Main Content
Research at the IRS is focused on the spatial aspects and contexts of social action. In doing so, spatial phenomena are explored in terms of both processual and historical dimensions using social-scientific methods.
The IRS' internationalisation strategy exhibits a distinct geographical focus on North America, Scandinavia and Poland. Variegated ties to the latter country were established twenty years ago and have been intensified in the context of the IRS' internationalisation strategy and through on-going collaborative research projects.
In August 1876, Richard Wagner's opera cycle “The Ring of the Nibelung” premiered at the Bayreuth Festival Theatre. Coincidentally, the year 1876 is an important year for river Rhine in an entirely different context, as it also marks the conclusion of one of the largest landscape construction projects in recent European history. From 1817 and 1876, the Upper Rhine was shortened by 80 kilometres (!).
Recurring financial and economic crises, municipalities and counties burdened by austerity measures, the effects of demographic and climate change, global migration flows, and increasingly polarised societies mean that cities and regions in particular face great challenges. This requires novel solutions to weather such crises or, in other words, to become resilient to them.
The Scientific Collections constitute an important specialized academic archive documenting the more recent building and planning history of East Germany with an emphasis on the GDR era. They serve as a repository for personal papers of architects and planners and include drawings, plans, written documents and photographs.
