The Mental Life of the Architectural Historian : Re-opening the Early Historiography of Modern Architecture [1 ed.] 9781443826228, 9781443825610

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The Mental Life of the Architectural Historian

The Mental Life of the Architectural Historian: Re-opening the Early Historiography of Modern Architecture

By

Gevork Hartoonian

The Mental Life of the Architectural Historian: Re-opening the Early Historiography of Modern Architecture, by Gevork Hartoonian This book first published 2011 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2011 by Gevork Hartoonian All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-2561-1, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-2561-0

For Violet and Jahangir, and in memory of Norick

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Illustrations ..................................................................................... ix Acknowledgements .................................................................................... xi Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Chapter One............................................................................................... 13 What is the Matter with Architectural History? Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 31 Nikolaus Pevsner: The Opening Closure Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 61 Henry-Russell Hitchcock: The Pastoral Vision of Modernity Chapter Four ............................................................................................ 101 Sigfried Giedion: The Zeitgeist Captured Chapter Five ............................................................................................ 141 Adieu Zeitgeist! Notes........................................................................................................ 177 Index........................................................................................................ 209

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

2.1 Henri Labrouste, Bibliothèque Ste- Genevieve, Paris, 1854-1875, section drawing. From Kenneth Frampton. Studies in Tectonic Culture, 1995. Courtesy of the MIT Press. 2.2 Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer, The Model Factory, Cologne, 1914. Courtesy of Institut für Geschichte und Theorie der Architektur (gta), ETH Zürich. 2.3 Peter Behrens, AEG Turbine Factory, Berlin, 1908-09. From Joseph August Lux, Ingenieur Aesthetik (Munich 1910). 2.4 Portrait of Nikolaus Pevsner, Reyner Banham and Sir John Summerson, 1951. Courtesy of John McCann / RIBA Library Photographs Collection, UK. 3.1 Henry H. Richardson, Marshall Field Wholesale Store, Chicago, 18851887. Courtesy of Frances Loeb Library, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University. 3.2 Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan, Wainwright Building, St. Louis, 1890-1892. Courtesy of the author. 3.3 Adolf Loos, The Looshaus, Michaelerplatz Vienna, 1909-11. Courtesy of the author. 4.1 Marseilles (Bouches-du-Rhone) the Transporter Bridge, 1939. Courtesy of Topfoto/Roger-Viollet. 4.2 Henri Labrouste, Bibliothèque Nationale, sale de lecture, Paris, 18551868. Courtesy of the author. 4.3 Louis H. Sullivan, Carson Pirie & Scott Store, Chicago, 1899-1904, exterior view. Courtesy of the author. 4.4 Frank L. Wright, Robie House, Chicago, 1908-1910, interior view. Courtesy of the author. 5.1 Mies van der Rohe, 860 Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, 1948-51, detail. Courtesy of the author. 5.2 Alvaro Siza, Swimming Pool, Leca da Palmeira, 1961-66, detail. Courtesy of the author.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The idea of writing this manuscript developed gradually from a seminar which I taught at the University of Sydney in 2002. It was also part of my personal conviction to attend to the theme of architectural historiography. I was further motivated by Anthony Vidler’s Histories of the Immediate Present (2008). I read Jorge Otero-Pailos’s Architecture’s Historical Turn (2010) while writing this acknowledgement. I remain indebted to the anonymous referees who reviewed excerpts of Chapters Two and Three, which were presented at the annual conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia/New Zealand. Andrew Benjamin encouraged me to write the first draft of the Chapter One, which was included in his volume Walter Benjamin and History (2004). I would like to express my gratitude to Carol Koulikourdi and the team at CSP. I also want thank my colleagues and friends, Craig Bremner, Neil Durbach, Richard Francis-Jones, Peter Kohane, Catherine Lassen, Wendy Lewin, Harry Margalit, and Andrew Metcalf, among others. Maryam Gusheh for her passionate friendship and the time she took away from Uma for proofreading this manuscript. I have always enjoyed my friendship with Nayere Zaeri, Heideh and Reza Afshari, and Nadir Lahiji. Shaowen Wang has been patient with my preoccupation with teaching and writing. I could not put this volume together without her love, intellectual support, and encouragement. 

INTRODUCTION

With the question of the discursive formation of architectural history as the starting point, the following chapters investigate the particular nature of the historiography of the early modern architecture. Each chapter evolved from the theoretical conviction that the architect’s work, including unbuilt projects and written texts, plays a constructive role in the mental life of a historian. The manuscript examines the historiography of Nikolaus Pevsner (1902-1983), Henry-Russell Hitchcock (1903-1987) and Sigfried Giedion (1888-1968). There are two objectives central to this volume. The first is to underline the ways in which architectural history differs from the traditions of art history. Even though the discourse of art history has been transformed in recent decades, its traditional hold on architectural historiography has not yet been shaken off. Secondly, the book concerns the specific characteristics of what might be called the subject matter of architectural history, exploring its capacity to problematize the autonomy of the text, the historiographic narrative. The argument presented in the following pages is expected to sharpen the profile of a historical time that has been formative for a contemporary understanding of the project of modernity. The historians discussed in this volume are the regulars addressed by most critics who have revisited modern architectural history. The idea of dedicating a chapter to Pevsner, Hitchcock and Giedion individually, entails an economy of selection that is formative for a critical understanding of texts that framed the canon of the historiography of modern architecture. Essential to the canon is a discussion that concerns the work of particular architects. There is also the need to contextualize the work in the purview of events, dates, and both objective and subjective transformations, without which the particularities of modern movement architecture might nurture two misunderstandings. The first misunderstanding can be associated with the author/historian’s overemphasis on a chosen methodology. The second evolves from the tendency to represent the history of modern architecture as a mirror image of a broader historiography of what is still difficult to establish: the period constructive for the modernity of modern architecture.1 The argument presented in the first and last chapters discloses the ideological limits of the present volume. It is not difficult for the reader to

