The Historiography Of Modern Architecture
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The Historiography of Modern Architecture
The history of modern architecture as constructed by historians and key texts. Writing, according to Panayotis Tournikiotis, has always exerted a powerful influence on architecture. Indeed, the study of modern architecture cannot be separated from a fascination with the texts that have tried to explain the idea of a new architecture in a new society. During the last forty years, the question of the relationship of architecture to its history—of buildings to books—has been one of the most important themes in debates about the course of modern architecture. Tournikiotis argues that the history of modern architecture tends to be written from the present, projecting back onto the past our current concerns, so that the "beginning" of the story really functions as a "representation" of its end. In this book the buildings are the quotations, while the texts are the structure. Tournikiotis focuses on a group of books by major historians of the twentieth century: Nikolaus Pevsner, Emil Kaufmann, Sigfried Giedion, Bruno Zevi, Leonardo Benevolo, Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Reyner Banham, Peter Collins, and Manfredo Tafuri. In examining these writers' thoughts, he draws on concepts from critical theory, relating architecture to broader historical models.
History of Modern Architecture
A serious and original study of the beginnings and development of modernism in which the pictorial aspects are designed to aid in the communication of the author's closely reasoned formulations. Let it be said at once that the format of this work is richly handsome: it is a two-volume boxed set comprising 844 pages and well over 1,000 high-quality illustrations, and it reflects throughout its publisher's conviction that good design is an essential, not superficial, part of bookmaking. Beyond that, it should be emphasized that this work is not another facile cultural tour of modern architecture. It is a serious and original study of the beginnings and development of modernism in which the pictorial aspects are designed to aid in the communication of the author's closely reasoned formulations, rather than to gloss over a lack of substantive content. The book is a translation of the third Italian edition, published in 1966. Benevolo, who is on the faculty of architecture in Venice, has earned an international reputation as a historian of architecture and town planning, and his publications embrace the span of time from the Renaissance to the foreseeable future. One such publication, The Origins of Modern Town Planning (The MIT Press, 1967), may be read as a prelude to the present work as well as an independent contribution. Perhaps more than any other architectural historian in our time, Benevolo has made a determined effort to place developments in design and planning in their proper social and political settings. Indeed, the author argues that the development of the modern movement in architecture was determined, not by aesthetic formalisms, but largely by the social changes that have occurred since about 1760: "After the middle of the eighteenth century, without the continuity of formal activity being in any way broken, indeed while architectural language seems to be acquiring a particular coherence, the relations between architect and society began to change radically.... New material and spiritual needs, new ideas and modes of procedure arise both within and beyond the traditional limits, and finally they run together to form a new architectural synthesis that is completely different from the old one. In this way it is possible to explain the birth of modern architecture, which otherwise would seem completely incomprehensible...." This second volume is concerned with the modern movement proper, from 1914 to 1966. The author emphasizes the unity of the movement, rejecting the usual treatment that allots to the individual architects separate and unconnected biographical accounts.Benevolo remarks at one point, "When one talks about modern architecture one must bear in mind the fact that it implies not only a new range of forms, but also a new way of thinking, whose consequences have not yet all been calculated." His main concern is to provide a more exact calculation of those consequences.
The Mental Life of the Architectural Historian
Author: Gevork Hartoonian
language: en
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Release Date: 2014-08-11
Starting with the question concerning the discursive formation of architectural history, the chapters compiled in this book attempt to re-read the historiography of early modern architecture from the point of view of the theoretical work produced since the post-war era. Central to the objectives of the argument are the ways in which, firstly, architectural history differs from the traditions of art history, and, secondly, that the historical narrative works its autonomy through theoretical representation, the discursive flow of which is interrupted by the historian’s urge to support arguments with references to buildings, texts, drawings, and historical events. The historians discussed in this volume are those regularly addressed by most critics revisiting modern architectural history. Individual chapters are dedicated to N. Pevsner, H. R. Hitchcock, and S. Giedion, an economy of selection that is formative for a critical understanding of the canon established by these historians. Themes such as periodization, autonomy, and time are discussed, and the coda of the final chapter expands on the scope of “critical historiography” popularised by Kenneth Frampton and Manfredo Tafuri.