Amhoff, T;
(2017)
The making of plans: Germany, 1858-1933.
Doctoral thesis , UCL (University College London).
Abstract
The thesis originates with the observation that notions of the ‘plan’ occur simultaneously within the three distinct discourses of architecture, town planning, and political economy. From this follows an enquiry into the relationships between the architectural, the urban, and the economic plan, and a search for the beginnings of the plan as instrument and product of regulation, organisation, and administration. The main focus is on the plan’s unique potential of seeing and visualising, of describing and theorising, and of organising and administrating the city, the factory, and the economy. How can we discuss the plan as, all at the same time, a material object, a drawing, and a conception of the future? The thesis sets out to understand and theorise the plan as medium and planning as cultural technique. The distinction allows thinking of plans as material object, and of the making of plans as techniques, for regulating, organising, and administrating processes and relations. The paper medium allows the plan to operate, to be discussed, and to be circulated. The techniques lie in the acts of drawing out, of making visible, and of arranging disparate data. The thesis emphasises and closely investigates the unique representations of the specific plans. The study is located in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Germany; from the ‘building plan’ in Städtebau, to the ‘floor plan’ and ‘work plan’ in the industrial engineering and scientific management of the factory, to the ‘economic plan’ in the socialisation debate and the ‘planned economy’. These plans devised the division and distribution of the productive forces of land, labour, and capital. The thesis asks—whether metaphorically or literally—the plans of architects, town planners, civil servants, entrepreneurs, engineers, managers, political economists, politicians, and Marxist theorists might to advantage be considered relative to each other rather than each in isolation.
Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
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Title: | The making of plans: Germany, 1858-1933 |
Event: | UCL (University College London) |
Language: | English |
UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices 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/1560635 |
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