2

Introduction

notice that the following pages draw mostly from “critical theory” understood through a close reading of Walter Benjamin’s work. This theoretical paradigm, however, is neither an arbitrary choice nor the result of exhaustive research on the nature of various schools of historiography. Apropos of this, the examination of different methods of historiography, or for that matter the idea of formulating a new one, is deliberately excluded. While taking into consideration the contribution structuralism has made, this volume avoids reading historiographic narrative in isolation from the work of architects, the presence of which is expected to fill the void discursive formation leaves behind. The intention, rather, is to expand the scope of problematic underpinning the historiography of early modern architecture. The choice is imposed by the historiography of architecture unfolding since the second half of the last century. Throughout this volume, the word critical connotes two things. At one level, it works as a strategy to deconstruct the revisionism implied in the work of post-war historians whose premise was to question the discursive formation of the canon established by Pevsner, Hitchcock and Giedion. At another level, critical draws its discursive legitimacy from the work of contemporary historians, particularly Kenneth Frampton and Manfredo Tafuri whose position is, in one way or another, influenced by the Frankfurt School in general,2 and the work of Walter Benjamin in particular. What has been said so far draws from the belief that any discussion concerning the idea of history in modernity is paradoxical by definition. That modernism was or was not against the past is not the issue. Essential to modernity is time, the time of the present. Starting from the now of the present, one is allowed to think of the notion of time in terms of past and future. This synchronization is, however, always in conference with dichotomies experienced at any particular moment of the now of the present. What this claim does not mean is that modernity is a transcendental force, hovering above our heads. The idea of modernity conveyed in these pages should be taken for a historical phenomenon that, since its inception, has produced its subjects and subject matters. This process of re-production, if you wish, does not take place immediately and in one moment of history. To explore the historicity of a particular subject, or subject matter, one is inevitably engaged with modernity as history. Still, the reproduction, that is the act of writing the history of history’s past, does not take place in a void. Rather it unfolds in its own past. The narrative re-enacts this past without reaching that which is commonly called as it happened. What then is involved in the implied doubling, that is: re-production? In the first place, the now of the present is imbued with

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the past, meaning that the present is neither the continuum of the past nor separated from it. Secondly, the phrase, now of the present, concerns an understanding of the past that is centered in both modernity and the time needed to register its advancement. In modernity, the past of a phenomenon is recognizable when the subject comes to the recognition of its own presence as an autonomous entity. Therefore, particular dates and points of departure, those qualifying the modernity of architecture, for example, are of critical importance. When the criticality of autonomy is established for the early historiography of architecture, then, the discussion should turn to the idea of progress, the engine of modernity. Consider this: even the forward-looking direction implied in the idea of progress and history is not immune to the historicity of the pre-modern era for which anthropomorphism was essential for any auratic experience. Implied in the cyclical recurrence of seasons, and in any act of making, there existed a sense of forward-looking that might be associated with the frontality of the posture of the human body. That the ancients celebrated the two moments of the beginning and the end of construction is a good old story. What has changed through modernity, and the loss of aura (to recall Walter Benjamin), is the following: the engine of collectivity that would necessitate rituals performed in the expectation of the completion of a building, for example, is now consigned to forces whose logic of formation and transformation has little to do with the collective. Thus we have the recognition of the formativeness of technology for the modernity of architecture, and the modernists’ indulgence with the subject, to the point that there is no single architect who did not, in one way or another, attend the subject, and did not formulate the impact of modern techniques on architecture. The historical development charted above had to take place as it did. What should not have happened, in retrospect, is the comradeship between the three historians discussed in this volume and the modernists’ dream of a holistic unity between architecture, technology, and whatever was understood of the project of modernity? And yet, the very intention to solidify the process of modernization of architecture was problematic at another level. Learning from their colleagues in art history, architectural historians had no choice but to address the question concerning the past through the rubric of style discourse. As will be demonstrated throughout this manuscript, the “past” was a crucial subject in the problematic formulation of the concept of closure, and period style. And yet the historical urge to reinvent the style in conjunction with a linear vision of history was unavoidable. These observations demand the recognition of the link

4

Introduction

connecting the three concepts of period style, autonomy, and closure, themes peppering every chapter of this volume. Thus, one is informed of a neutral presentation of the idea of past in Pevsner’s account of modern architecture where a chain of developments motivated by technology and abstract painting (and guided by the spirit of the time) culminates in the work of Walter Gropius, circa 1914. Giedion’s text, instead, discloses a rather complex understanding of the idea of past. According to him, the image of the past is reflected in a mirror held in front of the forward-looking gaze of the historian. Hitchcock’s position, to mention the third protagonist of this volume, is an interesting one: he makes an attempt to compromise the Jeffersonian vision of America with the actuality of modernity taking place in Europe. Where Gropius and Le Corbusier remained central to the historiography of Pevsner and Giedion, Henry H. Richardson is the architect whose later work presents the case by which Hitchcock could formulate America’s contribution to the formation of modern architecture. Again the idea of past is an interesting one in Hitchcock because, in the absence of the idea of historical style developed in Europe, he had to reinvent a past that did not exist in the first place. Thus we see the significance of Hitchcock’s idea of New Tradition and its recognition as a heterogeneous phenomenon if his work is mapped in the purview of the debate running between Lewis Mumford and others who were also interested in charting the index of modernity in America.3 At this point, it is useful to consider these preliminary accounts of the historiography of Pevsner, Hitchcock and Giedion in the context of the history of ideas pertinent to the historiography of modern architecture. In the first place, the discussion should turn to the idea of historicism. In line with Maurice Mandelbaum, Alan Colquhoun traces the subject’s history back to the discourses permeating Europe of the eighteenth century. He suggests that the word historicism can be used for three different purposes: “the first is a theory of history, the second, an attitude, the third, an artistic practice.”4 What makes that century’s vision of history attractive is the fact that architects were able, for the first time, to detach their work from classical wisdom and the theory of mimesis. This development was significant for the emergence of a historical consciousness whose vision is analogous to a backward-looking beholder, the eyes of which are not yet contaminated with theories of relativism. Colquhoun recalls Hegel’s formulation of two platforms critical for the development of modern architecture. Firstly, we have the thinker’s advocacy for the opacity of art, and thus the question concerning architecture’s autonomy. This unfolding dismantles architecture’s rapport with any symbolism external to its own processes of production. “Why

