Inaugural Lecture by Prof. Dr. Rainer Schützeichel

Hardly anything defines the framework for our daily lives and experiences as much as architecture and urban planning: we move around in spaces designed by urban planners, which shape our social behaviour, we live in houses designed by architects, their buildings are points of identification: The city and architecture surround us around the clock and can be seen as one of our most important "foods".
This omnipresence brings with it a great responsibility. Once built, they are in most cases permanent – and should and must be, not only in view of the current scarcity of resources.
What role does history play in architectural education when all the pressing issues of our time are directed more towards the future? If we consider the fact that every historical period was its own present, in which the future to be shaped was still uncertain, then we realise: We are not the first to look ahead and ask ourselves how it can be possible to continue building in an appropriate, measured, considerate, sustainable and good way – to continue building on the city and on the houses that have come together there.
This realisation opens up another way of answering the question: if we look back into history, we find strategies for fulfilling complex requirements that have themselves become historical in the meantime, but only in the rarest of cases do they not allow us to build a bridge to the present day. Earlier times were also concerned about the preservation of their environment, had to cope with structural change or were confronted with a blatant housing shortage. Their buildings, especially those from more recent times, do not merely stand before us as "fossilised shells of extinct social organisms" (Gottfried Semper), but speak to us. They bear witness to the changes and transformations they have undergone over the course of time, which on closer inspection reveal themselves to be the structural expression of underlying planning maxims.
If the city – and with it the works of architecture – is read and understood as a palimpsest, as a superimposition of different layers of time, it opens our eyes to the past as well as to a possible future. At this point, the importance of history in architectural education also becomes clear: the critical reading of the past opens up a resource for knowledge production and can lead historical knowledge into the present.

About the person

Prof. Dr. Rainer Schützeichel is a historian of architecture and urban development. After studying architecture at the University of Applied Sciences Cologne and the Vienna University of Technology, he was editor of the journal of the Association of German Architects. After completing the postgraduate MAS programme "History and Theory of Architecture" at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, he worked in teaching and research at the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture and most recently at the Institute for Monument Conservation and Historical Building Research. He was also a guest lecturer in the history and theory of the city and architecture at Munich University of Applied Sciences. Rainer Schützeichel completed his doctorate at ETH Zurich in 2016, and his dissertation was awarded the Theodor Fischer Prize of the Central Institute for Art History the following year. Since the winter semester 2022/23, he has been Professor of the History of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam.

Inaugural lecture
When: 23/01/2023, 6.00 pm
Place: House D / Room 011
Online: Live stream via Zoom

The inaugural lecture is open to the public. Interested parties are welcome. There will be a small reception in the foyer after the lecture