Architecture, Materiality and Society

Connecting Sociology of Architecture with Science and Technology Studies

Anna-Lisa Müller, W. Reichmann, Anna-Lisa Müller, W. Reichmann

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137461131
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book examines the extent to which the insights of STS can be used to analyse the role of architecture in and for social life. The contributions examine the question of whether architecture and thus materiality as a whole has agency. The book also proposes a theoretical and methodological approach on how to research architecture's agency.

1

The Secrets of Architecture’s Actions

Werner Reichmann, University of Konstanz and Anna-Lisa Müller, University of Bremen

Societies and architectures

The German foreign intelligence service – the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) – plans to move its headquarters from the small town of Pullach near Munich in the south of Germany to the capital, Berlin, probably in 2017. Reportedly, about 4000 BND staff will change their offices and an unknown number of secret files, documents, recordings, weapons and instruments will have to be brought across Germany from the Bavarian countryside to the pulsating centre of Berlin. Whereas the old base was about 600 kilometres away from the German Federal Chancellor and the German Parliament, in future it will be only about one kilometre away from the central political buildings of Germany.

The BND will not only draw physically much closer to political power and to the main administrative institutions in Germany, it will also move into a new building – it is getting a new place, new space and a new material frame for its secret actions.

The buildings of the old BND headquarters have a notable history (for a history of the BND see Schiel 2003; Meinl and Hechelhammer 2014). The Nazi regime built them in the 1930s for the elite NSDAP leaders and their families. The architecture was simple, standardized, and the buildings were of high quality. Several detached and semi-detached family houses were located around a rectangle. Although the camp was freely accessible, a high wall protected it from the view of nosy outsiders. Between 1936 and 1938, the camp was called Reichssiedlung Rudolf Heß (Magdanz 2006:5), named after one of the most influential men of the time, Hitler’s deputy. During World War II, the camp was enlarged by the addition of an underground bunker-system. It was also one of the 16 headquarters Hitler could use to command the German troops; it was called Führerhauptquartier Siegfried. The camp had become a strange mixture of family houses, infrastructural facilities and military buildings such as the bunker.

As the camp was barely damaged during the war (Meinl and Hechelhammer 2014:101), the US Army, which took over the area in March 1945 after World War II, assessed it as ‘modern and first class’ (Magdanz 2006:9). In December 1947, the so-called Organisation Gehlen moved into the area. This organization was mainly responsible for collecting intelligence about the Red Army and the political and social developments in the Soviet-occupied zone and, of course, it was under US control. Its president, Reinhard Gehlen, had been a general in the German Wehrmacht under the Nazi regime (Schiel 2003:30–1). He changed sides in 1945 and provided his knowledge of the Russian army to the US Army.

The buildings and the architecture of the camp in Pullach did not change. Contact between Pullach’s inhabitants and the members of Organisation Gehlen was strictly forbidden. This separation found its material expression in high walls and fences and barbed wire around the camp. The area was closed off hermetically and became self-sufficient. For the members of Organisation Gehlen and their families, there was no need to leave it because everything they needed was within its walls: a kindergarten, a tailor, a cobbler and a canteen (Magdanz 2006:6).

Things changed when Germany became a sovereign state; it established more and more independent administrative institutions such as a constitutional legal system, an army and a police force. In 1955, Germany also decided to found a modern foreign intelligence service and negotiated with the US administration about a takeover of Organisation Gehlen. Negotiations were finalized on 1 April 1956, and the BND was officially founded. Although the organization now had a new name and was under the control of the German government, the organization itself did not change; Reinhard Gehlen remained in charge and became its first president, and the high-security, bolted camp in Pullach was its first headquarters (Magdanz 2006:10).

Although the camp in Pullach is still a top secret place, accessible only to those with permission, there are two illustrated books published by photographic artists who were allowed to document the camp (Magdanz 2006; Schlüter 2014). They give an imposing impression of the buildings’ architecture and the architectural arrangements.