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should the architect tie himself to the past and chain his work thus to entirely alien shackles!” exclaimed Heinrich Hübsch, a nineteenth-century German architect. He continued, “Or how can evidence of the Beautiful ever be sought in Imitation?” 5 Hegel’s second contribution has to do with the autonomy of history, which in his work is charged with a teleological vision facing a dead end. Colquhoun sees both historical determinism and the idea of autonomy in the context of history. What is missing in his observation is the nihilism of modernity.6 What this entails is that history does not take place outside of modernity’s will to reproduce its subject and subject matters. Postmodern historicism, to recall the time when Colquhoun wrote his essay, was nothing but a moment of Modernity. Furthermore, one could speculate as to whether the nihilism of modernity, the negation of every value, is relevant to the modernists’ discourse on historicism. In the context of major intellectual work developed in the last couple of decades, one might also suggest that to see modernity without History lands in the camp of the structuralist discourse, as articulated by Michel Foucault.7 Two years before the publication of Colquhoun’s article, Demetri Porphyrios edited a special issue of Architectural Design, titled “On the Methodology of Architectural History.”8 Prominent scholars were invited to write on various approaches to architectural history. The volume aimed to disclose the ideological assumption implied in Hegelian or hermeneutical methodologies of history. Following the Foucault of The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972), Porphyrios presented a convincing argument disclosing the weakness embedded in Hegel’s concept of history while stopping short of fully questioning Erwin Panofsky’s iconographic studies. His text also demonstrates that these historical interpretations have made inroads into architectural history. Interestingly, on the issue of architecture and ideology, Porphyrios comes close to Manfredo Tafuri’s position. In addition to unmasking the imaginary, the very process by which architecture makes “reality” appear natural and eternal is suggestive that one should map the ideological dimension of architecture within historical events, both minor and major. These, according to Porphyrios, mark resolutions of contradictions inherent in both the theory and practice of architecture. Let this be clear: a structuralist understanding of history accomplishes two tasks, and Porphyrios’s text elaborates on this subject in the best possible way given the 1980s’ epistemological turn to language and the discursive understanding of an event. Firstly, rather than contextualizing the work in the traditions of metaphysics, we are told that Hegel discussed art and architecture in reference to cultural life. From Hegel’s point of

6

Introduction

view, architecture’s relationship with society, for example, should be understood through the presence of the spirit of the time, the Zeitgeist. Secondly, the social Weltanschauung as understood by artists should assure the historical contingencies of the work. In this paradigm, artwork and events are seen in casual and deterministic relation with the Zeitgeist. Architecture, for example, is expected to represent the idea if the design has a full grasp of the spirit of its time. Against this theoretical background, Porphyrios highlights Panofsky’s contribution for his emphasis on the iconographical dimension of creation whose subject matter concerns both pairs of the architect/author and architecture/object. Unnoticed in this affirmation are the proponents of the neo-Kantianism, who in those years tried to shift the discussion away from the traditions of art history, Alois Riegl’s discourse on the autonomy of artwork, in particular. To articulate a methodology of history that would debunk “the ideological foundations of a ‘humanist’ anthropology of creation”9, Porphyrios turned to Foucault, and for two reasons. Firstly, he needed to discuss the disciplinary autonomy of architecture, not as a unified totality, but as a structure whose “visibility” is sustained through “difference,” or “problematic”, as discussed by Jacques Derrida and Louis Althusser respectively.10 Secondly, the structuralist understanding of architecture draws from a perception of the object whose architectonics do not assure the linear continuity of architectural traditions. The work’s specificity, instead, is seen in its periodic capacity to depart from its own conventions. “We study neither hidden messages nor arbitrary encoded ones,” Porphyrios assured his reader. Instead, “we study the rules which define— within an historical conjuncture—the field of knowledge on the basis of which the various discourses unfold their debates and thematics.”11 Thus, the discursive departure from Hegel’s idea of history landed in “an historical conjunction” where history is ossified in “documents” and “events”, if not in types, to use an architectural analogue.12 Of this latter development mention should be made of Panayotis Tournikiotis. His book is the first one to take into consideration the entire gamut of the contemporary historiography of architecture. Foregrounding the importance structuralism gives to the discursive formation, Tournikiotis explores historical narratives, highlighting the way each attempts to map architecture at different moments in history. Both architects and their work recede in his historiography except when the work is of the capacity to structure the historian’s narrative. Gone with the author (historian) is the latter’s reconstruction of the past towards a defined end(s). What informs

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Tournikiotis’s narrative is the autonomy of text. His book, however, is a major feat in re-writing architectural history from a structuralist position.13 This brief account of the formation of the contemporary history of ideas has a twofold aim. It will be used to demonstrate the thematic commonalities recurring in the narratives of Pevsner, Giedion, and Hitchcock. It is also useful for showing the uniqueness in the American historian’s discourse on the idea of new tradition. As will be discussed shortly, historicism was critical for the recognition of both concepts of period style and autonomy, themes the theorisation of which were not accessible to our three historians. For further understanding of these observations we need to turn to art history and its formativeness for the formation of the early historiography of modern architecture. To understand the historicity of the traditions of art history, it is useful to approach the subject through Benjamin’s work whose position on history is central to the argument presented throughout this volume. Written in 1935, the essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, discusses the impact of technology on human perception, a subject already taken up by both Heinrich Wölfflin and Riegl, and other German scholars.14 Presenting the case of montage in film, Benjamin articulated the idea of wish-images in conjunction to the loss of aura. According to him, the aura recalls the magical and ritualistic origin of the work of art when space and time are intertwined and harmony prevails between the desire of the subject and technique. On another occasion, Benjamin describes the idea of aura in the following words: “in a strange weave of space and time: the unique appearance or resemblance of distance, no matter how close the object may be. While resting on a summer’s noon, to trace a range of mountains on the horizon, or a branch that throws its shadow on the observer, until the moment or the hour becomes part of their appearance - that is what it means to breathe the aura of those mountains.”15 Juxtaposing impressions such as “the unique appearance or resemblance of distance” and “resting on a summer’s noon”, Benjamin presented the idea of wish-images in analogy to the waking moments when the distinction between dream world (past?) and reality (the present?) is difficult to make. The wish-images Benjamin was concerned with are analogous to intoxicated objects with no task except radicalizing the moment of awakening, the time-now. This was a project that surrealists fell short of realizing fully, and thus their work remained in a state of intoxication. One might speculate that the idea of wish-images concerns a state of mind where historicism is suspended. In the dream, “in which every epoch sees in images the epoch which is to succeed it”, the latter, according to Benjamin, “appears coupled with elements of

