Toti, Alessandro;
(2023)
West Berlin Marxist Architecture Groups (1963-1977): A history of housing, planning, education and struggle.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
The thesis investigates the history of Marxist architecture groups in West Berlin between 1963 and 1977 in light of their contributions to housing, planning, education and political struggle. It explores the 1960s and 1970s students’ and architects’ engagement with Marxist theory and practice, and how this resulted in their participation in alternative seminars and exhibitions, university protests, housing campaigns, political parties, trade unions and militant magazines. Following these activities, the thesis examines the different Marxist architecture groups’ forms, objectives and methodologies, and illustrates how this diversity produced alternative evaluations of concepts such as social change, professional agency, and architectural modernism. The thesis is divided into five chapters, which represent five different stages in the development of the Marxist architecture groups. The first chapter investigates West Berlin’s and West German’s socio-economic, political, cultural and architectural contexts from which the architecture student movement emerged. The second chapter explores the attempts to reform architectural education in a more progressive sense between 1967 and 1968. The third chapter focuses on how the two main activities of the period, the Diagnosis exhibition and the COOP seminars, tried to expand the students’ architectural critique to the political and social context beyond the university. The fourth chapter investigates the social, political and architectural challenges faced by students and activists who tried to employ their research to take part in housing campaigns. The fifth chapter discusses the critical contributions of a series of Marxist historical, political and socio-economic accounts of capitalist urban and architectural development. Taking place in a moment of significant capitalist reorganisation, the thesis argues that the contribution of Marxist architecture groups constitutes an initial but foundational critique of contemporary housing, planning and education practices. In particular, the conclusion contextualises this legacy within the current architectural and political debates around architects’ unionisation and the housing question.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | West Berlin Marxist Architecture Groups (1963-1977): A history of housing, planning, education and struggle |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2023. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment > The Bartlett School of Architecture |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10176991 |
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