Recreating Berlin: Architectures and Infrastructures of Pleasure

• In Event: 3551 - Section on Sociology of Culture Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: 7. Culture Section Network: Material Culture

Abstract

How can pleasure come to define an urban space and vice versa? This paper works towards developing a sociology of pleasure to investigate the iconic status of Berlin in popular culture today. Drawing on several case studies: a legendary underground techno venue, iconic sex-positive dance club and a network of art galleries, we discuss the important role of architecture in framing and conditioning experiences. Buildings, as an indispensible part of the urban fabric, often appear to blend into the background as mere setting or container. Instead we argue that these are part and parcel of phenomenological experience and relied upon for shared cultural meaning-making that can be translated into cultural atmospheres. The way to understand buildings is not to reify them as the achievements of architects or singular containers of action but as interconnected sets of affordances. These case studies illuminate how cities define and recreate themselves as hubs of pleasure and ‘creativity’, and how the iconicity of a place is established and proliferates.

Authors

• Dominik Bartmanski, TU Berlin

• Martin Fuller