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autore |
KATE NESBITT |
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titolo |
THEORIZING A NEW AGENDA FOR
ARCHITECTURE: AN ANTHOLOGY OF ARCHITECTURAL THEORY 1965-1995 |
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editore |
PRINCETON
ARCHITECTURAL PRESS |
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luogo |
PRINCETON,
USA |
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anno |
1996 |
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lingua |
INGLESE |
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Titolo originale:
Theorizing a new agenda for architecture: an anthology of architectyral
theory 1965-1995 |
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Argomento e tematiche affrontate |
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The book collects fifty-one of the most significant
essays on architectural theory. It proposes a reexamination of the discipline
of the last thirty years which have been as Kate Nesbitt said a dynamic
period in which architecture has confronted a crisis of meaning.In
the process the postmodern era has produced widely divergent and radical
viewpoints on the tradition of architecture and its relationship to society and the city. Brought together,
the writings serve as a first-hand introduction to the important themes of
this contentious time in which architects have drawn new theoretical
paradigms from other disciplines, including philosophy, literature and
psychoanalysis, and architectural theory has become truly interdisciplinary. The book will not only lead to a wider understanding and evaluation
of the contemporary period in architecture but will also be useful to anyone
interested in postmodern culture and theory. |
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Giudizio Complessivo: 7,5 (scala 1-10) |
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Scheda compilata da: Gaia Terlicher & Gianluigi Zonni |
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Corso di Architettura e Composizione Architettonica 3 a.a. 2014/2015 |
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Autore Kate Nesbitt |
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Kate Nesbitt is an experienced teacher and practitioner in the fields
of architecture, writing, fitness, and dance. As an entrepreneur, she has
owned and operated Pilates Virginia, LLC since 2000 and has been frequently
recognized in the Best of Cville rankings. |
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Contenuto |
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The collection begins with an excerpt from Robert Venturi’s
"Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture," the now classic book
originally published in 1966 that radically changed attitudes about modern
architecture by critiquing then current technological utopias, expressionist
fantasies and formulaic repetitions of the canonical works of the Modern Movement. The paradigms Nesbitt uses to
organize the chapters include postmodernism, semiotics and structuralism, poststructuralism and deconstruction, historicism, political and ethical agendas, feminism and critical regionalism. |
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CAPITOLI |
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Capitolo
1 – POSTMODERNISM: ARCHITECTURAL RESPONSES TO THE
CRISIS WITHIN MODERNISM |
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COMPLEXITY AND CONTRADICTION IN ARCHITECTURE –
Robert Venturi |
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Modern architecture is too reductive, characterized by
pure and too simplified solutions which give a sense of bore. It isn't a
level with the modern science, art or poetry which are influenced by the
important theory of inclusion: inclusiveness produces positive artistic
tension. Architecture needs complexity in form and function; Moderns
idealized the purity and the elementary, the separation and the exclusion
against the inclusion and the variety. “Less is more” means to select which
problem to solve in architecture, but the architect must select only how to
solve all the problems. Like Khan said: “Aesthetic simplicity derives from
inner complexity” (ex. the Doric temple), and it's important to understand
that the true meaning of an artwork is in the discrepancies between what it
seems and what it is. The architectural contradiction must be a sort of
conflict between opposites and
research of balance, like a progressive debate leaning toward
evolution and improvement. It's important that complexity never becomes only
picturesqueness, but it must characterize also the architectural program and
not only the desire of expression. |
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POSTUNCTIONALISM – Peter Eisenman |
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The idea that relationship between function and form
has been a characteristic of architecture was born during the Renaissance,
when humanist buildings were a balance between program and aesthetic
articulation. When the industrialization introduced some new functions, form
was not more enough and so function dominated. During the 20th
century arises a new-functionalist
vision whose ambition is creating an architecture as a kind of ethically
constituted form-giving, in which “form follows function”. The manifestation
of this Moderns' ideology is the abstraction, the atonality and the atemporality of their buildings. After that,
Postmodernism asserts itself as a trend which recognizes Modernism as a new
and independent sensibility; there is in it the humanistic reference to the
relationship between form and function, but it is seen as a dialectic
comparison within the form itself. In fact, on the one side there is the
unity of form which is the recognizable transformation of platonic solid
models; and on the other the fragmentation of the atemporal
form which doesn't lean toward an elementary condition. And so we must
advocate a dialectic between typology and fragmentation of typical forms into
signs. |
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A CASE FOR FIGURATIVE ARCHITECTURE – Micheal Graves |
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As reaction of the human anthropomorphic original
architecture, which was characterized by the figurative power of express the myths
and rituals of that society, Modernism undermined poetic in favor of not
figurative and abstraction. The alienating continuous spaces of Modern
architecture show a big lack of character. In architecture there could be 2
forms of communication: the standard one (Modernism), that is more technical
and practice; and the poetic one, which is characterized by symbol, culture
and myths and that must be the principal value of a building. Architectural
elements require distinction one from another (while Modernism confused it);
they need distinction because every one reminds a
different symbolic meaning. Architecture needs to be grounded in nature and
read in anthropomorphic manner and the architect must consider the
possibility to have a big palette of solution if he allows the technical
space of Modern architecture and the enclosure of tradition. |
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THE RELEVANCE OF CLASSICAL ARCHITECTURE – Demetri Porphyrios |
