This article discusses the design methodology of the Benedictine monk-architect Dom Hans van der Laan, famous for his manifesto De Architectonische Ruimte, in which he proposed his ideal elementary architecture. In the past, this ideal achitecture was linked to Van der Laan’s proportional system and to his general approach as an architect rather than to his Catholic background. Consequently, the changing conceptual landscape in which he developed his ideas on the relation between religion and design was neglected. Yet, as this (...) article will argue, it is only by carefully exploring the relation between Van der Laan’s attempts to define a fundamental architecture and his ambition to understand the religious traditions they may have sprung from that one can understand how his religion and design methodology influenced each other. Based on unedited primary sources, this article reveals forgotten interconnections between Van der Laan’s religious and architectural thinking. By analysing these motifs, it offers new insights on the interrelationships between religion and architecture that go beyond the traditionalist-modernist dichotomy. (shrink)

이 글은 건축이 마음의 고향을 만드는 일이라는 하이데거의 입론을 따라 현대건축을 살펴보고, 이것이 타당한지를 고찰하고자 했다.BR현대건축은 모더니즘의 문명적 전환기에 등장해서 장식을 배제하고 기능에 충실한 건축을 주창했다. 이는 기능주의 건축으로 불리며 주택의 표준화와 규격화를 통해 대량생산을 가능하게 하는 국제주의 양식으로 나아갔다. 그러나 기능주의의 국제주의에 따라 형성된 현대의 도시는 점점 동질화되고, 거기서 구체적 삶의 질적인 면은 사라져 갔다. 이때 기능주의 건축을 비판하며 건축의 화두는 공간에서 장소로 변화되었다. 이러한 국면에서 하이데거의 존재론이 개진하는 장소론은 이론적 돌파구가 되었고, 크리스티안 노르베르그-슐츠, 케네스 프램튼, 유하니 팔라즈마는 하이데거의 (...) 장소론을 통해 이 국면을 타개해 나가는 대표적 건축 이론가들이다. 특히 노르베르그-슐츠는 건축이 하이데거적 의미의 거주함을 짓는 것이고, 그것은 장소의 혼을 드러내는 현상학이어야 한다고 말한다. 또한 케네스 프램튼은 현대 거대도시의 동질화된 비장소성을 비판하고 인간의 모습을 한 장소를 변증법적으로 만들어 가야 한다고 본다. 그리고 유하니 팔라즈마는 건축은 그 속에서 경험하는 감성과 이미지를 재창조하는 작업이 되어야 한다고 말한다.BR반면 하이데거는 건축의 문제는 거주의 문제라고 본다. 왜냐하면 인간이 건축하는 한에서 거주하는 게 아니라 거주하는 한에서 건축하기 때문이다. 즉 건축함은 곧 거주함이고, 거주함은 인간의 존재함의 양식이다. 따라서 건축은 존재의 문제이지 주택이나 그 보급과 같은 존재자의 문제가 아니고, 결국 건축은 거주에 대한 존재사유인 것이다.BR이때 두 가지 문제, 즉 존재사유란 무엇인지 그리고 거주함이란 무엇인가 하는 문제가 남는다. 하이데거에 따르면 존재사유는 고향을 그리는 마음 혹은 고향을 만드는 충동이다. 그리고 거주함이란 그의 어원분석에 따라 존재의 평화 속에 소중히 보살핌이라는 의미이다. 따라서 건축이란 존재의 고향에 평화롭게 있도록 소중히 보살피는 짓기(Dichten)라고 할 수 있다. 이러한 짓기는 단순한 제작(techne)이 아니라 존재를 퍼올리는(schöpfen) 창작(poiesis), 즉 존재진리의 비은폐성을 가지고 오는 것이다.BR요컨대 하이데거적 의미의 건축은 현대건축의 추상성에게 장소가 갖는 삶의 실존을 되돌아보게 함으로써 결국 건축이 존재에 대한 사유, 즉 마음의 고향을 만드는 일임을 보여주었다고 생각된다. (shrink)

Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture revolutionized the understanding of modernism in architecture, pushing back the sense of its origin from the early twentieth century to the 1750s and thus placing architectural thought within the a broader context of Western intellectual history. This new edition of Peter Collins's ground-breaking study includes all seventy-two illustrations of the original hard cover edition, which has been out of print since 1967, and restores the large format.

A discussion of "postmodern" architecture in the sense in which the term was used in the late 1980s, namely, the introduction of historical substantive content and reference into architecture, disrupting the supposedly ahistorical purity of modernist architecture. Argues that postmodern use of history is really another version of the modern distance from history.

The aim of this paper is to achieve a better understanding of why modern buildings do not easily harmonize with one another. After proposing, and defending, an analysis of the concept of architectural harmony, the paper turns to three possible views on whether we can expect more harmony from modern architecture in the future.

