Bauformen der Imagination. Ausschnitte einer Kulturgeschichte der architektonischen Phantasie

The intermingling of reality and imagination is processing rapidly in cultural theory as well as in every day life. Within the New Media and in todays metropolises the virtualization of the (architectonic) space is becoming more and more crucial. Imaginary architecture is being built and at the same time real architecture used to produce imaginary spaces. This porosity results not only from the inherent logic of the development of technology and media but also from a specific artistic tradition and is in itself a result of cultural construction. Accordingly, we can reconstruct the cultural encoding of the architectonic imagination as a historical process, and we can understand buildings as sediments of this process. Looking back at past architectural fantasies is therefore part of as still unwritten history of the imaginary. It is essential not to conceive space as well as its architectoninc shaping as rigid backgrounds but as social processes. In the spirit of these physical, social and cultural space conceptions "building" means "placing social goods, persons and locations". In this conception the relation between imagined and build architecture appears not to a strict dichotomy but rather a dialectic interaction. Both "solid" and imagined bulidings carry memories. Architectural vision as a paradoxical venture to expose the invisible (as the collectively suppressed) is a significant element of popular genres. In todays SF-writing, SF-films, in technologic or scientific discourse, the images of digitally produced virtual spaces serve as stages for innovative concepts of the body and of the subject as well as for apocalyptic prophesies. In addition, architectural metaphers structure the internet and transform it into a "cyberspace", which we can experience and live in; but we cant set foot in it. Construction and design programs create similar spaces. On the other hand, they are the basis of real building activity. Once more, winding but unbreakable bonds connect material and simulation. New approaches in the sociology of technology (Bruno Latour) conflict with the concept of an aseptic virtual space. Imagined, experienced and lived architecture is part of social and political (trans)formations right from the start. The book aims to contribute to answer the question, in which ways representations (of space and architecture) are connected with the practice of building and living. Which role does architectural fantasy play in the conflictual field of hierarchie and heterarchic discourses, between local tradition and global modernization, in the emotional structure of todays cities and landscapes?