Call for Papers: The Architecture of Gottfried Böhm. Aachen, 30 October 2020
Current Research Approaches and Perspectives on the Architecture of Gottfried Böhm – An International Architectural History Study Day on the Occasion of Gottfried Böhm’s 100th Birthday
The Faculty of Architecture at RWTH Aachen University is celebrating the 100th birthday of its former professor Gottfried Böhm with the joint event “Ein Tag Böhm”. An exhibition of student projects will document how the engagement with Böhm’s work continues to foster creativity. At the same time, an international study day will address the comprehensive work of the Pritzker Prize laureate from an architectural and historical perspective. While Gottfried Böhm’s buildings of the 50s and 60s are well-established subjects to scholarly analysis and reflection, in recent years, architectural historians began to examine Böhm’s works of the 70s, 80s and 90s.
The study day aims for an overview of current research approaches and perspectives. The organizers particularly like to invite emerging architectural historians to present their ideas and methodologies of how to analyse and interpret the work of Gottfried Böhm.
A wide range of perspectives may be addressed: monographic studies are just as welcome as overarching examinations or attempts of contextualisation. Contributions can approach the urban scale as well as the architectural detail. Furthermore, participants may focus on planning processes or questions of materialisation and perception.
For our study day at Aachen’s Faculty of Architecture, the organizers would particularly like to invite researchers to take a genuine architectural look at Gottfried Böhm’s work, contemplating, for instance, Böhm’s specific understanding of architecture as an “order of elementary experiences in space” (Jan Pieper, Bauwelt 4/2010). How does Gottfried Böhm incorporate shadow and light, compression and expansion in his architecture? How does he accommodate a tactile experience in his buildings? How are people guided through spaces, for instance, via thresholds and framed views? In what ways did Böhm achieve a symbolic and meaningful representation of functional circulation patterns?
Please submit your abstract (max. 3.500 characters, spaces included) for a 20/25-minutes presentation, as well as your CV and contact details, to the following e-mail address by 15 April 2020 at the latest: naujokat@ages.rwth-aachen.de
Please use the following subject line: “Böhm 2020 AC Last Name”.
Contributions will be selected by 1 May 2020.
The organisers endeavour to cover travel costs for all participants.