A careful reproduction of the 1931 Princeton University Press edition, including seven fine-screened black-and-white photographs on heavy coated paper of archival quality to preserve the finest detail. The Wright designed cover is treated with a protective coating to ensure that Wright’s subtle colors are protected from damage by abrasion or deterioration from extended exposure to sunlight. This book is one of the earliest statements by Wright of the principles of design that were to guide his entire career. Wright described this (...) book in a 1931 letter as “my Garden.” In these lectures are found not forms but fire, not formulas but ideas, not formality but vitality. They are not merely a monument to Wright’s work up to that time, but ideas that continue to bear fruit today. As E. Baldwin Smith writes in his preface, “[The lectures] are the sermons of an engaging, self-confident and enthusiastic artist fired with a faith, not in the machine itself, but in the power of man to master his creation, the machine, and to make it fashion a new manifestation of beauty.” He went on to prophesy that as Wright sought to “give men a new and hopeful outlook on the Machine, his philosophy of life, with his reactions, ideas and prejudices, will become a document in the history of art.” This fine new edition admirably fulfills that vision. (shrink)

Using theories by Pierre Bourdieu and the Frankfurt School that causally link art to class interests, this article examines the differential development of modern architecture in the United States and central Europe during the early 20th century. Modern architecture was the aesthetic expression of technocracy, a movement of the new class of professionals, managers and engineers to place itself at the center of rationalized capitalism. The aesthetic of modernism, which glorified technology and instrumental reason, was weak and undeveloped (...) in the US, because this class defined by its cultural capital was quickly integrated into modernizing corporations, where it was compelled to cater to the emerging mass market and drop its distinctive aesthetic. Modern architecture emerged mainly in interwar central Europe, because here industrial modernization was blocked, forcing the new class to pursue an alliance with state managers pushing modernization. Thus unencumbered by the demands of the mass market, modern architects were free to express their machine aesthetic in state-financed housing projects. (shrink)

This edited volume, aimed at both students and researchers in philosophy, mathematics and history of science, highlights leading developments in the overlapping areas of philosophy and the history of modern mathematics. It is a coherent, wide ranging account of how a number of topics in the philosophy of mathematics must be reconsidered in the light of the latest historical research and how a number of historical accounts can be deepened by embracing philosophical questions.

Walter Benjamin's Politics of 'bad tasteMichael Mac Modernity as an unfinished Project: Benjamin and Political RomanticismRobert Sinnerbrink Violence, ...

In The Psychologizing of Modernity, Mark Jarzombek examines the impact of psychology on twentieth-century aesthetics. Analysing the interface between psychology, art history and avant-gardist practices, he also reflects on the longevity of the myth of aesthetic individuality as it infiltrated not only avant-garde art, but also history writing. The principal focus of this study is pre-World War II Germany, where theories of empathy and Entartung emerged; and post-war America, where artists, critics and historians gradually shifted from their reliance on psychology (...) to philosophy, and, most recently, to theory. Included are discussions of writers such as Heinrich Wölfflin, Ludwig Volkmann, John Dewey, Vincent Scully and Richard Arnheim, among others. The Psychologizing of Modernity is a broad and erudite study of the evolution of modern aesthetic thinking in the fields of art and architectural history. (shrink)

The period that has begun after the last quarter of the 19th century brings an open conflict between the ‘histori- cal’ aspect of modernity and the ‘aesthetical’ one. The situation raises a question about the modern architectural shape’s dependency on architectonic function. Utility, production, profit become the keywords of the ideology; new social utopias and their reflection on the architecture- for-the masses projects emerge. This leads to the urban alienation of the modern man, in spite of the well-intended (...) architectural functionalism and mechanistic comfort, both of them ideologically uphold in order to ensure an easy livelihood for the proletariat. Thus, the late modernity is constrained to retrieve though eclecticism the very values that has denied itself, the mixing of codes that it ‘performs’ nowadays standing for a new ideology, one of “the ending of ideologies”. (shrink)

We, the residents of modernity, live in an unquiet house.This essay examines the relationship between human subjects and their built environment, but it does so less by focusing on architecture than on what one might call ‘architecture once removed'. It is less concerned with the built environment itself than with a prevalent image of that environment in ‘high’ and ‘popular’ culture, in literature, in film and painting. It is my contention that a particular unsettling image of buildings has gained increasing (...) currency in the modern epoch. I will attempt to show that such an image — and a concomitant anxiety — exists, and to offer an explanation for its provenance. (shrink)