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Under the point of view of an authentic classicism,
the mathematical abstraction of city advocated by Modernism was the
extinction of symbolic meaning, where buildings created sprawl and deprived
the city of meaningful hierarchies. Modernism is mute, unable to transcend
the materiality, a sort of tabula rasa as a vision of a liberated society
which refuses all the tradition. Postmodernism on the other side, remains
based on an eclectic attitude; it shows itself for the contrivance it is:
high-tech works wanted to show the development of engineering, but in the end
they only make-believe because they didn't apply the technologies only
showing false ones; classical works wanted to rework about firmness,
commodity and delight, but in the end the made only a parody;
deconstructionist works wanted to reject order, intelligibility and tradition
but they didn't have a valid socially-grounded critical platform. The
solution of a good base for architecture is to reuse the old traditional
urban fabric: the wisdom of the traditional and ethnic city and the imitative
celebration of construction and shelter qualified by the myths and the ideas
of a given culture. Architecture has to do with decisions concerning the
good, the decent, the proper; it depends on period, but is architects'
responsibility to define it. |
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NEW DIRECTIONS IN MODERN AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE – Robert
Stern |
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Postmodernism seeks to resolve the modernist split
between rationalism (importance to function) and realism (importance to
culture and history) considering architectural shapes as real rather than abstract
and cognizant of their utilitarian purpose, their history, theit phisical, social,
cultural and political context. There
are 3 main areas of Postmodernism: the allusionism
(importance to cultural memory), the contextualism
(importance to city), the ornamentalism (importance
to facade). The first one is based on a vision of buildings that should
convey meaning within society, in particular using appropriate references to
the past that could enrich new works and help architects and users
communicate better their intentions. The second one advocates buildings as
fragments of a larger urban whole and the importance of the power of fragment
as an element of composition. The last one, in the end, stressed the
importance of figuration and compositional use of historical fragments where
the decorated wall responds to the innate human need for elaboration of the
building's elements in relation to the human scale. In this last case,
postmodernists recognize that buildings are designed to mean something and that
they aren't hermetically objects, they wanted complexity and variability (not
“less is more”, but “more is more”!). |
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Capitolo
4 – HISTORICISM: THE PROBLEM OF TRADITION |
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THREE KINDS OF HISTORICISM - Alan Colquhoun |
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According to the classical view, values have always
derived from the immutable natural law. So the value of history for the first
historians (Hume, Montesquieu) was linked to found evidence of the existence
of this natural laws and equally architecture and arts had a value only as imitation
of nature. But the historicist view showed progressively how the work of man
couldn't have the same objective of the natural world, because men and
institutions could be studied only in relation to the context of their
historical development, and not in a fixed system of rules like nature ones.
This view converged into a relativism of cultures in which the ideal of each
historical period could be revealed from case to case. This relativizing is
connected with eclettism in art and architecture. Eclettism also was born from the attitude toward history
of the 18th century and from a big sense of nostalgia and
irretrievable loss to the classicism. Eclettism had
two forms: coexistence of styles side by side, or necessity to rebuild a
specific style bearer of a social reform. But relativism showed how a
particular spatial-temporal culture could not be judged except on its own
terms. So historicists were not able to accept this; two has been the ways to
avoid this implications of relativism: representing a historical period like
a paradigm or thinking through a flight into the future, with the motion of a
potential ideal, which historical events were leading up to. In this way was
born the idea of history determined by final causes; this is what was the
base of the avant-gardes in 19th e 20th centuries. They
turned back on tradition and started creating new forms under the impulse of
social and technological development which have their potency into the
future. But a blind faith in the future has the effect of handing over
control of the architectural environment to market forces and their
bureaucratic representatives. So historicists restarted to look at the past
with the awareness of impossibility that past can be applied to our own time
and the difficulty to imagine a culture that ignores the historical
tradition. So today, how can cultural memory manifest itself? A valid
approach to the problem is to consider architecture as an autonomous
discipline with a set of aesthetic norms as result of historical and cultural
accumulation and which takes its meaning from this. This system of forms
could be the mean through which the architecture could be constantly aware of
his own history, constantly critical of the seduction of history, constantly
leading to the progress. |
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THE
END OF THE CLASSICAL – Peter Eisenman |
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Architecture has lost its legitimacy in a time of
general crisis of values and, in particular, it has suffered 3 specifics
fictions: fiction of reason, linked to the idea of meaning; fiction of representation,
linked to the idea of truth; fiction of history, linked to the idea of
timeless. About the first, we can say that before renaissance
there was a congruence of language and representation, and the language
produced meaning. After Renaissance, the message of the past was used to
verify the meaning of the present. Modern architecture, instead, claimed that
it was not necessary for the architecture to represent another architecture;
architecture was solely to embody its own function (“..the form follows
function...”). But modern functionalism showed to be a sort of research of
pure and undecorated objects representing reality equivalent to the
simulacrum of the classical in Renaissance. Post-modernists tried to return
modernist abstraction to history but they failed when tried to distinguish
“architecture as is” and architecture “as message”. In fact, in a period in
which there is no distinction between representation and reality, when
reality is only simulation, the representation loses its a priori source of
significance, and becomes a simulation too. About the second fiction, we can say that before the
Renaissance the idea of origin belonged to an a priori universe of values.
