Architectures of Proximity is an artistic research project (PhD in Art) by Hinnerk Utermann. The project is presented as a hosting practice and an exhibition including a performative installation.
The thesis will be defended in a lecture followed by a discussion in front of the examination board.
Supervisor: Prof. Jan Svenungsson
Public Exhibition
March 3-5, 2025
14:00–18:00
Venue
Zentrum Fokus Forschung
Rustenschacherallee 2-4
1020 Vienna
Please come closer! Dare to do so. Only 200 steps away from the Prater, there are great things in small ones and small things in large ones: a wooden roller coaster, a manned box, a purple chamber of wonders. Shh. Nobody will notice, nobody will know what is going on in here. But one thing is for sure: thanks to you, this shack will be transformed into an apparatus of wow.
Public Defense
March 6, 2025
10:00–12:30
Venue
Zentrum Fokus Forschung
Rustenschacherallee 2-4
1020 Vienna
Candidate: Hinnerk Utermann
Examination committee: Prof. Miya Yoshida, Prof. Jan Svenungsson, Associate Prof. Ingrid Halland, Prof. Mona Mahall, Heribert Wolfmayr
Architectures of Proximity explores the experiential understanding of shared spaces and proximity through a ‘building as research’ approach: Four installations, Space Compartment One, Hochsitz, Talking House, and Der Nächste, serve as experimental apparatuses for hosting gatherings between two people, the architect Hinnerk Utermann and one guest, enabling reflections on proximity, hospitality, and in-between spaces. The work is inspired by Edward T. Hall’s notion of proxemics, architectural traditions such as the Japanese Teahouse, and artistic references such as Absalon’s Cellules. The project proposes a ‘miniature utopia’ where strangers and those known to each other can encounter one another.
Through these installations, Architectures of Proximity explores the expanded role of the architect as host, arguing for responsive and responsible design that prioritizes lived environments over abstract planning. This artistic research foregrounds subjective insights and embodied knowledge, using an autoethnographic approach. Proximity cannot be objectively measured nor represented. The chosen methodology thus resists conventional documentation of interactions within the installations, focusing instead on the process of making and the dynamic exchange between materials, tools, and the creator. Combining autobiographical notes and a detailed discription of the processes of modeling as research, the work critically examines the relationship between built environments and human relationships.
