Welcome and panel discussion

The Principle of the City

with Richard Sennett, David Chipperfield

Thu, Apr 3, 2014
8 pm
Free admission
City - Religion - Capitalism, The Tower of Babel and the Hanging Gardens of Semiramis / Skyline of Shanghai, right: Joan Campderrós-i-Canas, CC BY 2.0, Collage

Welcome: Bernd M. Scherer (Intendant HKW), Thomas Matussek (Geschäftsführer Alfred Herrhausen Gesellschaft)


Panel discussion: David Chipperfield & Richard Sennett

In their discussion, David Chipperfield and Richard Sennett trace an arc from the founding of the early cities of ancient Mesopotamia to the urban developments of the megacities of the 20th and 21st century and complex urban conglomerations of the present.
Moderation: Alexander Kluge, Bernd M. Scherer


David Chipperfield

Architect with offices in London, Berlin, Milan, and Shanghai and current or completed works in more than 15 countries. Royal Academician, RIBA Royal Gold Medal 2011, Praemium Imperiale 2013, director of the 13th Architecture Biennale, Venice (2012).


Richard Sennett

Professor of sociology, London School of Economics & New York University. Focuses include labor, cities, and cultural sociology. Hegel Prize 2006, honorary doctorate from the University of Cambridge. Author of Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation (2012).


The discussants

Eve Blau is adjunct professor of the history of urban form at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard. Her current research is concerned with the urbanism after socialism in Central and Eastern Europe.

Philipp Ekardt is research associate at Freie Universität Berlin. His research interests are: theory and practice of fashion; the motif of architecture in literature, film, and the arts; and the arts and affect around 1800.