After Renaissance, origins were sought in natural, divine or cosmological
geometries. Against this, Enlightenment architecture aspired to a rational
process of design whose ends were a product of pure secular reason; but
through the evolution of consciousness , the reason exposed itself to be a
fiction, linked to a network of valueladen arguments
dependent on teleology of rationality. About the third fiction, we can say that before 15th
century there was no concept of “forward movement” of time, and art was
ineffable and timeless. After 15th century, the idea of a temporal
succession emerged. The consciousness of the process of an historical change
was seen in 19th century as the idea of zeitgeist: the idea of “a
spirit of the time” which includes all the specific cultural tendencies of an
age. So modern architecture, by invoking the zeitgeist, only continued to act
as the “midwife to historically significant form” trying to break with the
past but remaining trapped in the illusion of the eternity of their time. In
the late 20th century, the representation of a zeitgeist was seen
as the paradox of replication of a past time to invoke the timeless as the
expression of a present time. It must be concluded that classical values were
always simulations and not seen to be so in light of a present rupture of
history. |
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FROM CONTRAST TO ANALOGY - Ignasi de Solà-Morales |
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The relationship between a new architecture and the
already existing ones depends on the cultural values of both of them. The new
architecture produces a genuine interpretation of the existing historical
material. The contrast between old and new makes no pretence of being a
negative judgment, but it could
valorize historic treasures. Antiquity is now no longer a system of exemplary
value as prior models of the good, but a subjective quality that produces a
psychological satisfaction derived from a view of the old as manifestation of
the historical time, that affirms a collective common sensibility. This
sensibility appears stronger in the contrast between old and new, because the
meaning in any field of the visual arts is produced through juxtaposition,
interrelation and contrast (... like a collage or a photo-montage...). But the predominance of the category of
contrast already belongs to the past. The new situation is characterized by
the analogical procedure, that is based on the association made by the
observer over the course of time. Thanks to the connotative capacity of the
languages evoked in the architectural intervention, relations are established
between old and new ( according to Grassi and
Viollet-Le-Duc). But today the cultural crisis is a crisis of universal
models and so it's not possible to formulate an aesthetic system to make it
applicable beyond the individual circumstances. As an aesthetic operation,
the architectural intervention is the imaginative, arbitrary and free
proposal by which one seeks not only to recognize the significant structures
of the existing historical material but also to use them as analogical marks
of the new constructions. |
|
|
TYPOLOGY
AND DESIGN METHOD – Alan Colquhoun |
|
|
The means of that art that preceded the development of scientific
method, were something linked to an “imitation, tradition and model” context
because they had in the past not only an “use” value, but also an “exchange”
one. They needed to communicate the artists' message. The Modern Movement
wanted to modify the representational system of this preindustrial past, tryng to impose the ability of science to imitate forms
in nature's mode of operation: this method was the biothecnical
determinism: there are no more forms
that are aesthetically accomplished by their belonging to an old system of
representation, but the completeness of a form now derives only from its
logical organization and realization. This modern doctrine contradicts ant
theory which gives importance to an intentional iconic form. But, indeed, a
purely teleological doctrine of technical determinism is not tenable. There
is always a stage in the design process in which the designer has to make
voluntary decisions and configurations which are result of an intention (for
example the plastic events of Ronchamp by LC are
not regulated by any formula). So there are this two contradictory ideas in
Modern Movement, in particular Moderns believed that the phase of intuition
worked in a cultural vacuum. This
freedom of intuition was particularly based on the expressionist theory,
which says that there is an unique system of interpretations, shapes and
forms; against this, Gombrich says that the
interpretation depends on the particular cultural ambiance and that the area
of intuition must be based on a knowledge of past solutions applied to
related problems, and that creation is a process of adopting forms from the
needs of past to the needs of the present. Nowadays it's necessary that
type-solutions play in relation to new problem. This process is carried out
by a method of exclusion of ideologically repulsive iconic elements. |
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|
THE
THIRD TYPOLOGY – Anthony Vidler |
|
|
The foundation of typology could be found in the
idea of nature as organic analogy (Enlightenment), in the industrial
production as machine analogy (Modernism) and in the city (Postmodernism).
The first typology was founded on a rational order of nature: the primary
geometries for the combination of type-elements were seen as expressive of
the form of nature. The second typology was founded on the system of the
machine: the primary geometries were seen as the most appropriate for machine
tooling. This two old group of typologies were linked to something out of
them. The third, instead, refers only to its own nature as architectural
elements and their geometries are essentially architectural. This typology
stands complete and ready to be de-composed into fragments which are selected
and reassembled according 3 levels of meaning: past experience of the forms,
choice of the specific fragment with its boundaries and re-composition of
these fragments in a new context. With this third typology, architecture
could only be understood by the experience of the city with its public space,
institutional forms and political implications. When a typical form is
selected by the past, it isn't deprived of its original meaning, but it's
moved to its new actual meaning (for example Rossi's City All in Trieste
refers to the prison type...). This typology refuses any nostalgia of
history, all unitary descriptions of the social meaning of form, all
eclecticism, filtering its “quotations” through the lens of a modernist aestetic. |
|
|
THREE KINDS OF HISTORICISM - Alan Colquhoun |
|
|
According to
the classical view, values have always derived from the immutable natural
law. So the value of history for the first historians (Hume, Montesquieu) was
linked to found evidence of the existence of this natural laws and equally
architecture and arts had a value only as imitation of nature. But the
historicist view showed progressively how the work of man couldn't have the
same objective of the natural world, because men and institutions could be
studied only in relation to the context of their historical development, and
not in a fixed system of rules like nature ones. This view converged into a
relativism of cultures in which the ideal of each historical period could be
revealed from case to case. This relativizing is connected with eclettism in art and architecture. Eclettism
also was born from the attitude toward history of the 18th century
and from a big sense of nostalgia and irretrievable loss to the classicism. Eclettism had two forms: coexistence of styles side by
side, or necessity to rebuild a specific style bearer of a social reform. But
relativism showed how a particular spatial-temporal culture could not be
judged except on its own terms. So historicists were not able to accept this;
two has been the ways to avoid this implications of relativism: representing
a historical period like a paradigm or thinking through a flight into the
future, with the motion of a potential ideal, which historical events were
leading up to. In this way was born the idea of history determined by final causes;
this is what was the base of the avant-gardes in 19th e 20th
centuries. They turned back on tradition and started creating new forms under
the impulse of social and technological development which have their potency
into the future. But a blind faith in the future has the effect of handing
over control of the architectural environment to market forces and their
bureaucratic representatives. So historicists restarted to look at the past
with the awareness of impossibility that past can be applied to our own time
and the difficulty to imagine a culture that ignores the historical
tradition. So today, how can cultural memory manifest itself? A valid
approach to the problem is to consider architecture as an autonomous
discipline with a set of aesthetic norms as result of historical and cultural
accumulation and which takes its meaning from this. This system of forms
