FIRESIDE CHAT

BUNGALOW GERMANIA would like to extend an invitation to a fireside chat in the German Pavilion.

The event is organized in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Gerd de Bruyn from Universität Stuttgart. Together with his colleagues Markus Allmann, Arno Lederer, and Klaus Jan Phillip, de Bruyn has organized series of talks for students of the Institute of Architecture at Universität Stuttgart since 2008. The talks usually deal with controversial subjects that reflect architecture's political and social nature. A fireside chat on the Kanzlerbungalow [Chancellor's Bungalow] and state architecture was held in the context of these talks in June 2009. Norbert Seitz, author of the 2005 book “Die Kanzler und die Künste [The Chancellors and the Arts]”, spoke on the relationship of postwar German chancellors to architecture. In conjunction with this, a debate was held on Sep Ruf's Kanzlerbungalow and the relationship between architects and politicians.

For the German Pavilion, the discussion theme “The Inner World of the Exterior“ is inspired by Peter Handke’s book “Die Innenwelt der Aussenwelt der Innenwelt [The Innerworld of the Outerworld of the Innerworld]”, published in 1969. In this book, the author is terrified by his realization about language on the one hand being the one thing he is most familiar with but on the other hand turns out to actually be the most alien entity to him. Such “familiar alienation” also happens within the German Pavilion: the installation stages an interior world within another interior, as a “double privatization” (the bungalow within the pavilion) while simultaneously promoting an exterior world within another exterior (both bungalow and pavilion are architectures of representation). This counterintuitive moment will trigger an exciting discussion with regard to history, politics, aesthetics, and space.

With Prof. Dr. Gerd de Bruyn (moderator), Prof. Markus Allmann, Arno Lederer, Prof. Dr. Klaus Jan Philipp, Alex Lehnerer und Savvas Ciriacidis