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Despite their differences, sociologists of architecture agree on one fundamental premise: buildings—and architecture more broadly—play a role in shaping social life. The importance of the "agency" of architecture has been equally highlighted in debates in cultural theory. The authors of the publications under discussion here approached this issue through empirical research. We suggest that, in doing so, they make visible the methodological challenges and potentials that confront sociologists of architecture. We aim to offer a comparative overview of some of the newer publications in the German-speaking sociology of architecture which adapt established methods of qualitative sociology to the field of architecture. We review these works through the lens of how well they empirically address the issue of the ways in which architecture can be shown to have agency in society.

This paper deals with Oliver SCHMIDTKE's study of architecture as a professional practice. SCHMIDTKE undertakes to prove that architects form a profession and that architecture represents an activity in need of professionalization. His approach is based on Ulrich OEVERMANN's influential theory of professions, which states that occupational groups become professionalized if they deal, by proxy, with specific crises faced by individuals and communities. In this understanding, architects form a profession because they deal with the practical problem of marking internal and external borders in shared social space. SCHMIDTKE thus examines architectural works with regard to how such crises are aesthetically translated by architects and materialized in an appropriate design vocabulary. His study focuses on the need to professionalize architectural practice in the face of competition from other occupational groups but the analysis of such developments also makes clear the limitations of this theoretical approach to professionalization. Despite this, SCHMIDTKE's account of the professional activity of architects represents an important and highly recommended contribution to the sociology of professions as well as the sociology of architecture. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs090159