could be the mean through which the architecture could be constantly aware of
his own history, constantly critical of the seduction of history, constantly
leading to the progress. |
|
|
THE
END OF THE CLASSICAL – Peter Eisenman |
|
|
Architecture has lost its legitimacy in a time of
general crisis of values and, in particular, it has suffered 3 specifics
fictions: fiction of reason, linked to the idea of meaning; fiction of
representation, linked to the idea of truth; fiction of history, linked to
the idea of timeless. About the first, we can say that before renaissance
there was a congruence of language and representation, and the language
produced meaning. After Renaissance, the message of the past was used to
verify the meaning of the present. Modern architecture, instead, claimed that
it was not necessary for the architecture to represent another architecture;
architecture was solely to embody its own function (“..the form follows
function...”). But modern functionalism showed to be a sort of research of
pure and undecorated objects representing reality equivalent to the
simulacrum of the classical in Renaissance. Post-modernists tried to return modernist
abstraction to history but they failed when tried to distinguish
“architecture as is” and architecture “as message”. In fact, in a period in
which there is no distinction between representation and reality, when
reality is only simulation, the representation loses its a priori source of
significance, and becomes a simulation too. About the second fiction, we can say that before the
Renaissance the idea of origin belonged to an a priori universe of values. After
Renaissance, origins were sought in natural, divine or cosmological
geometries. Against this, Enlightenment architecture aspired to a rational
process of design whose ends were a product of pure secular reason; but
through the evolution of consciousness , the reason exposed itself to be a
fiction, linked to a network of valueladen arguments
dependent on teleology of rationality. About the third fiction, we can say that before 15th
century there was no concept of “forward movement” of time, and art was
ineffable and timeless. After 15th century, the idea of a temporal
succession emerged. The consciousness of the process of an historical change
was seen in 19th century as the idea of zeitgeist: the idea of “a
spirit of the time” which includes all the specific cultural tendencies of an
age. So modern architecture, by invoking the zeitgeist, only continued to act
as the “midwife to historically significant form” trying to break with the
past but remaining trapped in the illusion of the eternity of their time. In
the late 20th century, the representation of a zeitgeist was seen
as the paradox of replication of a past time to invoke the timeless as the
expression of a present time. It must be concluded that classical values were
always simulations and not seen to be so in light of a present rupture of
history. |
|
|
FROM CONTRAST TO ANALOGY - Ignasi de Solà-Morales |
|
|
The relationship between a new architecture and the already
existing ones depends on the cultural values of both of them. The new
architecture produces a genuine interpretation of the existing historical
material. The contrast between old and new makes no pretence of being a
negative judgment, but it could
valorize historic treasures. Antiquity is now no longer a system of exemplary
value as prior models of the good, but a subjective quality that produces a
psychological satisfaction derived from a view of the old as manifestation of
the historical time, that affirms a collective common sensibility. This
sensibility appears stronger in the contrast between old and new, because the
meaning in any field of the visual arts is produced through juxtaposition,
interrelation and contrast (... like a collage or a photo-montage...). But the predominance of the category of
contrast already belongs to the past. The new situation is characterized by
the analogical procedure, that is based on the association made by the
observer over the course of time. Thanks to the connotative capacity of the
languages evoked in the architectural intervention, relations are established
between old and new ( according to Grassi and
Viollet-Le-Duc). But today the cultural crisis is a crisis of universal
models and so it's not possible to formulate an aesthetic system to make it
applicable beyond the individual circumstances. As an aesthetic operation,
the architectural intervention is the imaginative, arbitrary and free
proposal by which one seeks not only to recognize the significant structures
of the existing historical material but also to use them as analogical marks
of the new constructions. |
|
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CAPITOLO 5 - TYPOLOGY AND TRANSFORMATION |
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ON
THE TYPOLOGY OF ARCHITECTURE – Giulio Carlo Argan |
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|
Typology could be seen as the essence of postmodern
architecture, linked to the Quincy's definition of “idea of an element which
should serve as a rule for the model”. For Moneo is
“the structural and formal order that allows to group, distinguish and repeat
architectures” while Rossi finds a continuity between type and history as
necessary to give architecture legibility within a culture. All things
considered, types (archetypes) could be seen like “root forms” which have
analogues formal and functional properties. There is analogy between
architectural typology and iconography: typology is not the determining
factor of design, but it's always in evidence such as iconography in
figurative arts. It's based on a sort of symbolism or a ritual patter. But we
don't know if this symbolic contents exist before or we deduce them
subsequently. The notion of vagueness of the type explains its generation:
it's never formulated a priori but always deduced from a series of instances,
fusions and confrontations. The birth of a type is dependent to the existence
of a series of building with formal and functional aspects. The type is the
root, neutral, simpler form that expresses a specific historical context; so
it may allow variation assuming a particular character at any particular time
or the creation of new types too. The position of architect in front of
history has two aspects: typology itself and formal definition. About
typology, the artist assumes data, taking as a premise of all his work a
group of common notion with all their explicit content and ideological
overtones. About formal definition, it implies a reference to definite formal
values of the past. Bettini and Konig
says that an architectural type must be treated as a scheme of spatial
articulation which has been formed in response to practical and ideological
demands. In conclusion, we can say that the inventive aspect of architecture
deal with the demands of the actual historical situation by criticizing and
overcoming post solutions synthesized schematically in the type. |
|
|
TYPOLOGY
AND DESIGN METHOD – Alan Colquhoun |
|
|
The means of that art that preceded the development of scientific
method, were something linked to an “imitation, tradition and model” context
because they had in the past not only an “use” value, but also an “exchange”
one. They needed to communicate the artists' message. The Modern Movement
wanted to modify the representational system of this preindustrial past, tryng to impose the ability of science to imitate forms
in nature's mode of operation: this method was the biothecnical
determinism: there are no more forms
that are aesthetically accomplished by their belonging to an old system of
representation, but the completeness of a form now derives only from its
logical organization and realization. This modern doctrine contradicts ant
theory which gives importance to an intentional iconic form. But, indeed, a
purely teleological doctrine of technical determinism is not tenable. There
is always a stage in the design process in which the designer has to make
voluntary decisions and configurations which are result of an intention (for
example the plastic events of Ronchamp by LC are
not regulated by any formula). So there are this two contradictory ideas in
Modern Movement, in particular Moderns believed that the phase of intuition
worked in a cultural vacuum. This
freedom of intuition was particularly based on the expressionist theory,
which says that there is an unique system of interpretations, shapes and
forms; against this, Gombrich says that the
interpretation depends on the particular cultural ambiance and that the area
of intuition must be based on a knowledge of past solutions applied to
related problems, and that creation is a process of adopting forms from the
needs of past to the needs of the present. Nowadays it's necessary that
type-solutions play in relation to new problem. This process is carried out
by a method of exclusion of ideologically repulsive iconic elements. |
|
|
THE
THIRD TYPOLOGY – Anthony Vidler |
|
|
The foundation of typology could be found in the
idea of nature as organic analogy (Enlightenment), in the industrial
production as machine analogy (Modernism) and in the city (Postmodernism).
