Der Hörsaal als Interaktionsraum. Ein exemplarischer Beitrag zur Archäologie der Vorlesung

This contribution examines the relation between interaction and the built space (architecture), i.e. the built space will be dealt with as a resource for interaction. Compared with sensory perception and motor behaviour, or even cognition and language, the analysis of architecture as a resource for interaction has been strongly neglected up to now. The paper aims at making a step in this direction on the empirical basis of three audio- and video-recorded excerpts of university lecture openings. It will be shown that the architecture of a lecture hall can be analysed as an answer to genuinely interactive problems, the solution to which constitutes the university lecture as a specific type of interaction. Those who speak about university lectures should, therefore, not remain silent about the lecture hall: metaphorically speaking, the lecture hall is full of sedimented solutions of interactional problems that are constitutive of lectures. Accordingly, the analysis of its architecture aims at discovering the deeper layers of the features of these interactional problems. This is the perspective of an archaeology of interaction, which this paper discusses drawing on the archaeology of the university lecture. It is a contribution to understanding how the built space and its signs of usability ('affordances') can be employed as resources for the solution of interactional problems occurring dayto- day.