Northern Alpine building culture of the late Middle Ages

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Bruno Klein
• Subject Area: Art History
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 452913935

Building culture is a sum of action, organization, mediality and reaction of social interaction with the aim to design of the environment architecturally. It is closely linked to time-bound mental, political, religious and aesthetic backgrounds. In the period from the 14th to the 16th century it developed extremely dynamically, especially in the northern Alpine region, and became an important element of social practice. Building culture was promoted by increasingly differentiated abilities for visual spatial representation and the ever more widespread possibilities and intentions to use appropriate means; conversely, however, only a building culture that was constantly elaborated in technical, medial and organizational terms allowed such graded representations. These interrelationships and interdependencies require more intensive attention. Therefore, research on these complex phenomena is to be deepened with the help of the network. Previously separate analyses in sub-areas of building culture will be made recognizable in their interconnectedness, brought together and dealt with comprehensively.The topic offers interfaces to many scientific disciplines, in particular to media, economic, legal and linguistic history; however, the focus is especially directed towards social, technical and architectural/art history. This is reflected in the diverse professional composition of the network's member group. The tableau ranges from scholars from practical building research to those from the history of architecture and art history oriented towards the history of the humanities to medieval/early modern history and philology.In a series of international working meetings, special cross-sectional topics are examined with the aim of providing innovative impulses for research. In addition to the research objectives in terms of content, this includes transfer and the promotion of young researchers.The group is made up of individuals at various career levels: Doctoral students, postdocs, habilitated scientists and professors. The exchange with researchers from non-German-speaking countries is part of the project.

• DFG Programme: Scientific Networks
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Stefan Bürger