Walls and Fences
Theo Deutinger
2018, Austria
Animation based on book /Lars Müller Publishers, Zürich
Austrian architect, designer, and writer Theo Deutinger is known for projects that cut across geopolitics, urbanism and architecture. His ‘Handbook of Tyranny’ contains relentless and unflinching documentation of the architectures and technologies that create spaces of terror and oppression in today’s world: refugee camps, prisons, slaughterhouses and migration control systems. Its working title was the ‘Neufert of Terror’, and it takes its format and graphic approach from this classic of architectural handbooks, to bring the point across that these systems do not arise out of thin air. For this exhibition, Deutinger created an animation that brings the walls and fences he had drawn to life.
Deutinger: “Hearing of tragedies at the borders of Europe, reading how walls get built between the US and Mexico, there is an urge to understand. Drawing helps to get a grip on what you read in the news. At the same time, it helps to understand what our profession is hiding. Most of the phenomena in the Handbook of Tyranny are designed by engineers, architects, and planners. We should feel responsible and aware of that.”
Theo Deutinger (b. 1971) is an architect, writer, and designer of socio-cultural studies in which he illustrates global issues through pictograms, infographics, and texts. He is the founder and head of The Department (TD), an office that combines architecture with research, visualization, and conceptual thinking at all scale levels from global planning, urban master plans and architecture to graphical and journalistic work.
Deutinger is known for his theoretical writings on the transformation of European urban culture and his publications such as the ‘Handbook of Tyranny’ and ‘Joy and Fear’. His work has been shown at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (Netherlands, 2017), Storefront for Architecture in New York (USA, 2019), and the Swiss Architecture Museum in Basel (Switzerland 2020) among others.