Hilde Heynen: Architecture, modernity and homelessness

The first part of the lecture will address the critical literature on modernity as a condition of (metaphysical) homelessness, which has been formative for many interpretations of modernist architecture (Benjamin, Bloch,Tafuri, Cacciari).
I will discuss how from this point of view the architecture of e.g. Loos or Mies has been positioned as a reflection of / upon this condition of alienation.
In a second movement, I want to question how this critical tradition can be made productive in the face of the very physical homelessness that so many refugees are experiencing nowadays. Can architectural culture react in a sensible way? Or is this a political issue that architecture should steer away from? I will argue that the critical tradition challenges us to not look away, but to use architecture’s designerly tools and strategies to help devise at least partial answers to this crisis.
Text: Hilde Heynen


Hilde Heynen is Full Professor of Architectural Theory at the University of Leuven. Her research focuses on issues of modernity, modernism and gender in architecture. She is the author of Architecture and Modernity. A Critique (MIT Press, 1999) and the co-editor of Back from Utopia. The Challenge of the Modern Movement (with Hubert-Jan Henket, 010, 2001), Negotiating Domesticity. Spatial productions of gender in modern architecture (with Gülsüm Baydar, Routledge, 2005) and The SAGE Handbook Architectural Theory (with Greig Crysler and Stephen Cairns, Sage, 2012). She regularly publishes in journals such as The Journal of Architecture and Home Cultures.

Moderation: Gabu Heindl, ÖGFA