The Hut

If weaving is one of the oldest techniques of mankind, then the construction of huts is probably of equal origin with it: already Vitruvius' architectural theory establishes building in the three-dimensional interweaving of torn branches, which offer protection from all kinds of adversity. More abstractly, the sub-project assumes that the hut is an ›emergent structure‹, which could precisely also be read and generalized as a model for the ›structure of emergence‹. The hut folds space in a simple way, thereby creating an inner and outer environment. With the help of this partially permeable border not only an exchange can be regulated, but the inner and in some cases also the outer environments are adapted and a niche is created. The project follows this thesis of the hut as a structure of emergence by further investigating the hut as an environmental technique, as a temporal and mobile construction and as a ›heterotopos‹ (Michel Foucault). Research on these aspects requires an interdisciplinary exchange that illuminates the hut with different scientific and design methods, as well as on different disciplinary objects. The goal is to arrive at a new understanding of the relation of material–place–environment and of the temporal function of architecture.

A first result of the interdisciplinary research has already been published: Karin Krauthausen, Rebekka Ladewig (eds.), Modell Hütte. Von emergenten Strukturen, schützender Haut und gebauter Umwelt, Berlin (Diaphanes) 2021 (more information about content and contributors). In the years 2023 to 2025 the hut research will be continued also in cooperation with the research project Syntopic Architecture by Karola Dierichs. Here, the hut will be the model for a niche-like interdependency of material processes in ›natural‹ as well as cultivated (i.e. by agriculture) and even in damaged environments. The hut thus stands for a theory and practice of ›minimal materialism‹ – a concept that will be further developed in the special issue on Minimalistic Life Style Practices (edited by Christiane Arndt and Karin Krauthausen) for the peer-reviewed journal German Review. The role of agriculture in the formation of specific biological and social ›ecologies‹ and the negotiation of this topic in literature will be discussed in the anthology Landwirtschaft und Literatur (edited by Stephan Kammer and Karin Krauthausen).