These illustrated books help us to access the architectural setting and the material-spatial arrangements within the camp. The 56-hectare area is an inconspicuous and nearly invisible ensemble of small family houses, storage facilities, garages and streets. It consists of about 100 single buildings and looks like an ordinary, innocent small town with a main street, parking lots, green spaces, idyllic houses and even a tennis court. Built as a residential area, it creates the impression of a very average and perfectly normal German dwelling settlement; the streets in the area are lined with trees and trimmed bushes and surrounded by park areas (Magdanz 2006:33, 35, 67, 69, 81; Schlüter 2014:50, 51, 113–16). But there is one unusual characteristic: the photos do not show houses with more than two storeys; some of them are built as bungalows (Schlüter 2014:45). The only higher building is the library, built in the 1970s, which has four floors (Magdanz 2006:155; Schlüter 2014:65–6). Otherwise, the camp is fragmented into many small, scattered buildings. It exudes a banal and empty impression, oozing the charm of a shabby office chair.

Only a small number of its architectural characteristics hint at evidence of the secret activities in the camp. For example, there is a concrete wall topped with barbed wire around the camp, preventing intruders from viewing or entering. Most of the wall is hidden by trees and bushes and thus does not disturb the idyllic scenery too much (Schlüter 2014:48–51), and it needs an attentive eye to detect it. There is also a landing pad for helicopters, suggesting that the camp can deal with emergency cases. And, by German standards, there are an unusual number of surveillance cameras that monitor and record the activities all over the camp. All in all, the rare accessible photos from the camp portray a peaceful atmosphere with extremely understated architecture. The whole camp suggests meekness.

For the BND, the move from Pullach to Berlin will bring many improvements. The new building in Berlin is very different to the old one in Pullach in several respects. First, its architectural design is Pullach’s opposite. It stands in a kind of artificial trough to minimize its viewable height. Nevertheless, it soars about 30 metres above the street – thus, with its nine floors, it is taller than all the surrounding buildings. The main building in the centre of the site is about 280 metres long and 150 metres wide. There are two auxiliary buildings: one to the north and one to the south. The three buildings are connected to each other so that it will be possible to go directly from one to the other. The surface of the buildings consists of about 14,000 identical windows and looks like a completely over-dimensioned grey spreadsheet. Although the ten-hectare site is only about a fifth of the size of the site in Pullach, the buildings’ dimensions are impressive. All together, they look like a massive fallen giant in Berlin’s inner city. As a matter of fact, for reasons of secrecy, there are no publicly accessible photos or descriptions, neither of the inside of the buildings nor of the area around the central building.¹

Architecture, however, consists of more than materiality. It is also embedded in a particular historical and social context. Thus the old Pullach buildings and the new Berlin buildings not only differ in their architectural designs but were also built under very different political and social circumstances. In 2003, the German government, headed by a social democratic chancellor and a foreign minister from the Green Party, decided to relocate the BND headquarters from Pullach to Berlin. There was an architectural competition to establish who would carry out the planning and realization of the building. In contrast to the days when Organisation Gehlen was set up, the new BND headquarters were planned, constructed and brought to life at a time when Germany was already a modern, liberal society. Germany has one of the most elaborated democratic and pluralistic political systems in the world and is one of the strongest and most self-confident globally acting economies. It no longer feels the need to downplay its activities, and although what the BND does inside the building is highly confidential, the construction process can be observed from the outside. Additionally, the BND’s relocation process has, of course, been widely discussed both in social and in other media.

The situation was very different in 1947. Then, Germany was not a sovereign state, it was guilty of provoking the biggest catastrophe of human history, and the whole country lay in material and ideological ruins. It had lost the brashness of previous years. German society had witnessed a brutal and bloody war and its liberal, intellectual elite had been killed or forced to emigrate (Fleck 2011).

Society → Architecture

The whole process of moving the BND from Pullach to Berlin has been intensively discussed, in Parliament and in the social and other media. The design of the headquarters is only one of many dimensions in this discussion. We will pick two points from this discussion and use them to show how the interdependence of architecture and society is usually understood.

