We commonly and ubiquitously use architectural metaphors in both everyday speech as well as various professional contexts. Yet we rarely, if at all, register this connection when we talk, for example, about software architects, thought constructs, pillars of society, the architecture of the brain or the façade a person puts up. At the same time, metaphors also feature prominently in the fields of architecture and urbanism, where they are being used for the development of design concepts and provide useful means to communicate, discuss and evaluate design features. Examples range from crystalline buildings to the fabric of a city, but also include Le Corbusier’s infamous description of houses as ‘machines for living in.’
The conference aims to explore metaphors as productive mediators in processes of knowledge transfer between the fields of architecture and everyday knowledges and between architectural and other professional discourses. It thus contributes to a broader investigation of architecture as a cultural practice of ordering pursued by the interdisciplinary LOEWE research cluster Architectures of Order, a collaboration between Goethe University Frankfurt am Main and the Technical University of Darmstadt, with the Max-Planck-Institute for European Legal History and the Deutsche Architekturmuseum as associated partners
More details can be found here. The application time will end on 1 June 2020.