8

Introduction

prehistory—that is to say of a classless society.”16 Distancing himself from historicism, and discussing architecture in reference to the work’s tactile and optical dimensions, Benjamin’s position benefits and departs from the discursive horizon of art-history. Wölfflin, for one, had already formulated the autonomous character of art, postulating a formalistic understanding of period style. Wölfflin marks the years around 1800 as the beginning of a linear mode of vision, which “comes to serve a new objectivity.”17 Interestingly, such a perception of the architectural object soon found its architectonic language in the “international style”, a steel frame structure whose white clad surfaces were punctuated according to the aesthetics of the horizontal window discussed in Le Corbusier’s famous “Five Points of Architecture”. While Wölfflin saw the formal properties of art from the point of view of a non-engaged beholder, Riegl instead highlighted the viewer’s importance for the internal unity of the painting. The unity he pursued between the internal figures of Rembrandt’s paintings and the beholder was essential to the art’s transformation from haptic to optic. He weaved this observation with the autonomy of art to argue for the concept of Kunstwollen. These issues are further explored in the first chapter if only to underline Benjamin’s affinity with Riegl. Riegl’s importance for Benjamin also related to what Michael Steinberg calls Riegl’s “principle of externality”, that is, the lived cultural context of a work, and the experience of the viewer.18 Benjamin believed that the mechanical reproduction of art changes one’s perception of the object. In modern times, he wrote, one appropriates objects not directly but through technological means. Technology rips the work out of its local context and interrupts the smooth flow of tradition. While lamenting the loss of art’s authenticity, Benjamin celebrated technology’s attack on tradition, turning it into an analytical tool for cultural critique. In the Arcades Project Benjamin presents monuments, commodities, and the body as symbolic images. These cultural products speak neither for the matter-of-factness, nor for the spirit of time. Benjamin reads the material manifestation of the nineteenth century culture as a dream-image, pregnant with the repressed or the unfulfilled utopias of the past.19 Benjamin’s work on historical material speaks for a shift from the individual to the collective experience of a past that is not necessarily embedded in the high art, and period style. Rather it resides in anonymous works and in the detail. The attention given to the marginal was, for Benjamin, the result of a major methodological discovery laid down by Riegl. According to Benjamin, Riegl’s study of Late Roman Art Industry broke with the theory of “periods of decline”, and recognized in what had

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previously been called “regression into barbarism” a new experience of space, a new artistic volition [Kunstwollen].20 The lengthy attention I have given here to Riegl and Benjamin is in part due to my interest in Gottfried Semper who likewise broke away from the classical wisdom of architecture. He suggested seeing the origin of monuments in marginal works like the stage sets for carnivals, and skills developed in industries such as textile, carpentry, ceramics and masonry.21 Similar to Semper and Riegl’s interest in applied arts and ornament, Benjamin underlined the importance of the principle of montage as a means to “build up the large constructions out of the smallest, precisely fashioned structural elements. Indeed to detect the crystal of the total event in the analysis of the small, individual moment.”22 While the high art solidifies autonomy, the socalled “insignificant” is apprehended through involuntary memory of the collective experience. For Benjamin the point was not to reiterate those moments of the bygone past, but to underline their function for the intelligibility of the work of art. They also hold “redemptive power” which should be contemplated in the light of the recent. Riegl too, according to Margaret Iversen, believed that “in order for a particular work of art to have meaning, it must be couched in something comparable to a public language.”23 Discussing architecture towards the end of his essay, Benjamin stopped short of advocating the universalization of art and architecture, or subtracting form from historical context. His position recalls Riegl’s discourse on a formal-contextual approach.24 Nevertheless, it was Benjamin’s critical appropriation of “intelligibility” that led him to criticize Riegl. Rejecting formalism, Benjamin had this to say about the theoretical orientation of the collected essays published by Viennese arthistorians: … such study is not concerned with objects of pleasure, with formal problems, ... . Rather, this sort of studious work considers the formal incorporation of the given world by the artist, not a selection but rather always an advance into a field of knowledge, which did not ‘exist’ prior to the moment of this formal conqueror... . We should never be interested in ‘problems of form’ as such, as if a form ever came into existence for the sake of the stimulus it would produce.25

To see the most archaic in the latest technologies was Benjamin’s strategy for questioning the linear idea of progress without dismissing the radical potentialities of the new. What makes Benjamin relevant to the main objectives of this study is his interpretation of the role technique plays in modern art. Equally important is his methodology in deliberating a strategy of criticism that

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Introduction

was unavailable to most critics and historians writing before the post-war era. Furthermore, his criticism of historicism reveals a vision of history for which time is collapsed in the present. His is a construction, fabrication if you wish, defying the linear perception of history, which, as will be demonstrated in the first chapter, monitors events along with the natural progress of history with eyes fixed on the past. These remarks should be considered a preview for a critical understanding of two developments initiated by the structuralist discourse on history. Structuralism shifted the discussion from the object, say a building, to the discursive aspects of the knowledge of that object. According to Foucault, while those engaged in language analysis seek the rules that generate a particular statement, “the description of the events of discourse poses a quite different question: how is it that one particular statement appeared rather than another?”26 And Porphyrios writes: “…instead of asking what are the compositional principles (grid, rotation, procession, etc.) which govern a given architectural work, we will ask a different question: say, what is the peculiar classificatory mode (for example, homotopic reasoning) which allows for the “grid”, “procession”, “rotation”, etc. to be conceived in the first place?” He continues, “Such a history of architecture, therefore, is interested not in categories that would describe a building, but in categories that would describe the production (that is, the conception, design, execution, and recognition) of a building.”27 In the context of the linguistic theories of the 1970s, interpretation or deconstruction of the text became formative for the theorization of architectural history.28 And yet, what remained unnoticed was the concept of time that in structuralist and post-structuralist theories denotes timelessness. Accordingly, events and ideas float autonomously. Or else, their presence is felt when a particular discursive formation erupts. Again one is reminded of the subject of periodization and period style. Paradoxically, these developments had to take place in the context of a desire to make space for the return of the subject. Exclusive to this latter idea was the absence of any sense of the past, except a perception which itself was the raison d’etre of knowledge, the author for one. Secondly, in the light of postmodern criticism of the major tropes of modern architecture, even the structuralist tendency for a synchronic understanding of history (time) could not hold strong. The idea of the end of history soon paved the way for the proliferation of colourful theories of the late 1980s. They were constructive in nurturing the pragmatism permeating North American academic circles, at least until the turn of the new century.29

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To go beyond historicism and the claims made for “the end of history”, architectural historiography should do two things: in the first place, any criticism of historicism should also question the canonical vision of modern architecture, and a one-to-one correspondence between architecture and the subjective and objective forces central to the development of modernism; and secondly, this entails assessing architecture’s relation to modernity, the index of which is no longer determined by the technical alone. Unlike the concern of the historians discussed in this volume, the past of the present situation does not configure a style, the departure from which should be considered the main driving force of current architectural practise. In this line of consideration, it is important to stress the specificity of architectural theories as unfolding since the 1960s, the index of which differs from that of modern architecture. The early historiography of modern architecture dismissed the heterogeneous body of modern architecture even when the importance of technology was fully acknowledged. What is problematic with the canonical vision of modern architecture, however, is the use of technology to promote a particular aesthetics, a theory of architecture that came to its end with the Museum of Modern Art’s (MoMA) 1932 exhibition, International Style Architecture. There is another side to historicism that needs further attention. Central to the discourse of historicism is the dichotomy between periodization and autonomy. Most art historians of the last century did associate the formal aspects of art with the general manifestations of a given period. Period style establishes a chain of stylistic evolution cementing the idea of progress. It also presents form as the language internal to each artistic discipline. To depart from the uniformity implied in period style, periodization should be understood as a technique for articulating the undifferentiated mass left by history. We should not, Michael Hays writes, “think in terms of uniform periods and radical breaks but rather more nuanced shifts, making the placement of the specific work in the historical field every more complex and differentiated.”30 When this is established then the binary dependency between autonomy and periodization is unraveled. On the one hand, modernity’s departure from its pre-history necessarily ended in formulating the concept of autonomy.31 On the other hand, any discussion of autonomy that does not domesticate (historicize) the formal language of the work within a given periodic situation might turn to transcendentalism. The paradox is even implied in Theodor Adorno’s discussion of autonomy, where the modernity of the work is seen in an attempt to save the work from the hegemonic power of the culture industry.32