The first typology was founded on a rational order of nature: the primary
geometries for the combination of type-elements were seen as expressive of
the form of nature. The second typology was founded on the system of the
machine: the primary geometries were seen as the most appropriate for machine
tooling. This two old group of typologies were linked to something out of
them. The third, instead, refers only to its own nature as architectural
elements and their geometries are essentially architectural. This typology
stands complete and ready to be de-composed into fragments which are selected
and reassembled according 3 levels of meaning: past experience of the forms,
choice of the specific fragment with its boundaries and re-composition of
these fragments in a new context. With this third typology, architecture
could only be understood by the experience of the city with its public space,
institutional forms and political implications. When a typical form is
selected by the past, it isn't deprived of its original meaning, but it's
moved to its new actual meaning (for example Rossi's City All in Trieste
refers to the prison type...). This typology refuses any nostalgia of
history, all unitary descriptions of the social meaning of form, all
eclecticism, filtering its “quotations” through the lens of a modernist aestetic. |
|
|
CAPITOLO
6 - URBAN THEORY AFTER MODERNISM: CONTEXTUALISM, MAIN STREET, AND BEYOND |
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|
COLLAGE
CITY - Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter |
|
|
The essay presents a critical analysis of the origins, ideologies and
shortcomings of Modernist city planning through studies of the attempts of
Modernism’s opponents to
solve the resultant issues through their antithetical proposals. The review of utopian urban
schemes through comparisons of Disney World and the work of Superstudio; Rowe and Koetter look
at the two extremes in order to propose the centrale
question: which of them is the more necessary .Two different ideals of life,
two different conclusions.The presumption of
prophecy by the one, the assumption of nostalgia by the other. Two versions of the Utopian idea, which have never offered options,
and the anti-utopian Karl Pooper’s evaluation as an exponent of tradition’s
usefulness, for whom tradition is indispensable.The
triumph of generality in Versailles, as a sketch for total design, and the
reverse proposal to any “totality” in the Villa Adriana. Rowe and Koetter suggest (again) that
architects and urban designers should aim for a middle ground, somewhere
between the scientific engineering and the ad-hoc bricolage,
to produce solutions which can be both contemporary, efficient, but flexible
enough to move with the times and adapt to future situations. The outcome: a proposal of Collage City – a city of fragments from the
past, present and future, taking inspiration from working examples in existing
cities; some scientific, others picturesque; some antique, others
contemporary; some may be rational, whilst others disordered. |
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CONTEXTUALISM:
URBAN IDEALS AND DEFORMATIONS - Thomas L. Schimacher |
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The manifesto presents the evolving ideas of Colin Rowe. In a twentieth century town which comes up as a combination of the
traditional city, which is primarily an experience of spaces defined by
continuous walls of building, and the city-in-the-park, which is
compositionally the reverse of the traditional city, contextualism
has attempted to resolve this dilemma.Contextualism,
a fusion between Context and Texture, is a strategy capable to reconcile
modern urbanism with the traditional city.An
important idea of this strategy was that both urban solids (building masses)
and voids (the spaces of streets and square) can be figural; this kind of
plan diagram of figure/ground distinguish clearly the public spaces. A second
important component of the theory is the idea of the “differentiated
building”, which accommodates many pressures without losing the Gestalt “imageability”. |
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A
SIGNIFICANCE FOR A&P PARKING LOTS OR LEARNING FROM LAS VEGAS - Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown |
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Modern architecture has been anything but permissive. Modern architecture
needs a change. Accordingly to that, architect has a unique solution of
learning from the existing landscape: we need to look backward at history and
tradition to go forward but we can also look downward to go upward. Modern architecture have focused on space as the only element capable
to distinguish architecture from the other arts and abandoned the tradition
of iconology, symbolism of form was shunned as an expression or reinforcement
of content. Robert Venturi wonders on which role
have today signs in architecture, in a new context which is basely commercial
concluding that “if you take the signs away there is no place” as they
together with styles make connections and take the role of persuaders. A provocative comparison between
the A&P parking to the landscape architecture of Versaille to underline the importance of the sign, which
is now more important than architecture: “the big sign and the little
building is the rule of Route 66” More concentration is given to Las Vegas Commercial Strip; Las Vegas
from this massive change within years with its commercial values has been
known as a phenomenon of architectural
communication. Symbols create Las Vegas as
a communication system, they dominate spaces. Therefore, Architecture is not enough because
spatial relationships are made by symbols more than forms in space, and in
other words, architecture defines very little through the big signs and the
little buildings in the whole out of the city of Las Vegas. The big signs are
independent to the buildings and more or less play as a sculptural or
pictorial monument. Las Vegas is the apotheosis of the desert town. Las Vegas
is to the Strip what Rome is to the Piazza: “You are no longer in the bounded
piazza but in the twinkling lights of the city at night”. |
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POSTSCRIPT:
INTRODUCTION FOR NEW RESEARCH “THE CONTEMPORARY CITY” - Rem Koolhaas |
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Fascinated by New York, Rem Koolhaas finds
in Manhattan a model for understanding the development of modern
architecture. He proposes a documentation and interpretation of an ignored
ubiquitous condition, that consists in a spontaneous and independent
processes occurring in what have been termed “edges cities”, which represent
for Koolhaas an “uncategorized beauty”.Possibilities
for these are still unclear, but they own a high potential for a new form of
architecture and urbanism without turning to tabula rasa or abandoning but
for revision. |
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TOWARD THE CONTEMPORARY CITY - Rem Koolhaas |
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Koolhaas observes that the project of the modern city was built only in fragments
of modernity and the challenge is now
to remodel the different parts of the city without destroying them. His
contemporary urbanism will be neither “contextual tradition” nor “urban
