Architecture + Politics: Nikolaus Kuhnert in conversation

In personal conversations, large and small themes, people and anecdotes condense into an intellectual examination of the collective history of his generation, which, after the trauma of the Nazi era, sought its own ability to speak through politicization in the student movement.

Berlin as a place where his individual career intersects with contemporary historical developments in an exemplary manner comes up again and again. What relationship between architecture and politics becomes visible on the basis of his biography? What can we learn from this for the critical discourse on architecture and the city today?

In 2013, Stephan Becker, Kristina Herresthal and Anh-Linh Ngo conducted an 8-part video interview with ARCH+ co-editor Nikolaus Kuhnert about his career.

Work has defined my life. Drawing a summary, as I intend to do at this point, is a difficult undertaking. With the following reflections, I seek to distill themes that can be condensed through my decades of work on ARCH+. One theme would be discursive design. Mapping this theme would yield a line that begins with the Stadtbauwelt issues I compiled in the early 1980s and continues with those of ARCH+, for which I have now been responsible for almost fifty years.