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Introduction

How does the suggested paradox play out in architecture? The art of building possesses its own internal language, the tectonics. However, the thematic of the tectonic and its constructive and aesthetic possibilities are largely informed by techniques available in the developmental processes of capitalism. This is one reason Semper’s name occurs in this volume whenever the occasion is deemed appropriate. Another reason for highlighting tectonics relates to the unreserved attention the three protagonists of this volume gave to technology, and the view that equates modernity of architecture with the appropriation of formal and spatial potentialities implied in the work of late-nineteenth-century engineering. As a strategic concept, the tectonic brings to the fore the contradictions involved in establishing a productive rapport between style and construction, and the need to discuss architecture as a semi-autonomous entity. Even though some architects would still like to overstate the importance of formal autonomy, it is the task of the historian to problematize the concept of autonomy, and to demonstrate how form is inflected in architecture’s inevitable participation in the production and consumption cycles of capitalism. In this proposition a sense of “timenow”, temporality, prevails whose difference from the idea of Zeitgeist should be secured on two grounds: firstly, that modernity designates an epochal transgression, rather a chain in the linear progression of history; and secondly, what separates the time-now from its own immediate past is not of transcendental nature; rather it is subject to interpretation, sometimes transient and modish, fashion-like, at other times obsolete and forgotten. The enduring commonality underpinning the tectonics suggests that the historian’s vision should not invest in the work of any single architect or group of architects. The discussion pursued throughout this volume supports the idea that the historian should attempt to historicise the work in reference to dichotomies of modernity, and the technical and aesthetic particularities of the time-now. This is important, speaking theoretically. It allows for discussing the tectonic not as an operative criticism, but the zone where the historian can see the scars that the crisis of capitalism leaves on architecture. Now, should a historian look back at the architecture of the last fifty years and ensure the continuity of modern architecture, albeit the modifications induced by history? Or, should he/she acquire a different orientation towards the very tropes, including historicism and period style that were constructive for the formation of modern architecture?33 The discussion presented in the last chapter of this manuscript attempts to expand the scope of questions raised here.

CHAPTER ONE WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY?

Out of sight out of mind. Is that so? In a letter dated February 1929, Walter Benjamin acknowledged the receipt of Sigfried Giedion’s book, Building in France, Building in Iron, Building in Ferro-Concrete,1 and praised the historian’s intellectual capacity for “uncovering the tradition by observing the present.”2 Noting Benjamin’s remark on Goethe, Kevin MacLaughlin suggests that the business of criticism, for Benjamin, was a kind of “excavation” in the sense of “mining—taking something out of the earth—but in this case, more accurately, also ‘bringing to light’… .”3 The word “uncovering” endows Giedion with the skills of an archaeologist4, a person adept at recovering what is beneath the dirt, or the time-past as is the case with the historian’s attempt to unpack the historicity of architecture. For Benjamin “vision” is central to the historian’s search for that which should be rescued. But what is this vision equipped with? Is it the historian’s intellect, the breadth of knowledge and information he/she accumulates through observation and collection of facts and figures? Or is it a worldview, “the philosophy of history”, as Benjamin believed to be the case?  Following Benjamin’s discourse on history, this chapter presents “autonomy” as a strategic position for highlighting the disciplinary history of architecture. Re-thinking autonomy is important today when “design” is informed by techniques and ideas shared by every cultural production activity. This development leaves no room for a creative engagement with the culture of building, that which is architectural in architecture. There is a doubling in “architectural”. Firstly, it is informed by themes developed through the work of architects, critics, and historians. Secondly, such knowledge should be re-interpreted through technique available in various historical periods. The conjunction between technique and autonomy

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should not be taken for discursive by definition. Rather it involves strategies by which architecture problematizes the linear continuum of history. This observation begs a different understanding of “autonomy”, one that surpasses the modernist theories of architecture that, more often than not, compromise the disciplinary history of architecture with the Zeitgeist, a position primarily borrowed from art history. The following pages attempt to unearth those attributes that position a narrative in the realm of architectural history. Obviously we are not concerned with the historiography of styles: how a particular architectural style emerges, and then in due course is overtaken by another. There are also, as termed by M. Foucault, genealogical approaches to architectural history. The primary task of this strategy is to map events and themes that led to a particular apprehension of architecture. To recall the discussion presented in the introduction of this volume, a different historiography of architecture avails when the apparition of history, and the architect’s work structure the narrative. This is neither to underestimate the role Zeitgeist plays in the developmental processes of architecture nor to dismiss the extent to which architecture is influenced by themes and techniques developed outside the culture of building. This chapter explores the index of critical strategy to assess the ways in which the narrative accommodates History and architectural history, both seen through the lenses framed by the architect’s work.

The Ghost of History My wing is ready for flight, I would like to turn back. If I stayed timeless time, I would have little luck.

Gerhard Scholem’s poem nurtured Walter Benjamin’s insightful interpretation of Paul Klee’s painting named “Angelus Novus”. This is how Benjamin pictured the angel of history: eyes wide open and wings spread, his face turned to the past where “we [my italic] perceive a chain of events”, and the angel “sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage.” Benjamin continued: “The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise.” The storm propels the angel forward into the future, to which the angel’s back is turned. For Benjamin, “this storm is what we call progress.”5

