Semantisches Browsen

In numerous cases, contemporary architecture is nowadays accepted as a landmark of its respective cities and regions. This particularly applies to buildings with a clearly noticeable aesthetic and artistic radicalness. The popularity of the mentioned architecture poses questions: Does its specific design, which is the reason for its success with the public, include new characteristics? Or are, on the contrary, comparable effects inherent in every building that has been declared important or even a landmark, also in former times, although in a different form? In order to study the four selected contemporary buildings in this thesis - an university building in Cincinnati / USA realized by Peter Eisenman, the unrealized conception by OMA / Rem Koolhaas for a library building on the campus premises of Jussieu at Sorbonne University, Paris, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, realized by Frank O. Gehry, and the still unrealized project of the Faculty of Architecture in Venice by UN Studio / Ben van Berkel - specific criteria have been phrased which are not related to the evidence of certain formal elements or design ambitions. It deals with the immediate effect of the particular building on its beholders and users as well as its relation to the surrounding urban space. Therefore, the architecture is analyzed according to its haptic qualities, its spatial and semantic structures, followed by the identification of the relation and relevance to its urban context. This was done by highlighting unique characteristics, but also similarities due to a comparative analysis of the selected examples. Based on the results, there is the attempt to put the chosen buildings, even though it seems they have had no obvious exemplary model, in relation to traditional guidelines in architectural history. It was not intended to deduce the formation of a new style from certain phenomena of contemporary architectural happenings. Moreover, the goal of this thesis is to discover potential rules underlying its architectural impacts and - if applicable - to get an understanding of the exceptional fascination emanating from the portrayed buildings, aroused by the fusion of the opening architectural expression with the intact wholeness of the architectural form.