Building Operations & an Almost Self–Operating University

Abstract

This paper combines two reports: the first on the building of the Architectural Faculty at the Technical University in Berlin, and the second, on the HafenCity University in Hamburg. An account of the interrelations between a building’s maintenance by caretakers then with a Facility’s Management system and the usage of the buildings; including the effects of these interdependence on teaching and studying, offers a critique of the way in way which a neoliberal audit culture has affect building operations.

Keywords:

• building maintenance
• new materialism
• facility management
• computing system
• university administration
• actor-network theory

Notes

1. “Building and Service–management,” TU–Berlin, https://www.facilities.tu-berlin.de/iv_g_aussendienste/menue/referat_c_hausverwaltung/ (accessed April 2, 2019).

2. Principal caretaker of the Technical University–Berlin in discussion with the author, April 2016.

3. Bruno Latour and Albena Yaneva, “Give me a Gun and I will make all Buildings Move: An ANT's View of Architecture,” January 2008, http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/P-138-BUILDING-VENICEpdf.pdf (accessed July 20, 2019).

4. Budget- and Controlling Department of the TU–Berlin, https://www.haushalt.tu-berlin.de/haushalt/menue/iv_e_haushalt_und_controlling/ (accessed April 2, 2019).

5. Campus–Management TU–Berlin, https://www.campusmanagement.tu-berlin.de/menue/campusmanagement_projekt/menue/sap_informationen/ (accessed April 2, 2019).

6. German Facility Management Association, http://www.gefma.de/de nition.html (accessed March 12, 2016).

7. Dr. Walter Pelka, engineering President of HafenCity University Hamburg in HCU-portfolio “The future is metropolitan,” https://www.hcu-hamburg.de/fileadmin/documents/Universitaet/Imagebroschuere_englisch_Juli_2015.pdf (accessed September 12, 2019).

8. “Meilensteine,” 2009 Planung des Neuen Gebäudes der HCU. https://www.hcu-hamburg.de/universitaet/das-profil-der-hcu/meilensteine/ (accessed September 12, 2019).

9. The Authority for Science, Research and Equality in Press archives of the Harbour City Hamburg, https://www.hamburg.de/pressearchiv-fhh/1029472/2008-12-19-bwf-neubau-hcu/ (accessed September 12, 2019).

10. https://www.hcu-hamburg.de/universitaet/das-profil-der-hcu/meilensteine/ (accessed September 13, 2019).

11. A Caretaker of the HCU in discussion with the author, April 2018.

12. The New Building of the HafenCity University, https://www.hcu-hamburg.de/universitaet/der-neubau/das-gebaeude/ (accessed September 10, 2019).

13. https://www.ahoi.hcu-hamburg.de/scripts/mgrqispi.dll?APPNAME = CampusNet&PRGNAME = EXTERNALPAGES&ARGUMENTS=-N000000000000001,-N000316,-Awelcome (accessed September, 2019)

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Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bettina Vismann

Bettina Vismann is an architect, performing artist and scholar based in Berlin. Her research, practice and teaching experience lies at the intersection of matters relating to tangible reality and the built environment. Referring to a three-field-system, she cultivates her scientific research on dust, in the realm of applied and performing arts, working toward a collective mode of knowledge-production. Alongside her artistic engagement with this subject-matter, with works shown at Dirt-Apparatus, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, future archeology and ruinehq.org, her research has been published in, among others, the journals Grey Room, Volume, Urban China Magazine and Textures of the Anthropocene: Grain Vapor Ray.