Claude Perrault, a founding member of the Académie des sciences and architect of the Louvre, is a figure emblematic of architecture’s transformation by the so-called scientific revolution, representing a radical break with tradition. This article will address Perrault’s scientific challenge to architecture as one that harks back to both ancient and modern sources. It explores some ways in which Perrault integrated the analogy between medicine and architecture into his approach to this art and assimilated medical concepts, particularly observation, into (...) an empirical medical approach. This notion of observation was at the heart of the practical aspect of ancient philosophy as a care of the soul which articulated the ancient comparison of the charismatic orator to a doctor. Thus, Perrault’s remarks on Vitruvius’s authority can be broadened beyond architecture to the quest for a guide to living, transcending disciplinary boundaries between natural science and art. Further, Perrault’s claims for naturalness in observation share a double perspective: observation as a new form of learned experience reflects the ethos of the scientist, while, as a traditional activity of peasants, it reflects a raw empirical knowledge about rules of life condensed into habit and custom, enabling common people to be the physicians of themselves. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to reconstruct and evaluate the main argument in Roger Scruton's book The Classical Vernacular: Architectural Principles in an Age of Nihilism.

If the historian has difficulty assessing events in the past, matters are worse for the contemporary critic who attempts to explore events which are still unfolding. Thus, it is not surprising that contemporary discourse about Post Modernism in architecture does not lend itself to a neat taxonomy, not least because the participants sometimes term themselves Post Modernists, and other times reject that label. It is possible, however, to distinguish between stylistic Post Modernism and theoretical Post Modernism. Stylistic Post Modernism is (...) that of the popular press — an architecture characterized by a departure from the stylistic canons of the Modern Movement. Its leading practitioners claim that the architecture of Modernism eschewed ornament, emphasized the expressive potential of functionalism only, and denied both history and the human element in architecture. (shrink)

The Weimar-Republic, and the modernist architecture and planning that was born there, is still a contested place, from whence liberals, reactionaries and Marxists can all trace their lineage. Sabine Hake’s Topographies of Class attempts to clarify this contestation, through an interdisciplinary study of the modernist geography of the interwar-capital, Berlin. The book offers many new insights into the Weimar-era city, countering a tendency on the Left to reject the twentieth-century city in favour of the romanticised ‘capitals of the nineteenth century’, (...) with their insurgent proletariat and their lushly ornamented boulevards. Topographies of Class is a reminder that, irrespective of the era’s rejection of ornament and romanticism, it was a site of class-struggle as intense as that of the Paris of the 1870s. However, Hake’s study is dominated by a conception of class as an ‘identity’, akin to the identity-politics of race or gender, leading to an argument centred on the suppression or expression of ‘class-difference’ rather than class-struggle. In the process, her reading of the city’s modernism becomes overly one-sided, as a period of tension between labour and capital is read, under the influence of Manfredo Tafuri and Italian post-Marxist architectural theory, as being governed almost solely by the logic of Fordist capital. (shrink)

Ontology of Construction explores theories of construction in modern architecture, with a particular focus on the relationship between nihilism of technology and architecture. Providing an historical context to the concept of making, the essays collected in this volume articulate the implications of technology in works by such architects as Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Adolf Loos, and Mies van der Rohe. Also provided is an interpretation of Gottfried Semper's discourse on the Tectonic and the relationship between architecture and other (...) crafts. Emphasising 'fabrication' as a critical theme for contemporary architectural theory and practice, Ontology of Construction is a provocative contribution to the current debate in these areas. (shrink)

This article analyzes the formative role of medieval theology and aesthetics in the development of postwar American architecture by focusing on the architectural theory and practice of Mies van der Rohe and Jean Labatut, both of whom became actively interested in Neo-Thomism from the late 1940s. More specifically, a closer look at their reliance on the work of Jacques Maritain, the preeminent promotor of Neo-Thomism, sheds light on the transmission and circulation of old and new concepts within twentieth-century architectural theory. (...) By revealing how Maritain’s ideas helped to codify the latter and thus exposed the premodern ideas at the heart of modern architecture, I argue that modernist aesthetics should be re-evaluated with regards to its definition of “the new” and its emphasis on the breakdown or mutation of premodern frames of reference. (shrink)

Wagner is thought to be one of the first Modern Architects, yet a number of writers have argued that his most famous Modern building, the “Postsparkasse,” violates the most basic principles of Modern Architecture; principles that Wagner himself helped develop. This essay develops a new interpretation of this building by placing it in the context of fin de siècle Viennese culture. This interpretation shows that the “Postsparkasse” is a Modern building, but it also shows that the (...) common understanding of “Modern Architecture” needs to be revised. It also suggests a new role for architecture in the contemporary world. (shrink)

A vibrant history of acoustical technology and aural culture in early-twentieth-century America.

