Architecture and Cities Research Forum: ‘Learning in conflict: Jörn Janssen and the development of a Marxist-Leninist history and theory of architecture’ by Alessandro Toti

The presentation discussed Jörn Janssen’s theoretical and pedagogical efforts to analyse architecture from a Marxist-Leninist perspective in the early 1970s. Janssen scientifically situated architecture in the socio-economic dynamics of capitalist development, and examined it as an instrument of profit accumulation and workers’ exploitation. This understanding allowed him and his students to develop a clear agenda, aiming, to unveil the opposition between capital and labour at the core of every capitalist building; and to demonstrate that only revolutionary change could address this structural contradiction and liberate architecture from being an instrument of class exploitation.