renewal-modern”. The contemporary city, the one composed of peripheries, ought to yield
a sort of manifesto, a premature homage to a form of modernity, which when
compared to cities of the past might seem devoid of qualities, but in which
we will one day recognize as many gains as losses. |
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BEYOND DELIRIOUS - Rem Koolhaas |
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The article is a discussion of his recent large-scale projects for the
city and the urban strategies in order to give a lesson to our culture and
civilization which is unable to make the city. A new conception of the city
is introduced, a new form of urban condition: as an archipelago, a city
defined by its absence or empty spaces. Buildings of high density as
important instruments to contradict or resist the expansion of the city. Flexibility to avoid the limitation of specific function. |
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CAPITOLO 10 - ARCHITECTURE, NATURE AND
CONSTRUCTED SITE |
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TOWARD NEW HORIZONS IN ARCHITECTURE - Tadao Ando |
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The
essay comments the failing of both modern and postmodern architecture, giving
some advices to architects on how to not fall into mediocrity, formalism and
standardization of contemporary architectural creation, beginning from the
title’s reference to the horizon which indicates the need for a broad
perspective. From the recognition of the architecture’s power to
introduce a new landscape, to the attempt at the interaction of landscape and
building, to build up a space that provokes and inspires together as it
happens in the Rowe House. No more clear demarcation between outside and inside,
but rather their mutual permeation as consequence of an intense involvement
with the site by the architect. Architecture becomes a place where people and
architecture confront each other under a vital tension that allows for
spiritual awakening. |
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NEGATION AND RECONCILIATION - Raimund
Abraham |
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A process of architectural creation as one that oscillates between
negation and reconciliation in a continuous confrontation. Abraham speaks of
conquest and negation of the site and its topography. Conquest of the site,
transformation of its topographical nature manifest the ontological roots of
architecture, and only in a second moment will be necessary the process of
design, whose purpose, is to reconcile the consequences of initial
intervention, collision and negation. “Every civilization is a metaphor of time, a version of change” in
which architecture has always been and
will always be a monument to the eternal; that juxtaposition between the
ideal and the material is what commemorates both the absence and the presence
of man. |
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CAPITOLO 11 - CRITICAL REGIONALISM: LOCAL CULTURE VS. UNIVERSAL CIVILIZATION |
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PROSPECTS FOR A CRITICAL REGIONALISM - Kenneth
Frampton |
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Transition towards modernization is making homogeneous the built environment and the different cultures. Universalization,
while being an advancement of mankind, at the same time constitutes a sort of
subtle destruction of the ethical and mythical nucleus of mankind. Whence the
Ricouer’s paradox: "how to become modern and
to return to sources.” Passing through the sensitivity toward what is local
of Alvaro Siza, to
the Barragan’s feelings for mythic and rooted beginnings,
to the analysis of the particular case
of Switzerland, to the projects of Gino Valle and Mario Botta,
arriving finally to Alex Tzonis and Liliane Lefaivre's article "The Grid and the
Pathway", we arrive at critical regionalism, a "bridge over which
any humanistic architecture of the future must pass." Critical
regionalism is not simply regionalism in the
sense of vernacular architecture. It is a progressive approach to design that seeks to mediate between
the global and the local languages of architecture.Critical
Regionalism would seem to offer the sole possibility of resisting the
rapacity of this tendency. |
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WHY CRITICAL REGIONALISM TODAY? - Alexander Tzonis And Liane Lefaivre |
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Critical regionalism emerged as an alternative to the modernist and
postmodernist deconstruction. It’s main task was, according to Lefaivre and Tzonis, “to
rethink architecture through the concept of region”, and it differs from
Regionalism because it “does not support the emancipation of a regional group
nor does it set up one group against another” . The idea of region is not static or closed, as the region/place does
not coincide with a nation or a territory of an ethnic group as in the Heideggerian way of thinking. But it is mindful of local
potentials. If Romantic Regionalism employed familiarization, Critical Regionalism
argue that defamiliarization will help architecture
to carry out its critical function. Defining the operations of identifying,
decomposing, recomposing regional elements in a “defamiliarizing”
way are part of the universal set of skills of architects. |
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CAPITOLO 13 - FEMINISM, GENDER, AND THE
PROBLEM OF THE BODY |
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THE PLEASURE OF ARCHITECTURE - Bernard Tschumi |
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The essay, The Pleasure of Architecture manifests Bernard Tschumi’s theoretical ideas of the pleasures in
architecture, in which he stresses on the uselessness of architecture and the
inclusion of perversion and the irrational. It talks about sensuality and
sexual analogies such as eroticism, excess, bondage, seduction and limits
of architecture which he represents in eleven fragments: -A double pleasure: the pleasure of the space, that
concentrates on the senses, on the experience of space and the pleasure
of concepts as a thing of the mind detached from reality. The problematic of
pleasure arises from this opposition
internal to the architectural discipline, indeed “Neither the pleasure of
space nor the pleasure of geometry is (on its own) the pleasure of
architecture.” -Gardens of pleasure: from the Deconstruction of
architecture as the only capable to bring into the realm of pleasure, to the Garden as anticipator of the
city beginning from the orchard grid of man’s earliest agricultural achievements
preceeding the first military cities’ layout. The
architect who’s capable to design a park, will be similarly capable to plan a city: they both need a diagram of order in the
disorder of reality, in which in the apparent chaos as well as sensuality is
necessary, so is the reason. Built for delight, gardens merge the sensual pleasure to the pleasure
of reason, in a most useless manner. -Pleasure and necessity: architecture and uselessness. If in 1778 Quatremère de
Quincy wrote that the art of architecture from the point of view of utility
surpasses all the others providing for cities’ salubrity
and good order of civil life, today these necessities are determined by logic
of land economics while the good order is the order of corporate markets.
