The project is presented as a hosting practice and an exhibition including
a performative installation.
The thesis will be defended in a lecture followed by a discussion in front of the examination
board.
Supervisor: Prof. Jan Svenungsson
Public exhibition03. – 05.03.2025
14:00–18:00
Zentrum Fokus Forschung
Rustenschacherallee 2–4
1020 Vienna
Please come closer! Dare to do so. Only 200 steps away from the Prater, there are great things in small ones and small
things in large ones: a wooden roller coaster, a manned box, a purple chamber of wonders. Shh. Nobody will notice, nobody
will know what is going on in here. But one thing is for sure: thanks to you, this shack will be transformed into an apparatus
of wow.
Public Defense
06.03.2025
10:00–12:30
Zentrum Fokus Forschung
Rustenschacherallee 2-4
1020 Wien
Candidate: Hinnerk Utermann
Examination committee: Prof. Miya Yoshida,
Prof. Jan Svenungsson,
Associate Prof. Ingrid Halland, Prof. Mona Mahall, Heribert Wolfmayr
Architectures
of Proximity explores the experiential understanding of shared spaces and proximity through a ‘building as research’
approach: Four installations, Space Compartment One, Hochsitz, Talking House, and Der Nächste, serve as
experimental apparatuses for hosting gatherings between two people, the architect Hinnerk Utermann and one guest, enabling
reflections on proximity, hospitality, and in-between spaces. The work is inspired by Edward T. Hall’s notion of proxemics,
architectural traditions such as the Japanese Teahouse, and artistic references such as Absalon’s Cellules. The project
proposes a 'miniature utopia' where strangers and those known to each other can encounter one another.
Through
these installations, Architectures of Proximity explores the expanded role of the architect as host, arguing for
responsive and responsible design that prioritizes lived environments over abstract planning. This artistic research foregrounds
subjective insights and embodied knowledge, using an autoethnographic approach. Proximity cannot be objectively measured nor
represented. The chosen methodology thus resists conventional documentation of interactions within the installations, focusing
instead on the process of making and the dynamic exchange between materials, tools, and the creator. Combining autobiographical
notes and a detailed discription of the processes of modeling as research, the work critically examines the relationship between
built environments and human relationships.