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Benjamin’s reading of the Angelus Novus suggests that once the storm of progress is associated with the myth of “paradise”, then, the task of the historian is to de-construct the “chain of events” and uncover the catastrophe. It is important here to make a distinction between natural catastrophe, flood and earthquake, and historical catastrophe. The temporality implied in history demands distinguishing the ruins of the past from the wreckage left by the storm of progress. The ruin is not just the effects of time. It also involves the decay of material, and the appreciation of aesthetics that are bound up with the transitoriness essential to modernity.6 There is nothing new in saying that material decays. In modernity, things become outmoded even before their material disintegrates. In modernity, the specificity of time is experienced in the absence of a unity that would set the sub-text for the durability and meaningfulness assigned, or expected, from every action, including the act of design and production of architecture. In the Renaissance, for example, or even in the first decades of the last century, architecture played a crucial role in housing and gathering communities that were connected to the various institutions of the society. In contrast, the good intentions of today’s architects cannot escape the forces of commodification of values and techniques that turn every edifice into a spectacular ornament. In this situation, one’s relation to the past is subject to the temporality delivered by the storm of progress as it moves from one catastrophe to another. According to Françoise Choay, “the historic monument has a different relationship to living memory and to the passage of time.” On the one hand, “it is simply constituted as an object of knowledge and integrated into a linear conception of time: in this case its cognitive value relegates it irrevocably to the past, or…. to the history of art in particular. On the other hand, as a work of art it can address itself to our artistic sensibility, to our ‘artistic will’.”7 If Choay is correct in saying that the dawn of this new century witnesses the decay of our competence to build, then, how might architecture articulate the architectonic of “witnessing”? Choay’s idea of “the decay of competence to build” alludes to the disappearance of that totality, which prevailed in the pre-modern era, the artistic representation of which was indeed the content of what architects created in the name of place. Does the historical decay also banish the vision of competence in building? Here “image” is used interchangeably with the phenomenon of building as discussed by Fritz Breithaupt. According to him, “within the phenomenon there is something non-phenomenal that does not appear, and within the event there is something that does not take place.” He

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continues, “history comes into play by delaying the appearance of this nucleus within the phenomenon.”8 The place is experienced through technique. But techniques are not just an assemblage of tools. In addition to performing their purpose, techniques set up a particular movement and rhythm, the temporality of which coordinates the body’s action and its relation to a place. According to Wolfgang Schivelbusch, “Pre-industrial traffic is mimetic of natural phenomena… . Only during a transitional period did the travelers who transferred from the stagecoach to the railway carriage experience a sense of loss due to the mechanization of travel: it did not take long for the industrialization of the means of transport to alter the consciousness of the passengers: they developed a new set of perceptions.”9 Modernity inaugurated technologies. One task of technologies was to underscore the spirit of the place, the experience of which was based on natural time. Modern industrial techniques and machines were designed in coordination with the performance of the organs of the human body. Contemporary experience of time, framed by the advent of electronic networking, enjoys a different temporality. Electronic technologies, if one relies on JeanFrançois Lyotard’s account in The Postmodern Conditions (1984), are changing the balance between the natural, the body, and the built-form. Computer technologies have also changed our communication system. They open up the spaces once considered private and appropriate for contemplation. Privacy, the micro-space, is invaded, if not subsumed by the global flow of information and goods. We eat, wear, watch, and even dream about things that have little relation to our immediate places. Involuntary memory of a bygone place is the only thing left to the present generation of architects. The next generation might have even less chance to imagine and contemplate a memory that would evoke any major aspect of “the competence to build.” These observations involve two sets of assumptions. Firstly, progress is registered in an understanding of time that transforms one’s experience of natural time. Progress progresses, but its flow does not suggest that history unfolds according to a pre-planned linear path. Secondly, the juxtaposition of the natural and the ruins of modernity—the piled wreckage of the past—is essential for the landscape of modernity where everything is short-lived and subject to history. Harry Harootunian writes: “All production immediately falls into ruin, thereafter to be set in stone without revealing what it had once signified, since the inscriptions are illegible or written in the dead language.” He concludes: “Beneath the historical present, however, lie the specters, the phantoms, waiting to

What is the Matter with Architectural History?

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reappear and upset it.”10 What does this statement, drawn from Benjamin’s vision of history, mean for architecture? This question demands two considerations: firstly, to differentiate history from historiography; and secondly, to discuss the specificity of architecture’s relation to history. The difference between history and historiography is obvious, but needs reiterating here mainly because of Benjamin’s unique intellectual cause. The title of Werckmeister’s essay, mentioned earlier, anticipated the author’s detailed account of Benjamin’s various re-writing of what finally would be formulated as the angel of history. The “transgression of the revolutionary into the historian”, a phrase used in the title of Werckmeister’s essay, summarises the tale of Benjamin’s intellectual life, which was closely connected to the broader praxis of the left of the 1930s. In the four available versions of Benjamin’s text, the reader notes a modification at work, which demonstrates, among other things, Benjamin’s disappointment with the fate of “revolution” during that period. This also reveals the process of distillation of the concept of angel from all religious connotations except one: that the angel, like a superman, represents the image of a gifted revolutionary figure, which reads more into the rubble of progress than anybody else. Dismissing the idea of progress as the ultimate engine of political revolution, Benjamin turned the revolutionary and constructive aspects of Karl Marx’s understanding of history into the act of historiography. He wrote, historicism prevails by “establishing a casual connection between various moments in history”, perpetuating “the eternal image of the past.” Materialistic historiography, according to Benjamin, “is based on a constructive principle. Thinking involves not only the flow of thoughts, but their arrest as well.”11 What is involved in arresting this flow? If historicism endorses the flow of time, then, one way to halt the continuum would be to arrest the time. “The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again.”12 And when “the time is out of joint”, as Shakespeare said through Hamlet, then the present is saturated with the propelling wreckage of the past. In a standstill situation, the present merges with the past, and yet the distinction between the old and the new does not disappear. The redemptive power of the past, rather, shines out of the surface of the new. It is the task of the historian to capture the gaze of that power. Such was the situation in the Russia of the 1920s, a historical period the transformation of which was of great interest to Benjamin. In his journey to Moscow13, he witnessed his concept of history under construction