Therefore, in front of a hopeless dilemma in which on one hand architects
implicitly accept the constraints of society and on the other hand their
architecture is accused of elitism, the only way for architecture to save
itself will be questioning itself, denying or disrupting the form that a
conservative society expects of it. Architecture no more as an artistic
supplement or a cultural justification for financial manipulation but an art
producing a pleasure that cannot be integrated in any production cycle. -Metaphor of order-bondage: not the necessity of mere building but the
non-necessity of architecture with its bonds of histories and theories
enhance pleasure. Such a game, the game of architecture is made of a network
of rules called System des Beaux-Arts or
Modern Movement that like so many knots that cannot be untied, are a
paralyzing constraint. However when manipulated they assume the erotic
significance of bondage, this is the reason why there is no simple bondage
technique since the more numerous and sophisticated the restraint, the
greater the pleasure. -Rationality: the rational excesses of Piranesi’s prisons. An
architecture that carried to the extremes of irrationality the obsessive
rationality of the classical building type. -Eroticism: eroticism as a theoretical concept, not the pleasure of
the senses, nor the sensuality, but the pleasure of the excess; neither space
nor concepts alone are erotic, but the junction between the two is. Thus the
pleasure of architecture is that moment when an architectural act, brought to
excess, reveals both the traces of reason and the immediate experience of
space. -Excess: distortion as the starting point of
architecture, the dislocation of the universe that surrounds the architect.
Exceeding formalized products of past social or economic constraints is the
necessary matter to preserve the erotic capacity of architecture. -Architecture of pleasure: architecture of pleasure
lies where concept and experience of space coincide and where architectural fragments
collide and merge in delight, where culture of architecture is deconstructed
and rules are transgressed. It depends on the feat that keeps
architecture obsessed with itselfd in such an ambiguous way that it never
surrenders. -Advertisements for architecture: drawings and words
cannot produce the experience of real space, since paper space is only an
image. Thus Tschumi in the fragment wonders on why
should the paper space replace an architectural space, finding the answer in
the very nature of architecture. Such as there are certain things cannot be
reached frontally but that require analogies, metaphors, or round-about to be
understood, so architecture cannot be easily unveiled. It is its unveiling
that produces part of the pleasure of architecture. -Desire/fragments: language as a condition of the
unconscious. Such as dreams appear as
a series of fragments (the Freudian notion of fragment), so architecture can
be read in that way too. Architecture fragments assemble the architectural
reality. These are like beginnings without ends; there is always a split
between real fragments and the virtual ones, between memory and fantasy.
These splits are passages between one fragment to another, connections,
traces. They are in-between. What is important is the movement between the
fragments which consists in a constant and mobile relationship inside
language. That movement is called desire. Desire is never seen but it
remained constant. Architecture must not exteriorize the unconscious desires,
rather set in motion the operations of seduction and the unconscious. One
last essential warning ends the fragment: “architecture is not a dream … and
it cannot satisfy your wildest fantasies, but it may exceed the limits set by
them”. -Metaphor of seduction - the mask: architecture as a seducer in which
its masks (facades, arcades, squares…) become the artifacts of seduction.
Behind literal aspect of the disguise lie other systems of knowledge and each
system obscures another, giving other ways to read the city. Therefore, since
there’s no pleasure without seduction, and since the architectures’s
role as a seducer, what lies behind all masks cannot be dissociated from the
pleasure of architecture. |
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ARCHITECTURE FROM WITHOUT: BODY, LOGIC, AND SEX -
Diana I. Agrest |
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Diana I. Agrest begins her analysis from the
discussion of exclusion, and in order for it to occur, two parts are
required. Something inside and something outside create the exclusion of the
female body in architecture. But it is not really excluded rather repressed.
To analyze better that kind of repression which woman suffers by what Diana
calls the “system of architecture” , the text has been divided in two scenes: -Scene I: the scene deals with the concept that since the Renaissance
period, which in turn draw upon the classic Vitruvian texts, has been
developed a logocentric and anthropocentric
discourse in which male body is placed at the center of the unconscious of
architectural rules and configurations, that causes throughout history the displacement/replacement
of woman at a level of the body's relation to architecture. Renaissance’s symbolization of the body was defined by a complex
process in which can be found several steps. Beginning from Vitruvio who posits the issue of the human body as a
model for architecture; the type of formal relationship between the body of
man and architecture; following the analogical relationship between the body
(of man) and architecture in Alberti’s text.
