Martin Schmitz

Martin Schmitz, born 1956, studied architecture, urban and landscape planning at the University of Kassel. Author of the book "Über die Kultur der Imbißbude", Zurich, 1983. Curator of the film programme of the 8th documenta 1987, the conference on "Dilettantism", Görlitz 1995, the exhibition "Die Tödliche Doris – Kunst", Berlin 1999, the international congress "Spaziergangswissenschaft: Sehen, erkennen und planen", Frankfurt 2008, and the Lucius Burckhardt-Conventions in Kassel 2014 and 2017. Publisher of books on architecture, art, film, design, music and literature since 1989. Since 2013 professor at the Kunsthochschule Kassel. www.martin-schmitz.de
Photo by Doris Spiekermann-Klaas

Taking a Walk to Understand Lucius Burckhardt – Pedagogy and Strollology

Walking Conference
Date: Day 1 – 18:00
Location: from Gelmeroda to Weimar
Language: German

Never before in history have so many people been able to move around the world cheaply and quickly, and never before has there been a greater influence by media than in our present day. Both have led to enormous changes in our perception and visibly changed design. In the 1980s, the Swiss sociologist Lucius Burckhardt (1925-2003) called his research in this field Strollology or Promenadology. Since the late 1940s, he was critically engaged with architecture and planning, urban planning and design, protested as a student against the car-friendly reconstruction of the Gothic old town of Basel and phrased his questions in terms such as: ‘Who plans planning?’, ‘Why is landscape beautiful?’, ‘Design is invisible’, ‘Destroyed by care’ or ‘The smallest possible intervention’. In conveying his ideas, he made use of various media such as text, photography, caricature, happening, action or watercolour and said: "Certain perspectives can probably only be conveyed through art, since the restriction of the gaze is so widespread today that people hardly have the distance anymore to lift it. This can only be conveyed by art without being patronizing or hurtful." In addition, Lucius Burckhardt was involved in the founding of three faculties for design professions: the integrated course of studies in architecture, urban planning and landscape planning at the University of Kassel, the founding advisory board of the Kunsthochschule in Saarbrücken, and as founding dean of the faculty of design at the Bauhaus University in Weimar.