Sub-Project A | Architecture and Society

Initiated from an archaeological perspective, the sub-project "Architecture and Society" encompasses an investigation in cultural sociology, which takes as its main object monumental architectures from prehistory to the present day including the study of works of representational art associated with these architectures. Like no other type of archaeological source, architecture and monumental art reflect social structures and concepts of the visualisation of supreme rule. Accordingly, the work of the project organizers will focus in particular on the visualisation of authority in protohistoric Greece on the one hand and, on the other, on modern signs of hierarchies in urban agglomerations in Asia, Africa and America. In addition to such qualities of signification and representation, aspects of architectural configuration, the ordering of human encounters through built structures, will be taken into consideration. From this results a fundamental duality in the academic conception of the built environment.

Because palaces, castles, temples, churches and monumental tombs are not just the material traces of profane and/or sacral power; these built structures also provided the respective societies with the loci of a continuous reconstitution of social relations and the affirmation or transformation of ideas about the "right" order of things. In this sense, public and state buildings and spatial orders need to be understood both as documents of social reality and as preconditions for such social realities, both as platforms for the self-projection of those in power and as arenas for a continuing renegotiation of power, both as a medium of codified messages and as a means of spatial odering.

With this in mind, research has to face the challenge to reconstruct how architecture, images and movable objects were strategically deployed to represent the legitimacy of authority and allow the staging of rituals. It is helpful in this context to concentrate on architectural designs which have been realized within a short span of time and which thus present their underlying ideas with special clarity. If written sources can also be used to shed light on the cultural background, on political structures, religion and the ideology of rulers, this will further enhance the usefulness of case studies. Both conditions are met in the study of the citadels and palaces of the Mycenaean culture of the Greek Late Bronze Age. Accordingly, these will form a main focus of archaeological enquiry within the sub-project. Aspects of this enquiry include the integration of existing monuments in newly created, palace-oriented topographies of power as well as the analysis of architectural continuities from palatial into post-palatial times. An understanding is sought of how the ruins of palatial buildings formed foci for the legtimization of new elites, who rebuilt prestigious elements of former palaces and tried to integrate them into new conceptions of power.

Sociological study within the sub-project will concentrate on the dissolution of the European and North American city-type in global conglomerations, which in themselves reflect the "monumental art" of social structures and the visualisation of authority. The metropoles of Shanghai, Bangalore, Johannesburg and Sao Paolo will thus form the modern counterparts to the Mycenaean centres of Mycenae, Tiryns and Pylos. Monumental architecture is replaced in many respects by urban development, which attracts or repels migration, unfolds inner-city vitality or organizes a void, provides global knowledge and local ties or polarizes life. This necessitates a comparison between different models of global development and urban societies.

While these studies form important foci in the work of the project organizers, ongoing research of members of staff and postgraduate students of the participating universities will be integrated in order to enlarge the scope of case studies in space and time. Architecture as a manifestation of specific views of the world and as an organizational framework for ritual activity are central research interests of representatives of the disciplines of Egyptology, Classical Archaeology, Assyriology, Near Eastern Archaeology and East Asian History of Art at the universities of Heidelberg and Freiburg. The topic also provides points of contact with existing projects like the SFB "Ritualdynamik" at Heidelberg.

The international symposium "Constructing Power" forms part of the sub-project "Architecture and Society".