A group of researchers is investigating the organisational designs of the first half of the 20th century, using the examples of housing and urban planning, industrial architecture and transport planning. There is now much to suggest that similar approaches were tried out in numerous Western societies to absorb the upheavals of modern industrial society, that ideological and personal continuities can be observed from the 1920s until well into the 1950s, and that these draft orders - not least thanks to the international contacts of the protagonists under investigation - turned out to be similar internationally. Under National Socialism, these ideas of order then underwent a frighteningly unexpected radicalisation.

• Sub-project 1: The organisation of living space(Kuchenbuch)
• Sub-project 2: The organisation of factory space(Luks)
• Sub-project 3: The organisation of traffic space(Schlimm)

The project was funded by the DFG.

Conference report of the workshop on the project in April 2008 here...

Most important publications:

• Etzemüller, Thomas (ed.): Die Ordnung der Moderne. Social Engineering in the 20th Century, Bielefeld 2009
  
• Etzemüller, Thomas: Social engineering as a behavioural theory of the cool head. An introductory sketch, in: Ders. (ed.): Die Ordnung der Moderne. Social Engineering in the 20th Century, Bielefeld 2009, pp. 11-39
  
• Etzemüller, Thomas: "Leisure should create harmonious people": "ambivalent modernity" and the social engineering of everyday life. The "Fritiden" exhibition in Ystad in 1936, in: Historical Anthropology 19, 2011, pp. 372-390
  
• Etzemüller, Thomas: Structured space - integrated community. On the traces of social engineering in 20th century Europe, in: Raphael, Lutz (ed.): Theorien und Experimente der Moderne. European Societies in the 20th Century, Cologne, Weimar, Vienna 2012, pp. 129-154
  
• Etzemüller, Thomas: Rationalising the Individual - Engineering Society: The Case of Sweden, in: Brückweh, Kerstin et al. (eds.): Engineering Society. The Role of the Human and Social Sciences in Modern Societies, 1880-1980, Basingstoke 2012, pp. 97-118
  
• Etzemüller, Thomas: Social engineering, Version: 2.0, in: Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte
  
• Etzemüller, Thomas: Brasilia as an experimental space and Gesamtkunstwerk, in: Böschen, Stefan/Groß, Matthias/Krohn, Wolfgang (eds.): Experimentelle Gesellschaft. The experiment as a knowledge society dispositive, Baden-Baden 2017, pp. 269-289
  
• Kuchenbuch, David: Ordered community. Architects as social engineers - Germany and Sweden in the 20th century, Bielefeld 2010
  
• Kuchenbuch, David: The Peckham Experiment. A micro- and knowledge history of the London "Pioneer Health Centre" in the 20th century, Vienna, Cologne, Weimar 2014.
  
• Luks, Timo: Mass society on the way to the canteen. Factory meals, self-service and "orderly thinking" at Daimler-Benz AG 1948-53, in: Historical Anthropology 17 (2009), pp. 38-55
  
• Luks, Timo: The factory as a site of modernity. On the history of industrial labour, regulatory thinking and social engineering in the 20th century, Bielefeld 2010
  
• Luks, Timo: A modernity in a normal state. Ordnungsdenken und Social Engineering in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts, in: Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften 23 (2012), pp. 9-32
  
• Schlimm, Anette: Orders of transport. Working on modernity - German and British transport expertise in the 20th century, Bielefeld 2011