Apparatus Architecture
Thesis Project, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria, 2020


This work advocates the notion that architecture is produced by the interaction of political, economic, and technological developments. These developments combined, form mechanisms, which the French philosopher Michel Foucault called apparatuses. Further, Architecture can be read as the result of a conflict between various apparatuses. Each of these apparatuses is trying to enforce its own agenda, while the others have to react in order to keep up. This conflict manifests itself in our built environment. The resulting buildings are full of political tension, compromise,, and contradictions. This work elaborates on this reading of architecture, by investigating the conflicting apparatuses and the buildings they produce. The shown buildings are designed to emphasize their involvement with the apparatus. But they are not the exception. Instead, in our globalized world of today, in which apparatuses are more numerous and pervasive than ever before, probably any building is in some form a part or the result of one or multiple apparatuses. Even the most generic architecture is consciously or unconsciously interwoven within a net of political, economic and technological development.
 
Additional Artwork by Nathaniel Nutt.