The first understanding conceptualizes the difference between the political and social situations in Germany in the 1950s and at the beginning of the twenty-first century as the direct cause of the different architectural designs. In this line of argumentation, the old BND buildings represent an economically weak and politically unstable state. They symbolize a guilty, fragmented and doubtful society that, after years of brutal megalomania and presumption, wants its political institutions to materialize as meek. In contrast to that, the new BND headquarters symbolizes the modern, self-confident and economically strong Germany of the twenty-first century. It is like a symbol of Germany’s economic and political dominance in Europe – which everyone should see (Maak 2014a). This first interpretation clearly differentiates between social contexts as the cause and architecture as its effect: after World War II, Germany was a meek nation under special observation by the Western Allies. This situation produced a meek and invisible architecture that tried to hide in a suburban area, far from the political centre. In contrast, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, Germany now considers itself a leading nation and demonstrates its status with a self-confident building style that is clearly visible and is situated within a prominent urban context close to the nation’s political centre, that is, close to Berlin.

The second interpretation looks more at what the BND does and the kinds of enemies it is confronted with. It argues that there is a ‘reciprocity’ (Maak 2014b:22, own translation) in the relation between the nature of the enemy and the BND’s architecture after World War II and at the beginning of the twenty-first century. In the 1950s and during the Cold War, the enemy was clearly defined and visible; it was the Warsaw Pact states, mainly the Soviet Union and its allies. It was clear who and where the enemy was. At this time, the BND’s architecture was fractioned, inconspicuous, confined to a provincial area and hidden behind trees. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the BND is confronted with a completely different kind of enemy. It is now the enemy who is fractioned; it is unclear who they are, where they come from, what their interests are, and sometimes they do not even have a geographic centre, existing only as loose networks. In this new strategical situation, the German secret service has decided to move to a building that is huge, highly visible and which shows clearly defined structures. It is like an enormous marker that tells the hidden enemy: ‘Look! Lots of rooms for people who will put a stop to your game!’ (Maak 2014b:22–3, own translation).

Both interpretations implicitly assume that there is a strong connection between the architectural designs of the old and the new BND buildings and the respective different German societies, political situations and sociocultural zeitgeists. Without making this more explicit, they create a correlation between societies and their architectures and assume that specific societies, and their historical, political and cultural situations, impact on their own architecture. This view may be consensual; but, still, from our point of view, it is just half the story.

Architecture → Society?

We also want to turn the argument on its head and ask: what does architecture do to societies? Does it change interactions, social contexts or society as a whole – and if so, how? Does architecture retroact on its users? Is architecture, after being installed as formed materiality, something neutral, lifeless? Is architectural materiality dead in the sense that it does not vary sociality? Or is architecture an agent in social contexts – does it have an agency?

In the discussion about the contrasting architectural designs and the opposing symbolic worlds of the old and new BND buildings, this question has never been raised explicitly. Still, sometimes it shines through texts about the BND headquarters, for example, when Maak (2014b:24–5) rhetorically asks how Mossad spies might have felt when they visited the BND and held meetings in the villa that was built for NSDAP elites; a building located in the centre of the former Rudolf-Heß-Siedlung. How, we would ask, did the architecture with its particular history shift the interaction situation between the German and the Israeli spies? Maak’s (2014b:28) question of whether ‘the house itself is the spy’ is another example of architecture’s possible agency. However, in his answer he just uses the simplistic concept of a Smart Home equipped with sensors and computers that should make life easier, but which could also be used for surveillance. He does not mean the architecture is active in itself.

At first view, the claim that architecture may affect social contexts may jar. However, in sociological theory, material objects are being increasi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Notes on the Contributors
• Introduction
• 1. The Secrets of Architecture’s Actions
• 2. Designing a Counter: the Constitutive Entanglement of the Social and the Material in Architectural Design
• 3. The Mutual Influence of Architecture and the Social in a Non-Home
• 4. The Emergence of Architecture-Transformations: an Examination of Architecture Experiences from the Perspective of the Sociology of Space and Actor-Network-Theory
• 5. The Parliament as a High-Political Programme
• 6. The Lure of Restoration: Transforming Buildings and Bodies for Ever-Longer Life
• 7. Infrastructures of Epistemic Moments: Buildings, Black Boxes, Improvement and Neighbourhood Change
• 8. Putting Architecture in its Social Space: the Fields and Skills of Planning Maastricht
• 9. Moral Agency in Architecture? The Dialectics of Spatializing Morality and Moralizing Spaces
• 10. The Actions of Architecture: Constituting a New Sociology of Architecture
• Index