Peter Hübner - Building as a Social Process: Dtsch.-Engl. - Hardcover

Blundell Jones, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 3932565029 ISBN 13: 9783932565021

Verlag: Edition Axel Menges, 2007

Inhaltsangabe

Peter Hübner began his career as an orthopaedic shoemaker and
moved on to cabinetmaking before studying architecture. In the
1960s he became a successful designer of prefabricated buildings
and sanitary units. This expertise gained him a chair in building
construction at Stuttgart University where, in collaboration with fellow
professor Peter Sulzer, he undertook a series of experiments
that changed the course of his architecture. It began with an elaboration
of the Walter Segal building method, but culminated in a
student hostel designed, built and lived-in by architectural students
at Stuttgart University’s Vaihingen campus. Using student labour
and superfluous or recycled materials it was very cheap, but it also
reflected the capabilities and aspirations of its owners in a surprising
and potent way, imbuing them with confidence. Hübner was
struck by the importance of building as a social process, and understood
that the mechanised construction he had earlier been involved
in had largely taken the soul out of it.
As word about the Vaihingen project got about, Hübner received
requests for more cheap self-help buildings, and discovered a new
professional role as facilitator and ringmaster. Unable to predict
how these improvised buildings would turn out, he yielded up the
aesthetic control of the designer-despot in favour of experiencing
the pleasure of human relationships as a project unfolds. Most new
buildings are received by their users with comparative indifference,
but the self-help projects engender passionate commitment, and
it continues long after they are finished. People identify with the
spaces they helped to determine, and naturally appropriate them.
As a producer of such anarchic work, it is perhaps surprising to
discover that Hübner has also long been at the forefront of CAD,
but this is a natural development of systematisation, for if computers
can calculate all the variants and irregularities, we need no
longer conform to Ford’s production line. Hübner uses three-dimensional
programmes which connect design directly with production.
His work also responds to Green concerns, not only
through the use of recycled and low-energy materials and in avoiding
toxicity, but also in passive energy collection. All these issues
are explored in the book.
Peter Blundell Jones is Professor of Architecture at the University
of Sheffield and has already published monographs on Hugo
Häring (Edition Axel Menges), Hans Scharoun and the new Graz
architecture. He is a frequent contributor to The Architectural Review,
in which he has reported regularly on Hübner’s work since
the early 1980s.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Peter Blundell Jones is professor of architecture at the University of Sheffield.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Edition Axel Menges
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2007
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 3932565029
• ISBN 13: 9783932565021
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 240
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland