Revolution and Canon: International Classicisms around 1800.
Karlsruher Institut für Technologie – Institut für Kunst- und Baugeschichte, Nov 19–20, 2026
Deadline: May 25, 2026
At a time of fundamental social and political upheaval, when the emancipatory impulses of the revolutions in the United States and France were making themselves felt across the world, architecture around 1800 turned back to the canon of classical forms. This apparent tension between bourgeois transformation and cultural continuity continues to raise questions of both a historical and historiographical nature:
• Historically, it is necessary to identify the driving forces and conditioning factors behind the international search for a binding classicist canon of values. What means were deployed? What intentions lay behind them? How do these differ from place to place, and how are they connected?
• Historiographically, the interplay between canon formation and educational canon also sheds light on current calls for a decanonisation of what has hitherto been an overly Eurocentric architectural historiography. How do contemporary questions and paradigms in historiography change the ways in which classicism is read?
The occasion for the conference is the 200th anniversary of the death of Friedrich Weinbrenner (1766–1826), Director of Building in Karlsruhe. His work and life bear witness to the thematic complexity of the classicist canon, as confirmed both in the local context and in national and international comparisons of classicist architectures of those years. Weinbrenner was responsible for the architectural and urban transformation of the royal residence city. In doing so, he occupied an ambivalent position amid the bourgeois upheavals of the age: on the one hand, he remained chief architect of the court and municipal building administration of a patrimonial state (from 1806, the Grand Duchy of Baden); on the other, the privately run (state-supported) school of architecture he directed was to merge with Johann Gottfried Tulla’s school of engineering in 1825 to form the first polytechnic school on the French model in the German-speaking world. Several of Weinbrenner’s later works, including the Durlach Pumphouse, testify to the polytechnic spirit of technical innovation, economic efficiency, and civic emancipation. His students contributed to the international reception of his work and to the dissemination of his architectural teaching: through them, his influence reached as far as the United States, where several of his former students emigrated. The geographical reach of such episodes makes tangible how thoroughly classicism around 1800 was already embedded in international networks, within which a canon of classical forms and educational ideals was reflected upon and reconstituted in international discourse.
By combining both perspectives on as broad an international basis as possible, the conference aims to open new viewpoints and deeper insights into the multilayered structures of meaning attached to the classical in architecture around 1800. Using specific works and actors as points of departure, it will examine architecture and urbanism – both as academic disciplines and as productive practices – with regard to their artistic, technical, and social dimensions. The goal is to arrive, through dialogical exchange, at a comparative perspective and thereby at an expanded, internationally networked understanding of the classical and its manifold implications around 1800. Five thematic sections will provide the framework and guidelines for this dialogue:
• Scientification and technologization of classicism
• Territorial and colonial strategies of classicism
• Concepts of nature and landscape in classicism
• Teaching methods and design methods of classicism
• Cultural heritage and archives of classicism
Programme
• 5 panels over two days, 20 papers in total
• Excursion to Karlsruhe and surroundings, 21 November
Abstract Submissions
• Deadline: 25 May 2026
• https://forms.gle/Hx3S27pa8ffqgNgo9
• Abstracts: max. 2,500 characters (including spaces) + short CV max. 500 characters (including spaces)
• Notification of acceptance: 30 May 2026
Languages
English, German, or French
Conception and Organisation
Prof. Dr. Joaquín Medina Warmburg, Dr. Marco Silvestri, Dr. Federico Garrido Karlsruhe Institute of Technology – Faculty of Architecture Institute for Art and Architectural History (IKB) Chair of Architectural and Building History
In cooperation with saai – Archive for Architecture and Civil Engineering (KIT)
In case of questions or problems, please contact us at ba*@*****it.edu
