Empty Buildings on Standby: Temporal Matters
06–09.10.2021
Doing and Making Times III: Infrastructures
4S Annual Meeting
Society for Social Studies of Science
Toronto, Canada (Online)
This paper traces the socio-material life of an ensemble of empty high-rises, the Hochhausscheiben A-E in Halle-Neustadt (East Germany) from the perspective of the (un)making of their (possible) futures between demolition and preservation.
Building futures are, so the argument of this paper, “concretely and materially crafted, enabled, and actively reclaimed” (Ringel, 2014: 68).
Looking at their biography through the eyes of the future makes it possible, so the argument, to pay attention also to ideas and projects that have been rejected or not implemented but have nevertheless shaped the buildings’ becoming.
The purpose of this paper is the exploration of temporal relations and temporalizations involved in the making of building-futures within administrative planning practices.
It will be shown how timely matters made present in practice have a transformative effect on the present and on the conditions of possibility.