Launch of the DFG Research Training Group 1913

The interdisciplinary DFG Research Training Group ‘Cultural and Technological Significance of Historic Buildings’ at the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg was launched on 2 April 2014 with a lecture by Prof. Dr. Eugen Brühwiler (Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne) and a small celebration in front of the Lehrgebäude 2 AB. The two spokespersons of the Research Training Group, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Klaus Rheidt and Prof. Dr-Ing. Werner Lorenz, welcomed the doctoral candidates and postdoctoral researchers as well as associated academics, after which Eugen Brühwiler demonstrated the tensions between art, technology and society through a series of technical architectural examples from Switzerland. An analysis of these questions in various historical and cultural contexts will be the subject of research by graduates, postdoctoral and external fellows. The research is based on individual studies of buildings and ensembles and the processes of their emergence from antiquity to the 20th century.

On May 20, 2014, Prof. Dr. Sabine Kunst, Minister of Science, Research and Culture, will hold a ceremonial opening of the Research Training Group at the Kunstmuseum Dieselkraftwerk in Cottbus. The conference will be lead by Prof. Dr. Friederike Fless (German Archaeological Institute).