KARI JORMAKKA
*1959 - †2013
Founder and former Head of the Department (1998-2013)
Kari Jormakka was professor for architectural theory at the Technical University Vienna since 1998 until 2013. Between 2007 and 2010, he also taught at the Bauhaus University in Weimar. Previously, he taught at the Knowlton School of Architecture at Ohio State University, the University of Illinois and Chicago, the Tampere University of Technology, as well as Harvard University. Jormakka is the author of ten books and many papers on architectural theory and -history. He studied architecture at Otaniemi University in Helsinki and at Tampere University of Technology, and philosophy at the University of Helsinki.
selected publications
Kari Jormakka
Luftschacht, 2004
GENIUS LOCOMOTIONIS
Bewegung liegt allem Werden zugrunde, behauptete Paul Klee. Wie kann aber Bewegung einen neuen Ansatz für das architektonische Denken und Schaffen bieten? Genius locomotionis befaßt sich mit dem Thema Bewegung in der Architektur und Kunst aus einer philosophischen Perspektive, die einerseits auf klassischen Texten von Winckelmann, Lessing, Herder und Goethe basiert und andererseits auf den Werken von Nietzsche, Bergson, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty und Deleuze aufbaut.
Kari Jormakka
Luftschacht, 2003
GESCHICHTE DER ARCHITEKTURTHEORIE
Der hier präsentierte Text ist keine gewöhnliche Geschichte der Architektur: Vielmehr handelt es sich um einen phantastischen Streifzug durch die westliche Architekturtheorie vom antiken Griechenland bis in die heutige Zeit. Der Diskussion liegt die These zugrunde, dass die Kunstgeschichte zu einem Gutteil mit der Herstellung von Kontinuitäten und Ähnlichkeiten befasst ist, indem sie gerne auf frühere Werke verweist. Im Gegensatz dazu wendet sich dieses Buch den Unterschieden zwischen den verschiedenen Strömungen in der Architektur zu, um anhand weniger Beispiele zu klären, welche Qualitäten eine Zeichnung oder ein Bauwerk jeweils erfüllen musste, um zu einer bestimmten Epoche als Architekturwerk anerkannt zu werden.
Kari Jormakka
Birkhauser, 2002
FLYING DUTCHMAN
Flying Dutchman analyses the ways that contemporary Dutch architects have thematized the issue of movement in their buildings and projects.
Kari Jormakka
Verso, Weimar 1995
HEIMLICH MANOEUVRES.
RITUAL IN ARCHITECTURAL FORM
Radically breaking with formal and semiotic theories of architectural meaning, Heimlich Manoeuvres argues that embedded in buildings there are tacit performative rituals which do not represent or symbolise anything but rather insidiously partition and organise our world.
The discussion ranges from Daedalus to Derrida, from original sin to simulation, from ´nomad´ to ´dhaman´, and from Adolf Hitler to Adolf Loos. The fundamental rethinking of the concepts of meaning, function, place, tradition and ornament results in a conception of architecture not as the seat of truth but as a technology of contingent fictitions and lies.
Kari Jormakka
Datutop 15, Ars Magna 1991
CONSTRUCTING ARCHITECTURE. NOTES ON THEORY AND CRITICISM IN ARCHITECTURE AND THE ARTS
Works of art, together with dream and God´s Word, are prefect objects in the sense of being deeply meaningful unities with no contingent aspects; at least this is how masterpieces of art are not infrequently described in traditional aesthetics, historiography, as well as architectural and art criticism.
Constructing Architecture undermines this view by pointing out that such perfection cannot be predicated of physical things, for example. Hence, a work of art cannot b e identified with a material thing, nor with a subjective mental entity. Rather it exists as a construct of criticism. In interpretation, a work of art is constituted out of a material thing by highlighting some of its aspects and organising them so that the construct manifests the characteristics of artworks, including perfection, unity, aboutness, and originality. In this sense, much of tradition aesthetics can be understood not as describing art-malling properties of real things but as stating the conditions for the constitution of a thing as a work of art.
