2007–2008 Exhibition The Making of Architecture

Scientific contributor at the exhibition The Making of Architecture, curator Elke Krasny, for Architekturzentrum Wien.

Pictures of the exhibition (Alexandra Maringer, exhibition architect)

The exhibition showed how individually architects work with their tools, operate and design. Elke Krasny, Robert Temel and Gudrun Hausegger conducted research in 20 architecture offices and studios worldwide over two years. Field research with architects was conducted on the basis of their ‘studio lives’, inspired by the approach of the French philosopher and sociologist Bruno Latour. “The Making of Architecture” shows how individual the creative strategies and design methods actually are despite a collective knowledge base of architecture production.
A trip through time and the tools of the architect’s profession was at the centre of the exhibition: from the Hardtmuth pencil to Computer-Aided Design (CAD). In 1795 Joseph Hardtmuth (court architect to the Prince of Liechtenstein) made decisive improvements to what is still unbeaten as an architect’s design tool, the pencil. The tools, drawing pens, Rapidographs, an airbrush, electronic lettering equipment, curve templates, T-squares, printing machines or copiers, were displayed in the middle of the hall. The exhibition was a journey through the world of architecture creation, where the tools are as varied as the architects that use them. “The Making of Architecture” told of the working world of architecture — how it develops and the processes that govern the completion of a project, and the tools that the architects work with.
My contribution to the exhibition was the development of the history of tools. For the catalogue, I wrote an article on The Means and the End and the Lexicon of Tools.