Research Profile

Just like the department’s teachings, also its research activities are placed between the poles of "historical analysis and assessment" and "ingenious analysis and handling of historic buildings". The former topic represents the main focus, while structural reinforcement plays a minor role.
The historical approach deals with processes as well as products, constructing as well as structures. Main topics are the interactions between construction, science, architecture and art as well as history and the historicity of self-concepts and attitudes of civil engineers as the basis for a historically well founded critique and as enrichment of nowadays construction practices.
From an evolutionary point of view, the focus is mainly on 19th- and 20th-century structures and buildings influenced by industrial processes. Main points of interest include constructions in iron, steel and reinforced concrete as well as historic brick structures. Attention is given to the Berlin-Brandenburg region, where especially projects in the areas of technical monuments and industrial archaeology have been accomplished.
Besides general literature and source work methodological cornerstones are the techniques and methods of historical building research transferred to ingenious approaches (archival research, in-situ investigations, structural surveys using methods of minimized invasiveness) as well as static-constructive analysis.