Alle Publikationen
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2016
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(2016): `Space - The Final Frontier'. In: Sociology 33 (3), S. 535-553. DOI: 10.1177/S0038038599000346
Abstract: For too long the built working environment has been excluded from the analysis of work organisations. Buildings, like other cultural artefacts, encapsulate social and economic priorities and values, and represent prevailing power structures. Work buildings, such as offices and factories, both make possible the organisation of the labour process and also serve as structures of non-verbal communication, providing cues on hierarchy, status and appropriate behaviour. Control over the working environment can be seen as a constituent part of the control of the labour process, displaying similar cyclical movements. Human resource management and information technology are currently combining to encourage a reappraisal of the working environment, but one that is not without its own contradictions.
2015
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(2015): Site Decorum. In: Architectural Theory Review 20 (2), S. 228-246
Abstract: Site decorum refers to the fitting relationship of the site to the building. In classical architectural theory, the character of place affected style and materials: for example, buildings in the country were decorated with less refined finishes than those in the city. Italian Renaissance architects also considered scenography as part of site decorum, so that the position of the observer was taken into account when calculating the appropriate volumes and detail. This resulted from the mastery of linear perspective, a technique that permitted the manipulation of elements to coordinate with the sight-lines of the viewer. Less well known in the context of architecture is the significance of atmospheric perspective, where things become indistinct as they move away from the eye, which could be countered by emphasising the main horizontal, vertical, and massed elements of a building. In the nineteenth century, Charles Robert (C. R.) Cockerell described the methods of designing for different vantage points, noting that the best architects reconciled the two modes of far and close view, and demonstrating how drawing conventions are instruments that might be harnessed to appropriate siting. The salient theme of site decorum is one of perception, namely that a building’s coherent order is relative to the beholder.
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(2015): Decorum and the Meanings of Materials in Triumphal Architecture of Republican Rome. In: JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY OF ARCHITECTURAL HISTORIANS 74 (3), S. 289-311
Abstract: In Decorum and the Meanings of Materials in Triumphal Architecture of Republican Rome, Maggie L. Popkin argues that the literal and figurative values of materials in republican triumphal architecture stemmed from complex interactions among patron, architect, audience, and sociohistorical context. Several case studies—the Temple of Fortuna Equestris, the Porticus Metelli, the Round Temple on the Tiber, and Temple B in the Area Sacra di Largo Argentina—demonstrate that the juxtaposition of multiple materials, changing historical circumstances, and new groups of viewers resulted in constantly shifting meanings of materials in republican architecture. The Roman notion of decorum helps explain the shifting uses and valuations of materials. Factors such as the monument’s patron, the event that sparked its construction, its location, the monument type, the availability of materials, and the intended audiences affected the choice of materials and their intended and perceived meanings, which had rich conceptual and imaginative potential to evoke Roman conquest, piety, and spectacle.
Keywords: Architektur, Architektur (high and low ranking buildings), Art des Kommunikationsmediums, decorum, Geschichte, Häuser, Kunst, Öffentlicher vs. privater Raum, Raum/Ort, Situationsbedingter Kontext, Social Rank, Sozialer Raum / Kultureller Kontext, Sozialer Wert von Objekten/Prestigeobjekte etc., Strategien zur Erlangung von Sympathie, Wissen um Normen 2014
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(2014): Cross-cultural differences in processing of architectural ranking. Evidence from an event-related potential study. In: COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE 5 (1), S. 45-53
Abstract: Visual object identification is modulated by perceptual experience. In a cross-cultural ERP study we investigated whether cultural expertise determines how buildings that vary in their ranking between high and low according to the Western architectural decorum are perceived. Two groups of German and Chinese participants performed an object classification task in which high- and low-ranking Western buildings had to be discriminated from everyday life objects. ERP results indicate that an early stage of visual object identification (i.e., object model selection) is facilitated for high-ranking buildings for the German participants, only. At a later stage of object identification, in which object knowledge is complemented by information from semantic and episodic long-term memory, no ERP evidence for cultural differences was obtained. These results suggest that the identification of architectural ranking is modulated by culturally specific expertise with Western-style architecture already at an early processing stage.
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(2014): The spatial frequencies influence the aesthetic judgment of buildings transculturally. In: COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE 5 (3-4), S. 143-149
Abstract: Recent evidence has shown that buildings designed to be high-ranking, according to the Western architectural decorum, have more impact on the minds of their beholders than low-ranking buildings. Here we investigated whether and how the aesthetic judgment for high- and low-ranking buildings was affected by differences in cultural expertise and by power spectrum differences. A group of Italian and Japanese participants performed aesthetic judgment tasks, with line drawings of high- and low-ranking buildings and with their random-phase versions (an image with the exact power spectrum of the original one but non-recognizable anymore). Irrespective of cultural expertise, high-ranking buildings and their relative random-phase versions received higher aesthetic judgments than low-ranking buildings and their random-phase versions. These findings indicate that high- and low-ranking buildings are differentiated for their aesthetic value and they show that low-level visual processes influence the aesthetic judgment based on differences in the stimuli power spectrum, irrespective of the influence of cultural expertise.
2010
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(2010): Hippocampal contributions to the processing of architectural ranking. In: NEUROIMAGE 50 (2), S. 742-752
Abstract: Theories of rhetoric and architecture suggest that buildings designed to be high ranking according to the Western architectural decorum have more impact on the minds of their beholders than low-ranking buildings. Here, we used event-related potentials in a visual object categorization task to probe this assumption and to examine whether the hippocampus contributes to the processing of architectural ranking. We found that early negative potentials between 200 and 400 ms differentiated between high- and low-ranking buildings in healthy subjects and patients with temporal lobe epilepsy with and without hippocampal sclerosis. By contrast, late positive potentials between 400 and 600 ms were higher in amplitude to high-ranking buildings only in healthy subjects and TLE patients without but not in TLE patients with hippocampal sclerosis. These findings suggest that the differentiation between high- and low-ranking buildings entails both early visual object selection and late post-model selection processes and that the hippocampus proper contributes critically to this second stage of visual object categorization.
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