Panel discussion ‘Participation Business’

For Ottokar Uhl architecture is always also an expression of social conventions. Democratically based communities must search for new forms of building. Only where the processes of planning and use are made transparent can the basis for decision-making and the allocation of responsibilities be clarified and negotiated in a democratic way.

The participation of future users is, initially, more a question of power than of architecture. The architects’ area of responsibility in the process expands to include additional roles: for example as the organisers and moderators of these processes. In much the same way as Uhl opened up new areas of responsibility for himself, those making architecture today are constantly discovering new fields of activity. What role is played by the question of social responsibility and what kind of architectural strategies are being developed to deal with it?

Panel guests:
Jesko Fezer, architectural theorist
Christa Kamleithner, architectural theorist
Martin Krammer, INNOCAD, President Central Association of Austrian Architects, Styria
Bernhard Steger, co-curator of the exhibition
Rudolf Szedenik, s&s architekten
Moderated by: Oliver Elser