Since the Renaissance, the architectural discourse has also been based, above all, on the definition and analysis of architectural elements. Leon Battista Alberti´s six elements (region/location, site, division (floor plan), wall, roof and openings; 1452), Gottfried Semper´s four elements (hearth, roof, enclosure and mound, 1851) and Le Corbusier´s five elements of architecture (Pilotis, free façade, open floor plan, horizontal windows, roof garden, 1928) were all attempts to analyze the history of building in varying degrees of intensity and to codify the future of architecture.

But since the globalization of modern architecture after the Second World War, the possibility of an element-related systematization of architecture has been largely ignored. With architectural consequences as: what was once the specialty of architects - the roof and the window, but also the façade - became an apparatus, evaporating into advanced technological spheres, decoupled from the architect's responsibility.

The research question entails a paradox: despite standardization, despite devices becoming apparatuses and the attempts of the parametric architecture, distinct categories such as the roof, the wall or the window don´t merge into a continuous surface of architecture and are outlasted by certain elements of the architecture.

Preliminary work: Stephan Trüby: Geschichte des Korridors (HfG Karlsruhe, 2011, Fink, 2018); Rem Koolhaas, James Westcott, Stephan Trüby (ed.): Elements of Architecture (Marsilio, 2014)

Contact Person: Stephan Trüby