Governing iconic architecture . Discursive Struggles on the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Paul Reuber; Professor Dr.-Ing. Frank Roost; Professor Dr. Gerald Wood
• Subject Area: Human Geography
• Term: from 2014 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 253531038

As spectacular urban flagship-projects iconic architectures play an increasingly important role in the context of national and international interurban competition. In the form of concert halls, museums, hotels, office complexes or shopping malls, they are expressions of an increasing culturalization of urban economies as well as a central component and symbolic-material manifestation of entrepreneurial resp. competitive urban development policies. New discourses and practices of urban governmentality emerge in the processes of iconic architectural production and representation. To explore these discourses and practices with regard to the particular case of Hamburgs Elbe Philharmonic Hall is the central aim of the proposed research project - not least because providing basic knowledge about the underlying discursive logics and rationalities is an indispensable precondition for orientating future forms of governance and mediation of such urban flagship projects. Therefore, the central question being looked into is in how far the current building of Elbe Philhar-monic Hall and its related discursive practices can be regarded as an expression and means of a neoliberal urban governmentality. The production and representation of iconic architecture do not pass without contra-dictions and discursive disruptions. Thus, the case study analysis endeavours to lay open the entire contested arena of urban governmentality which includes powerful discourses of legitimation as well as subtle activating technologies of power within discourses dominated by donators and lobbyists down to defying and partly marginalized images of an alternative urbanity which lie beyond and stand in critical opposition to hegemonic ideas of neoliberal urban development. Drawing on discourse theory, we particularly aim to make the rationalities of iconic architectural production and representation within contemporary urban development policies visible. With regard to the possibilities and scopes as well as the limits of political intervention, the constituent discursive contradictions and disruptions between hegemonic and marginalized discourse positions will be highlighted

• DFG Programme: Research Grants