Kollisionen: Strategien des Komischen in Architektur und Theater
Aktuelle Forschungen zur Geschichte und Theorie der Architektur
Architektur – Theorie – Geschichte
Franziska Wilcken M.A.
Begin:
23.04.26, 14:00 Uhr
Place:
1-120
“The more we study art, the less we care for nature” (Oscar Wilde)
Architecture and comedy—an odd couple. Comedy addresses—sometimes affirmatively, sometimes subversively—social and aesthetic norms and rules. Pathos, the sublime, the eternal, criteria of “classical” architectural styles, including Modernism, collide in the realm of comedy with the banal, the improvised, and the ugly.
Examples in which architectural design also involves deliberate distortion, deformation, and banality—as in Baroque or postmodern buildings from Jencks to Kohlhaas—are discussed in the seminar and confronted with jointly read texts by Henri Bergson (Laughter), Susan Sontag (Notes on “Camp”), and Venturi/Scott-Brown.
In theater, a repertoire has existed since ancient comedy in which strategies of the comic are also formally reflected upon and applied. An exploration of the theatrical tools of the comic also takes place in the seminar through a group visit to the Staatstheater Wiesbaden.
Course requirements include a written term paper and a conceptual model.