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and at work. The Russian constructivists considered themselves constructors and not “artists”. Emptied of the vision of historicism, their work merged with history, and architecture was conceived not only as a constructive form, tecktonica, but the agent of historical reconstruction. Aleksander Rodchenko, according to Hubertus Gassner, called the constructivists’ objects “comrades.”14 These architects thought their work possessed a temporality where technology was conceived as neither a means to an end, nor a tool to overpower nature. Following the Marx of the 1884 manuscript, constructivists attempted, as Susan Buck-Morss reminds us, “to liquidate the distinction between artist and worker, not by the subservience of aesthetic pleasure to industrial instrumentality but by the interpretation of these activities, providing images suggestive of a reconciliation with nature, wherein sensual (aesthetic) pleasure was understood as the goal, transcending mere physical need.”15 Her observation warrants the following question: Was not the work of constructivists unleashing the fear Giedion noticed resting beneath the historicists’ inclination to mask construction? According to Giedion, “Construction in the nineteenth century plays the role of the subconscious. Outwardly, construction still boasts the old pathos; underneath, concealed behind facades, the basis of our present existence is taking place.”16 This statement of Giedion stimulated Benjamin to invest in technology as the source of new collective needs. After receiving a copy of Giedion’s book Benjamin expressed his admiration for him in the following words. “I am studying in your book... . the differences between radical conviction and radical knowledge that refresh the heart. You possess the latter, and therefore you are able to illustrate, or rather to uncover, the tradition by observing the present.”17 However, while Giedion was making rather radical remarks in connection to Le Corbusier’s early architecture, Russian constructivists were, instead, weaving the anticipatory potentialities of technology into the collective practice, and thus grafting the collective experience of those revolutionary moments into the linguistic potentialities of architecture.18 The experience of the Russian constructivists highlights the implication of Benjamin’s vision of history for architecture. This is important because, while constructivist architecture was dissociated from the dominant cultural values of pre-revolutionary statehood, it was not until the mid-thirties that their work became subject to the politics of a dictatorial state.19 This observation necessitates the following distinction: although the culture of building (architecture’s interiority) runs through many historical periods, its thematic remains autonomous from the politics of any state except when the state apparatus attempts to control its

What is the Matter with Architectural History?

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architectural language; or when an architect, or a group of architects, chose to inflict autonomy of architecture with extra-disciplinary values. Now if Werckmeister’s reading of the motives involved in Benjamin’s rewriting of the thesis of history is correct, then, “transfiguration,” a word used in the title of his essay, refers to Benjamin’s turn from the realism of a revolutionary praxis to the historiography (theory) of that practice. If this turn was central to Benjamin’s thesis of history, then, any discussion of architectural history entails a reversal of that turn, meaning to move from historiography as a theoretical thesis into the writing of the actuality of architecture’s project. The shift is implied in Benjamin’s “Work of Art” essay. According to him, “Buildings have been man’s companions since primeval times. Many art forms have developed and perished… . Architecture has never been idle. Its history is more ancient than any other art, and its claim to be a living force has significance in every attempt to comprehend the relationship of the masses to art.”20 What is the implication of this statement for architectural history? In the first place, the anthropological dimension of Benjamin’s remark should be addressed. That architecture is inconceivable apart from the everyday life of the masses does not necessarily suggest that architecture mirrors the social and technological development of its context (place?). Architecture enjoys a degree of autonomy, which paradoxically assures its bond to various layers of its context. Architecture progresses while readjusting the conventions intrinsic to the art of building, that is, architecture’s disciplinary history. James Ackerman is correct in discussing architecture in terms of a convention equal to that of language: once its elements have been established “it maintains an astonishing consistency through time.”21 The duration of building’s companionship with the masses, however, is fragile. Otherwise, the wreckage of the past would have no meaning. The loss of aura, discussed by Benjamin, raises an opposing view to the dominant forms of humanism whose discourse has been central to many architectural historians, including Ackerman, who sees humanism as the only way of making positive sense of progress.22 Benjamin’s “anthropological materialism”, instead, draws its conclusions from a “bodily collectivity” that is traceable to the realm of images, and the bodily self-consciousness that is informed by technological development.23 The historical intertextuality, if not the confrontation between modernity and the idealist conventions of humanism, explains the importance of psychoanalysis24 (relating to the unconscious) for the anthropological side of Benjamin’s belief that “architecture has never been idle.”

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That Benjamin’s discourse was a critique of the romantic yearning for a unified state of art, and that his aspiration for technology was not aligned with the instrumental logic and the total affirmation of technology, demonstrate the extent to which his concept of the loss of aura is imbued with psychoanalysis. Similar to Sigmund Freud’s interpretation of the dream world, the wreckage of progress relates to history without its actual presence. The absence underlines the difference between historical ruins and architecture’s relation to history. The physical presence of ruin stimulates a romantic relation to the past, and sustains a totalized image of a bygone era. The work of architecture, instead, maintains a complex relation with history even when architecture is forced to simulate historical forms, as was the case with the 1970s postmodern eclecticism. Benjamin’s reflections on architecture—discussed in the “Work of Art” essay—entail a radical understanding of architecture’s relationship to history. As the storm of progress blows, architecture maintains its companionship with the masses through Verwindung, to recall Gianni Vattimo. Accepting Benjamin’s characterization of the loss of aura, this Italian thinker conceives the attainability of a tectonic dialogue between conventions and the “excess” initiated by technical development, mainly through the radicalisation of the process of secularisation of values.25 According to Beatrice Hanssen, “for Benjamin secularization announced the fall away from religious historical time into an inauthentic, excessive preoccupation with space and spatialization—a predicament for which, once again, the natural sciences were to be held partly responsible.”26 This would suggest that architecture does not re-present an ossified image of the past. History is presented, rather, through the inevitable doubling that takes place between the intrinsic laws of the art of building and the actuality of the time-now experienced in both technical and aesthetic realms. This means that, what must be maintained, “laws of the art of building”, should be construed “at the present as the present.”27 Not only does architecture take place in time, but there is also the time involved in construing the act of construction. While the former sense of time forces architecture to internalize the latest available techniques, the latter is experienced in the drive for technification of architecture, and the confrontation of this process with the essentiality of the tectonic for the autonomy of architecture. Once this doubling is established, what needs to be added is the recognition of two moments when the ghost of history haunted architecture.28 The two moments compromise architecture’s departure from the classical wisdom in the eighteenth century, followed by the discovery and invention of industrial material and techniques in the mid-

What is the Matter with Architectural History?

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nineteenth century. In the first moment, architecture enjoyed a temporary state of autonomy, one paradoxical result of which was architecture’s deeper entanglement with the institutions of capitalism, a subject extensively discussed by Manfredo Tafuri. For him, architecture’s ideology unfolds itself in a stressful search for a space beyond the domain that is already occupied, or will be occupied, by capitalist forces of production and consumption. Every aspect of the everyday life that in one way or another relates to the art of building has already been internalized into the representational realm of capitalism or would be part of it through architecture.29 In the second moment, the ontological bond between the body, landscape, and the craft of architecture was shaken, and the initial steps were taken towards the disappearance of competence in building. This latter development, whose impact on architecture is not yet finalized, sets the pretext for Kenneth Frampton’s discourse on “critical history”.30 The degree to which these two contemporary historians, Tafuri and Frampton, are relevant to the present situation demands a discussion that will be taken up in the last chapter. What should be said is that the above two historical ruptures underpin the historical unconscious for any critical historiography of architecture even today. Once this is established, the discourse of the autonomy of architecture should be understood at two levels: first, in reference to architecture’s confrontation with techniques developed outside of architecture’s disciplinary history; second, the extent to which the autonomy of architecture is considered as a phenomenon for differentiating architectural historiography from other histories. The matrix of these two discourses sustains the praxis upholding “autonomy” as a strategic position for the present situation of architectural practice.

