Focus: A Future Without Architects? Architecture and the Sharing Economy

Sabine Gruber, Social Scientist
Christian Kern, Institute of Art and Design, Vienna University of Technology
Karoline Mayer, Az W
Andreas Rumpfhuber, Expanded Design, Architecture Theorist
Sarah Spiekermann, Professor, Institute for Management Information Systems, Vienna University of Economics and Business
moderated by Anne Isopp, Architectural Journalist

We live at a time when our jobs are threatening to dry up despite rising productivity. This increasing scarcity of employment is tied to factors such as rationalisation, the increasing automatization of many tasks, and ultimately the much praised sharing economy. An evening dedicated to A Future Without Architects? pursues the question of whether the “digital revolution” will revolutionise architecture and so the architect’s profession, as is so often claimed, or simply render them redundant. The aim is to stimulate a serious engagement with the future of architecture and of handcraft in the context of the social and technological developments of recent decades.