Research Project
Dr. Georg Vrachliotis
Fritz Haller. A history of architecture of the abstraction (working title)
Swiss architect Fritz Haller worked from 1962 to 1971 at the Institute for Building Research of Konrad Wachsmann at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and is regarded as one of the most radical representatives of architecture conceived as a (building) system. Following the intensive cooperation with Wachsmann, he developed a constructive view of architecture, in which interfaces emerged between the technical thinking of industrial construction, the natural sciences and early information technology. Abstraction, miniaturization and dematerialization of technology became an important cultural cipher: the node of construction became the node of communication networks, furniture systems became urban systems and building structures resembled the abstract aesthetics of concrete and minimal art. The project investigates the historicity of these interfaces and then, like Haller – as a protagonist of a specific ‘thought collective’ of his time – lends a new kind of accent for the architecture of the 20th century to the term abstraction.
Dr. Georg Vrachliotis
Fritz Haller. A history of architecture of the abstraction (working title)
Swiss architect Fritz Haller worked from 1962 to 1971 at the Institute for Building Research of Konrad Wachsmann at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and is regarded as one of the most radical representatives of architecture conceived as a (building) system. Following the intensive cooperation with Wachsmann, he developed a constructive view of architecture, in which interfaces emerged between the technical thinking of industrial construction, the natural sciences and early information technology. Abstraction, miniaturization and dematerialization of technology became an important cultural cipher: the node of construction became the node of communication networks, furniture systems became urban systems and building structures resembled the abstract aesthetics of concrete and minimal art. The project investigates the historicity of these interfaces and then, like Haller – as a protagonist of a specific ‘thought collective’ of his time – lends a new kind of accent for the architecture of the 20th century to the term abstraction.