Antje Senarclens de Grancy (2022), Lager und Architektur in der Moderne. Architekturhistorische Perspektiven auf die Kriegsflüchtlingslager der Habsburgermonarchie, Institute of Architectural Theory, Art History and Cultural Studies

Habilitation committee: Matthias Castorph, Urs Hirschberg, Anselm Wagner, Franziska Hederer, David Roufaiel, Dorothee Hippler

Antje Senarclens de Grancy, Associate Professor at the Institute of Architectural Theory, Art History and Cultural Studies since 2022, received her venia legendi in Architectural History at Graz University of Technology in the aforementioned year. Over the past few years, her research and teaching have primarily revolved around the network of relationships between modernist architecture and urbanism and the "modern camp" as a technology, spatial structure, and political instrument in the early 20th century, a historical subject area which, nevertheless gains particular present-day relevance due to the omnipresence of the camp in connection with global phenomena such as (forced) migration, repression, and radical political changes. This endeavor has taken her to the University of Edinburgh / College of Art and ENSA Paris La Villette as a visiting researcher.

Her habilitation thesis Lager und Architektur in der Moderne. Architekturhistorische Perspektiven auf die Kriegsflüchtlingslager der Habsburgermonarchie emerged as a product of this research and will be published in book form in 2024. The study focuses on the barracks run by the K.K. Ministry of the Interior for up to 30,000 people each (refugees and forced evacuees from the front regions of the monarchy), which not only served as emergency accommodation for the homeless but also as an instrument of internment and control. She links the refugee camps planned by architects and engineers with contemporary local and international fields of discourse, experimentation, and practice in architecture––the focus hereby lies on, for instance, the plotting of land, prefabrication, acceleration of construction, urbanism and urban hygiene, and settlement and small-scale housing––thus opening up new perspectives on the architectural history of modernism.