunst Köln (MAKK) is currently hosting the exhibition 'O.M. Ungers – Architektur als Idee' (22 May – 27 September 2026), marking the centenary of Oswald Mathias Ungers. Accompanying the exhibition is an insightful opening lecture by Martin Kieren, who presents Ungers not merely as one of Germany's most influential post-war architects, …
Blaubeurer Tor: Zwischen Ergänzung und Authentizität
Die Diskussion um die Zukunft des Blaubeurer Tors in Ulm berührt eine der zentralen Fragen der Denkmalpflege: Wie gehen wir mit historischen Verlusten um? Sollen sie sichtbar bleiben oder durch bauliche Ergänzungen überwunden werden? Und bedeutet die Wiedergewinnung einer verlorenen Gestalt tatsächlich auch einen Gewinn an Authentizität?Die aktuelle Debatte ist bemerkenswert, weil sie sich nicht …
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Tectonics Against the Image: On Frampton, Brutalism, and the Drift of Contemporary Architecture
There is a line of thought—most clearly articulated by Kenneth Frampton—that should be stated as precisely as possible: construction is not merely the technical basis of architecture; it is its language. What architecture communicates emerges through how it is made—through material, joint, assembly, and the specific conditions of its time. This is the tectonic argument …
Joseph Greissing und die Comburg: Architektur als Weiterbau
Die Großcomburg bei Schwäbisch Hall ist kein Werk im klassischen Sinne, sondern ein über Jahrhunderte gewachsenes Ensemble. Gerade in dieser langen Dauer liegt ihre architektonische Qualität. Im frühen 18. Jahrhundert tritt mit Joseph Greissing eine Figur auf den Plan, die diesen Bestand nicht ersetzt, sondern transformiert und neu ordnet.Greissing, aus dem Vorarlberger Baumeistermilieu hervorgegangen und …
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Abendvortrag: Fritz Leonhardt und die Stuttgarter Schule des Leichtbaus
Abendvortrag Fritz Leonhardt und die Stuttgarter Schule des Leichtbaus Christiane Weber, Institut für Architekturgeschichte der Universität Stuttgart (ifag) 9. Juni 2026, 19.00 Uhr, Hällisch-Fränkisches Museum (Medienraum), Schwäbisch Hall. Der Eintritt ist frei. Die Kammergruppe Schwäbisch Hall lädt im Hällisch-Fränkischen-Museum zu einem Vortrag mit dem Titel Fritz Leonhardt und die Stuttgarter Schule des Leichtbaus ein. Der …
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Beauty After Suspicion. Architecture, Expertise, and the Public Gaze
In recent weeks, public debate once again circled around a familiar accusation: architecture has abandoned beauty. Contemporary award shortlists, suburban housing developments, and public buildings are cited as evidence that aesthetic judgment no longer plays a meaningful role in architectural culture.1 The tone is often indignant: how could the profession drift so far from what …
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The Architecture of Low Obligation: Minimalism in a Post-Welfare Society
Architecture, Ethics, and the Erosion of Collective Responsibility Within the framework of postwar social-contract architecture, contemporary minimalism appears not as a neutral stylistic preference but as a symptom of a broken ethical horizon. Its widespread appeal marks a decisive shift away from architecture’s former role as a material agent of collective obligation and toward a …
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Architecture as a Slow Medium in a Fast Culture. On the Structural Erosion of Architectural Meaning
For much of the twentieth century, architecture was widely understood as a cultural practice in the strong sense of the term. Buildings were not merely shelters or infrastructures; they were carriers of collective values, spatial condensations of political ambition, social ideals, and shared futures. This assumption has become increasingly fragile. The recurrent diagnosis that architecture …
The Hands That Built the Future: On Craftsmanship and the Paradox of Brutalism
It is one of the great paradoxes of twentieth-century architecture: that the buildings which appeared most austere and raw — the massive concrete structures of the 1950s to 1970s — were in fact realized with an extraordinary degree of care, precision, and craft. In an age of economic boom, growing labor costs, and expanding workers’ …
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The Architecture of Self-Reliance: Emerson’s Philosophy in Wright’s Buildings
Every culture is haunted by the question of origins. Where does authenticity begin? For America, two figures answer in remarkably parallel ways—one with words, the other with buildings. Ralph Waldo Emerson, the philosopher of Self-Reliance, and Frank Lloyd Wright, the architect of organic modernism, never met across time, yet their work speaks like two voices …
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Luigi Monzo 