<Bart Lootsma: Individualization>

Individualization has been one of the implicit, hidden driving forces behind discussions of architecture at least since the 1960s. However, the view on this phenomenon has fundamentally changed since then. In the 60s, 70s, and 80s, and to a great extent even today, individualization was perceived as something to be achieved. The main task of progressive architecture was to find and create differences in aesthetics or arrangement, or even to provoke them. Currently, and in the decades ahead, individualization is becoming something that needs to be addressed, something that is necessary to assimilate. This represents a completely different focus, and we are already grappling with it today. Some of the most fundamental problems in architecture and urbanism, such as suburban sprawl or uncertainty about what public space actually is, are directly connected to individualization. However, individualization brings more than that: it threatens the very essence of what we have learned to perceive as Architecture with a capital A and urban planning. This alone need not be a problem; nonetheless, there are certain fundamental obligations and tasks in society that would need to be reorganized, particularly in the field of urbanism and city design. This presents us with a tremendous task, which is still taken too lightly, especially by architects. It is such an immense task because, as Ulrich Beck writes, “any attempt to come up with a new concept that would ensure social cohesion must start from the awareness that individualism, diversity, and skepticism are deeply rooted in Western culture.”

Bart Lootsma is a historian, theorist, critic, and curator of architecture, design, and visual arts. He is currently a professor of architectural theory at the Faculty of Architecture in Innsbruck. He has been a visiting professor at several leading institutions, including the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg, the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, and the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam, as well as a research leader at ETH Zurich, Studio Basel. He served as a guest curator of ArchiLab 2004, held in Orléans, and in 2016 he was a co-curator of the Pavilion of Montenegro at the Venice Biennale. Lootsma has published many articles and several books, and has served as editor for magazines such as Forum, de Architect, ARCHIS, ARCH+, l’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, Daidalos, Domus, and GAM. His books include, among others: Media and Architecture (1998, with Dick Rijken), SuperDutch: New Architecture in the Netherlands (2000), ArchiLab 2004: La ville à nu / The Naked City (2004), Reality Bytes: Selected Essays 1995–2015 (2016).

The lecture takes place as part of the workshop Elena Markus & Nick Förster: From Collective to Commoning.

The lecture is supported by the Embassy of the Netherlands in the Czech Republic.