Supervisor: Ing. arch. Maria Topolčanská, Ph.D.

The topic of my doctoral research in the theory and history of modern and contemporary architecture is the relationship between residential architecture and ideas of the good life (including related philosophical and architectural conceptions of what the “good life” consists in). Specifically, the connections between different ways of organizing the relationship between private and communal space through architecture and the ways of life that they make possible are explored. I trace these relationships through the specific example of the development of internal courtyards in residential building typologies in Central and Eastern Europe from the mid-nineteenth century to the present.

In his influential study of the structural transformation of the public and private spheres in Europe (Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit [Structural Transformation of Public and Private Spheres], 1962), Jürgen Habermas marginally notes in several places how this structural transformation that characterizes modernity was reflected in the fate of the inner courtyards in various Western European residential architectures (their marginalization in new ways of inhabiting domestic spaces and their subsequent layout changes, or even their reduction and even deletion). My research builds on this linking of the fate of courtyards in residential architecture to changes in the organization of space and life, and focuses on exploring the modern history of courtyards in Central European residential architecture from the perspective of contemporary architectural theory. The investigation focuses on the characteristics of different typologies of inner courtyards in relation to the ways of life they enable (or disable) – from pavilion courtyards to courtyard courtyards to selected reinterpretations of inner courtyards in contemporary residential architecture.

In terms of issues relevant to contemporary architectural theory, I am particularly interested in the following three sub-areas in this research:

The changing relationship between living spaces as spaces of care and spaces of work
Housing and the question of social inequality.
Possible connections between the organization of physical space and ethical and political imagination and agency.

Juliana Berberich Sokolová, M.A.

Studio:

Dissertation: Residential architecture and the idea of the good life

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