Armillary Lectures: Tim Altenhof

Tim Altenhof
Respiratory Modernism: Ideologies of Fresh Air around 1900

In recent years, a number of scholars—the likes of Emanuele Coccia, Eva Horn, Luce Irigaray, Peter Sloterdijk—have attempted to bring the air we breathe and inhabit into focus within the Western philosophical framework, spanning disciplines from evolutionary biology to climate studies. This project seeks to do something similar in the field of modern architecture.
Notions of ventilation have concerned architecture since its beginnings, and architectural theory since Vitruvius has been preoccupied with the movement of air and its implications for human health. Yet seldom does this discourse include the bodily process of breathing; instead, it addresses the replacement of stale air with fresh air by virtue of natural or mechanical means in buildings and cities. But is not architecture conceived for living beings in the first place? If ventilation is of any importance, it is largely because of the workings of our lungs, and ultimately, because our cells call for oxygen.
Breathing is synonymous with life. Because it is vital, it is controlled by the autonomic nervous system and cannot be wilfully overridden. It takes place unconsciously—most of the time. From the mid-nineteenth century onwards, attitudes toward breathing changed significantly. Breathing became a widely exercised and discussed cultural phenomenon, often performed as a conscious act with increased pulmonary awareness. In this talk, we discuss a number of pneumatic phenomena in modern culture, and by looking at one specific structure, we throw into relief the ways in which this new awareness for breathing inflected modernist architecture.

Tim Altenhof is an architect and a university assistant in architec­tural theory at the University of Innsbruck. He holds a PhD from Yale University, where his dissertation, entitled Breathing Space: The Architecture of Pneumatic Beings, was awarded the Theron Rock­well Field Prize in 2018. An excerpt of this work also won the Bruno Zevi Prize 2018. During the fall semester 2022, Tim was an Interna­tional Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities (KWI) Essen, where he worked on his book manuscript, a monograph on the ways in which different conceptions of the atmosphere and a heightened awareness for breathing affected modern architecture in the early twentieth century. The book will be forthcoming in 2025. Tim’s writings appeared in 21:Inquiries, the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Log, Ra. Revista de Arquitectura, and Süddeutsche Zeitung, among others.

About the lecture series:
Armillary spheres are “models of the celestial globe constructed from rings and hoops representing the equator, the tropics, and other celestial circles, and able to revolve on its axis.” This lecture series wants to be a window onto the sphere of academic research, gazing at the different constellations drawn by doctoral dissertations within the horizon of architecture. The course aims to invite researchers who have already obtained a Ph.D. to present their dissertations to an audience of Ph.D. candidates, providing a diverse array of examples and case studies on approaching dissertation work within the field of architecture.