Weltanschauung as an Ersatz Gestalt

Jan Turnovský (1942-95), born and educated in Prague, emigrated to Austria in 1966 and worked for various architectural firms in Vienna. In 1975 he was appointed as a research and teaching assistant at Technische Universität Wien’s Institute for Architecture and Design. During his tenure, and as temporary head of the institute’s department of residential architecture in 1995, he proved to be an equally dedicated and unorthodox assistant and lecturer. His thinking and intellectual legacy has been influential for an entire generation of younger Austrian architects. This new book presents for the first time Turnovský’s previously unpublished The Weltanschauung as an Ersatz Gestalt as a facsimile-reprint of his illustrated and highly original typo-script. Penned as a thesis to obtain his Master’s degree at the AA in London, the text focuses on a philosophy of “open systems”, which Turnovský applies to the architectural design process. He relates the psychological term “gestalt” to the philosophical weltanschauung: A collective, contemporary, etc. “weltanschauung” always affects our perception of a “gestalt”, in this case a work of architecture. Turnovský questions conventional thinking both critically and constructively and presents his strategy of reading architecture and its elements in new contexts. Text in English and German.