The fundamentals of Kahn's architectural philosophy begin with his personal history: his inherent talent; his family background and childhood experiences; his education, from elementary school through architectural school; the influences of Paul Philippe Cret and Beaux Arts architecture; and his travels, especially those to study the antique monuments of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Because the causal aspects of these experiences were absorbed by him, rather than being the products of Kahn's own thinking, he rarely acknowledged them. His conclusions led to (...) a philosophy that echoed some of the thoughts of earlier philosophers, like Spinoza and Heidegger, but were arrived at independently.1 Kahn expressed his philosophy in lectures, seminars, writings, interviews, conversation, and often through sketches. However, he habitually expressed himself elliptically-his phrasing poetic, his metaphors original and apt. Therefore, his meaning was often felt rather than understood. Extensive studies of Louis Kahn's architecture exist, but few focus on his fully developed architectural philosophy.2 This text addresses that subject, incorporating his own words (in italics) and relating them where relevant to his final work, the Yale Center of British Art (hereafter, "the Center"). Kahn died during the construction of the building, the last material expression of his architectural philosophy. I was the first director of the Center, a participant in the selection of the architect and throughout the building's planning and creation. Coincidental with the early years of Kahn's planning for the Center, two young architectural historians-John Cook and Heinrich Klotz-interviewed several leading architects, including Kahn. Working with a verbatim transcript of the Kahn interviews, made by Karen Denavit, I produced an edited version of the interviews in book format. Louis I. Kahn in Conversation: Interviews with John W. Cook and Heinrich Klotz (hereafter, "Kahn in Conversation") is the source for many of the Kahn quotations included here. A researcher can consult the full, verbatim transcript of the interviews in the Center's Institutional Archives, in the Manuscripts and Archives collections in Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University, and in the Architectural Archives of the University of Pennsylvania. (shrink)

Louis I. Kahn is one of the most influential and poetic architects of the twentieth century, a figure whose appeal extends beyond the realm of specialists. In this book, noted Kahn expert John Lobell explores how Kahn's focus on structure, respect for materials, clarity of program, and reverence for details come together to manifest an overall philosophy. Kahn's work clearly conveys a kind of transcendent rootedness, a rootedness in the fundamentals of architecture that also asks soaring questions about our experience (...) of light and space, and even how we fit into the world. In Louis Kahn: The Philosophy of Architecture, John Lobell seeks to reveal how Kahn's buildings speak to grand humanistic concerns. Through examinations of five of Kahn's great buildings, the Richards Medical Research Building in Philadelphia; the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla; the Phillips Exeter Academy Library in New Hampshire; the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth; and the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Lobell presents a clear but detailed look at how the way these buildings are put together presents Kahn's philosophy, including how Kahn wishes us to experience them. An architecture book that touches on topics that addresses the universal human interests of consciousness and creativity, Louis Kahn: The Philosophy of Architecture helps us understand our place and the nature of well-being in the built environment. (shrink)

Once the province of film and media scholars, today the moving image is of broad concern to historians of art and architecture and designers of everything from websites to cities. As museums and galleries devote increasing space to video installations which no longer presuppose a fixed viewer, urban space becomes envisioned and planned through "fly throughs," and technologies such as GPS add data to the experience of travel, moving images have captured the attention of geographers and scholars across the humanities (...) and social sciences. Their practice of "mobility studies" is remaking how we understand a contemporary world in relentless motion. Media theorist and historian Anne Friedberg (1952-2009) was among the first practitioners of visual studies to theorize the experience of vision in motion. Although widely influential beyond her own discipline, Friedberg's work has never been the subject of an extended study. The Moving Eye: Film, Television, Architecture, Visual Art and the Modern gathers together essays by renowned thinkers in media studies, art history, architecture, and museum studies to consider the rich implications of her work for understanding film and video, new media, visual art, architecture, exhibition design, urban space, and virtual reality. Ranging from early cinema, to works by Le Corbusier, Sergei Eisenstein, Gordon Matta-Clark, and Pierre Huyghe, to theories of the image in motion informed by psychoanalysis, theories of the public sphere, and animal studies, each of the nine essays in the book advances the lines of inquiry commenced by Friedberg. (shrink)

The global crisis that erupted in 2008 has left unmistakably deep scars in architectural culture. But what is happening now is not solely attributable to what began as a mortgage crisis; many of the causes lie deeper, and go back further than a few years. In a way, the recession has simply accelerated, and exacerbated, various pre-existing trends. Without overstating the case, the West, and above all Europe, is undergoing such major change at the beginning of the twenty-first century that (...) it is no longer logical to expect the future to be simply an extrapolation and continuation of the recent past. And this could well have far-reaching consequences for architecture. Of course, this is not the first time that people have declared that things will never be the same again. And up to now reality has usually turned out to be a good deal better than predicted. But there are reasons why architects in Europe should consider the possibility that this time it really might turn out differently. (shrink)