Sociology

CLASSICAL AND MODERN SOCIOLOGY OF ARCHITECTURE
Classical sociology doesn’t have concepts which allow a sociological analysis of architecture as artifact, as art in terms of creativity and affectivity. Nevertheless one can find in French and German sociology case studies which can be considered as veritable “classics of architectural sociology”. This article brings together these texts, and interrogates their implicit theories and their conception of relations between the architectural and the social. With respect to the currently emerging sociology of architecture, the article stresses the effectivity and positivity of the architecture within the social.
Architecture should not be understood only in terms of “representation” or “expression” of a given society (of their social strictures, relations of power and so on). On the contrary, architecture makes a “difference” within the social sphere.The initial conviction is that architecture not only reflects or reproduces what almost “exists”. Rather, it gives a society a symbolic form in which it “institutes” itself as a certain “society”. And it creates spaces for everyday living, coexists with human body, enables his affects, movements, views, actions and interactions. In its creative architecture a society has a chance to see itself in a way that is partially new. Particularly in case of modern architecture, architecture pushes social things rather that is only an “expression” of them. So, the aim of that work is to say that architecture is not merely an expression, a mirror, a symbol of a given society or given social structures: it is their “medium”. It has a social activity or positivity.
Classical sociological theory conceptualized the social sphere too restrictive for such a theoretic sociology of architecture. Sociological thinkers conceived the object of sociology as a sphere of pure “sociological facts”; as social, and particularly “interaction” or as “communication”. In these basic concepts of sociology architecture is ignored first as artifact, second as technology, and third in its creativity. This conception of social explains the challenge of this sociology of architecture. It is the dualistic, “classical” tradition of philosophy that requires to think architecture as mere object and shell: simply a “copy” of already existing social structures
The theory operates both on level of social theory as well as on (quite understood) micro-sociological level of interactions. In that micro-respect, a concept of Gilles Deleuze is used to think architecture not in subject-object scheme, but in terms of artifacts, bodies, motions, affects. On a level of a diagnostic theory of society, theory of »imaginary institution of society« by Castoriadis is extended to architecture: architecture gives a »society« foremost a permanent shape in which it occurs for anyone as a specific, given society. At the same time architecture provides always new characters for a society: architecture is both constitutive and transitive for a »society«. This sociological theory of architecture is designed that it applies to any society. But in attention to the new in architecture it applies in particular for modern societies, for the 20th century, in which architecture unfolded a creative and social-technological attitude. They all allow a sociological thinking that considers artifacts and their symbolic dimensions. In addition and correction of this French tradition, Philosophical Anthropology is a background of this sociology of architecture: in particular theory of institutions and artifacts by Arnold Gehlen; and philosophy of culture by Helmuth Plessner. He unfolded a media philosophy which is not based on a paradigm of language. Rather it sees an own logic of architecture: their materiality and their relation to human body.