Dienstbarkeitsarchitekturen

The book focuses on the question of how space, media and user are in a service relationship to each other and how this is reconfigured in each case. The book brings together contributions from art and architectural history, sociology, and cultural and media studies. In addition to concrete buildings such as the Vienna Hofburg and the Houses of Parliament, hospital corridors and airport terraces are also the subject of the individual studies. Literary examples-from Franz Kafka’s stories, C.P. Snow’s Corridors of Power, and Petron’s Satyrica-are considered, as is the artistic work of Allen Wexler or the design of tunnels in computer games. A discussion of the architecture of the present and future is offered by analyses of ambient intelligence, the renaissance of the servant, and the design of digital servitude.