Consequently the body has been transformed into an abstract system of
formalization and incorporated into the architectural system as form. The ambiguity of the gender of the body was then eliminate with Filarete
and Giorgio Martini by making explicit that the human figure is synonymous
with the male figure. If first woman is excluded (repressed), then, in what Diana calls a transsexual operation,
for which her repression is essential, woman is replaced by the architect who
now possesses the female attributes necessary for conception and
reproduction. The architect (male) conceives the idea of the architecture,
carries it and gives birth to it and assumes the role of mother (nurse) to
tend, care for and nurture the building. Again, woman is pushed out as man
assumes a role that woman are capable of. A similar analogy but at the scale of the city is used by Giorgio
Martini: female body is replaced by the male body, but notice that the
replacement always occurs in relation to the maternal function of
reproduction. Again the representation of femininity is subsumed by maternal.
Thus woman is not only suppressed, but her whole sexual body is repressed.
Still man’s body represents the natural and perfectly proportioned body from
which architectural principles and measurements derive. -Scene II: The recuperation of
the female body in architecture. As woman does not fit the symbolic order,
she’s offside, an outsider. It is from that outside that woman can project
better than anyone the critical look to recuperate her body. Woman being the
best voice to take a critical look at architecture. Being outside the system,
woman is able to see what has been “negated, or excluded, or to surface the
repressed. |
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VISIONS’ UNFOLDING: ARCHITECTURE IN THE AGE OF
ELECTRONIC MEDIA - Peter Eisenman |
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A shift from mechanical paradigm to the electronic one has taken place
in the second half of the twentieth century but it does not had an affect on architecture. Vision and perspective have been
explored since Brunelleschiʼs projection
system was developed and has had an affect on
architecture. Till our days other disciplines such as sculpture, painting and
so on developed themselves, but while they developed, architecture always
resists to developments, and in particular it never problematized the issue
of vision. Thus Eisenman argues “as long as
architecture refuses to take up the problem of vision. It will remain within
a Renaissance or Classical view of its discourse”. Vision can be defined as a way to organize space and the elements
within but Eisenman suggests looking back “to allow
the subject to have a vision of space that no longer can be put together in
the normalizing, classicizing or traditional construct of vision; an other space, where in fact the space looks back at the
subject”, much like the idea of the mobius strip. Deleuzeʼs concept of the
fold is then discussed as one potential way to develop spaces that no longer
fall under traditional architecture ideals. Indeed folded space articulates a
new relationship between vertical and horizontal, figure and ground, inside
and out. Therefore it will be the gaze to open the possibility of seeing the
light lying within darkness; the looking back will expose architecture to
another light, “one which could not have been before”.Architecture
will continue to have “four walls” but could deal with other discourses over
the mechanical paradigm, such as affective senses, sound, touch. |
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CAPITOLO
14 - CONTEMPORARY DEFINITIONS OF THE SUBLIME |
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EN TERROR FIRMA – Peter Eisenman |
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Nature has always been the opposite by which humans define themselves
and the beauty as the dominant aesthetic category. Initially men tried to
overcome nature, but now this problem has been solved by the development of
technology, and a new bigger problem arise: how to overcome the artificial
knowledge. Also in architecture, there is the necessity to think about
buildings which symbolize man's capacity to overcome knowledge: the
uncertainty may be the answer. So now architecture, to achieve this necessary
internal displacement, needs to require a more complex form of the beautiful,
one which contains the ugly, or a rationality that contains the irrational.
This is a big break with the tradition of architectural categories of
opposites. In fact, before Kant, sublime (the airy qualities linked to
grotesque and uncertainty, that resist physical occupation) was against
beauty, while the philosopher affirms that there is no sublime without beauty
and no beauty without sublime. All
things considered, there are 4 specific aspects that could outline a
condition of displacement in architecture: the first is the sense of
otherness and uncertainty made by trace; trace can never be original,
it's the presence of the absence or of some other aspect which have been
repressed. The second is the twoness; it suggests a condition where
there is no dominance in opposites, but rather a structure of equivalences,
where there is uncertainty instead hierarchy. The third is betweeness; it's the condition of the object as a
weak image. A strong image have an only one strong meaning. The new condition
of the object must be the uncertainty of a partial knowing. The fourth is interiority;
it deals with the unseen and the hollowed-out, with the condition that the
symbolism refers not outward but inward to an already present condition. All
of these remove the architects and the users from any necessary control of
the object; it's now the distance between object and subject which provokes
anxiety, and not to look ugly or terrifying. |
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THEORIZING
THE UNHOMELY – Anthony Vidler |
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As described by Freud, the uncanny is the rediscovery of something
familiar that has been previously repressed: it's the uneasy recognition of
the presence of an absence, the mix of the familiar with the unhomely. Architecture reveals the structure of uncanny
demonstrating a disquieting slippage between homely and unhomely.
The uncanny opens up the problems of identity around the self and has been
construed as a dominant constituent of modern alienation, with a corresponding
spatiality touching urban life. As a concept, the uncanny has found its
metaphorical home in architecture: is the house that pretends to afford the
utmost security while opening itself to the secret intrusion of terror; and
in metropolis, where what was once intimate has been rendered strange by the
spatial incursion of modernity. In neither case, uncanny is a representation
of a mental state of projection that precisely elides the boundaries of the
real and the unreal to provoke a disturbing ambiguity. If actual
architectures are interpreted trough this lens, it's not because they possess
uncanny properties, but because they act, culturally, as representation of
estrangement. |
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