The Institutionalization of Hospitality

The sick, the criminal, the poor and the stranger; these groups are hardly seen as parts of society today, having been excluded and marginalized for centuries. Among other things, the institutionalization of hospitality is to blame. Institutional heteronomy must be dismantled, that is, housing must be deinstitutionalized, while a community-based care network of many small institutions is postulated. When people live in an institutional context, it is not legally permissible to speak of "housing" but only of "accommodation". By separating the question of housing from the question of treatment, it is also made possible for sick or delinquent people to move into their own living space, which protects their personal individuality.

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This work was awarded with the "Daniel Gössler Belobigung" for outstanding work in architectural theory.

In his master's thesis, Lukas Großmann asks: How do we treat minorities and marginalized groups? And how can architecture contribute to changing society? Specifically, the author is concerned with marginalized groups such as delinquents, the sick, the poor, strangers, "lunatics and fools" - and the institutionalization that manifests itself analogously in building typologies of prisons, hospitals, poorhouses, refugee shelters and much more. "The author begins with a convincing historical analysis of hospitality, its institutionalization and service-like building typology since antiquity. In doing so, he takes into account different interests with consequences for architectural theory: The contexts, how they are interpreted and instrumentalized, are excellently revealed in the work,"

- the jury's verdict.

Part of the theoretical elaboration of my master thesis was a manifesto to be used as a planning guideline for an archetype for socially fair, barrier-free, inclusive and deinstitutionalized housing typologies

Some scientifically substantiated statements were publicly displayed in the form of posters during the exhibition of the master's theses in front of the Faculty of Architecture.

In addition, diagrams were created that, on the one hand, identify milestones in the institutionalization of hospitality, demonstrating that different institutions that share a common origin (such as the prison, the hospital, and the hotel) acted more and more autonomously over time and today have nothing to do with each other, while, on the other hand, the architectural typologies that these institutions make use of seem to be freely chosen, counteracting the autonomization of the organizations. The floor plans of hotels, prisons, hospitals and even monasteries are still very similar today.

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