The Ghost of the Architect To say that the apparition of an architect’s work overshadows the historian’s vision necessitates a discussion that, in the first place, involves the task of the historian, and in the second place, demands specifying the subject matter of architectural history. The point is not to picture the architect as a gifted seer, but rather to underline the importance of the work itself. How does the project address the interiority of architecture? And in doing so, how does it interject critical lines into the historian’s narrative? The autonomy of architecture, its interiority, has always been understood in reference to architecture’s dialogue with institutions among which, land, capital, and technology, most influence the art of building. These three factors are essential for differentiating architecture from other

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artistic activities. Paradoxically, it can be claimed that the very realization of architecture’s project is bound to capital, land, and technology. These factors are endemic to architecture’s constructive transformation of the built environment. This is not to deny the fact that visionary projects do also influence architecture’s historical journey. To avoid general theorization of the historian’s task, the subject should be discussed in conjunction with the ways in which architecture differs from visual arts, painting and sculpture in particular. Hence the importance of the old question: what is architectural in architecture? And, how is architecture’s particularity addressed in the historian’s text? That the discipline of architectural history is young and was born out of the rib of art history says nothing new. What should be stressed, however, is the way in which the culture of building is approached through architectural history, a subject most commonly dismissed by art history. Before mechanical reproduction of art, the symbolic content of an artwork hindered the differentiation of the various artistic activities from each other. In the Renaissance, for example, the homology between the various arts was discussed in reference to simulacra: the symbolic association between everyday life and the divine world of Christianity. The symbolic content (the aura of the artwork discussed by Benjamin) disappeared when modern technologies were introduced into the process of production. In spite of this development, the artisanal dimension of architecture was little changed. This is one reason that, towards the end of the “Work of Art” essay, Benjamin discusses architecture in terms of habit and tactile rather than optical. Even transformations taking place in the optical realm were considered effective when moulded into our habits. That which in pre-modern societies bonds architecture with painting and sculpture is indeed the work’s symbolic content and not the technique specific to each artistic activity. Still, after the birth of art history in the nineteenth century, the homologies attributed to the various forms of artwork were formulated in terms of style, understood either as a subjective choice or the expression of the will of the time. In neither of the above periods did the technique specific to each artwork remain identical. Both painters and architects were obliged to actualize their ideas, even those evoked by simulacra, with the metier of painting or building. That the medium of work for painters is surface and paint, and that of architects the tectonic articulation of material and technique, is obvious and needs no further discussion at this juncture. What must now be pursued are the ways in which the proponents of art history have approached these issues. In 1888, Heinrich Wölfflin31, the father of contemporary art history, introduced the term “painterly” to discuss Baroque art and architecture.

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For him the concept of painterly was to make a distinction between Renaissance and Baroque art. Wölfflin argued that the art of building in Baroque abandoned its characteristic nature and sought out effects that belonged to another art, and thus it became painterly. His discourse set criteria for periodization. The interrelationship between the different arts, he exhorted, was theological though he believed that those homologies were motivated by the technique of one art form or another. For him architecture was neither painterly nor sculptural, but essentially the art of shaping space. However, the fact that a sense of “painterly” peppers all three art forms is suggestive of Wölfflin’s inclination to frame each period in terms of style. He failed, however, to outline the specificity of the work, thus ending in overgeneralization. The problematic of Wölfflin’s argument is twofold. Firstly, the historian casts his own interpretive tool, “painterly”, as a phenomenon shared by the artists and architects of the period under examination. He also confused the time invested in the work with that of the historian. A distinction between the historicity of the work and that of the historiographic narrative was the first crack in the wall of historicism. Secondly, his analysis remains formalistic, even though his case for the idea of painterly is charged with a sense of aura. Missing in Wölfflin’s discourse is the essentiality of the work and the close ties of its material content to historical circumstances. Benjamin identifies Wölfflin’s failure in a dualism formulated in the following words: “A flat, universalizing history of the art of ‘all cultures and times’, on the one hand, and an academic aesthetic, on the other hand—without, however, being able to overcome it entirely.”32 Benjamin’s argument is suggestive of a historical vision, which, in the first place, underlines the significance of the work. Not every work, only “those whose life is most deeply embedded in their material content”, which over the course of their “historical duration ….. present themselves to the researcher all the more clearly the more they have disappeared from the world.” In the second place, Benjamin emphasized the particular nature of architecture’s apprehension, the structure of which affects the imaginative being of the viewer. At both levels, “image” is crucial for Benjamin’s remarks on the ways in which the work presents itself to the historian. This prompts a discussion concerning not only the essentiality of the tectonic for architecture, but also the poetics (image laden quality) of construction, a subject that triggered the famous debate between Alois Riegl and Semperians.33 Riegl is famous for challenging the idea of autonomy as implied in Wölfflin’s remarks on the formal properties of art. The Austrian art historian, instead, underlined the beholder’s role for the internal unity of

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painting and its “necessity” for the work’s passage from the haptic (volumetric) to the optic (spatial). Analyzing Rembrandt’s “the Anatomy Lessons of Dr. Tulp”, Riegl argued that “the picture accordingly contains a double unity through subordination: first, between Tulp and the seven surgeons, all of whom subordinate themselves to him as the lecturer, and, second, between the crowning surgeon and the beholder, the latter subordinated to the former and indirectly through him to Tulp in turn.” Such a perception of the beholder and painting, according to Riegl, “remains closely dependent upon the works of his direct predecessors... . and one becomes convinced that Rembrandt, too, was primarily merely an executor of the artistic volition of his people and his time.”34 Riegl was also interested in the autonomous nature of the work of art. He was less concerned with the subjective process of creation, or the materialistic interest in matter-of-factness. Kunstwollen, artistic volition, was for him a gestalt of continuous flow of thought that would enjoy a dialogue with socio-technological transformations. According to Margaret Iversen, for Riegl, “different stylistic types, understood as expression of a varying Kunstwollen, are read as different ideals of perception or as different ways of regarding the mind’s relationship to its objects and of organizing the material of perception.”35 Riegl’s importance, however, lay in his argument that stylistic changes are driven by the perceptual world. As noted in the previous chapter, when Benjamin wrote that “during long periods of history, the mode of human sense perception changes with humanity’s entire mode of existence”, the major historical example he provided was from the late Roman art industry whose birth, according to Riegl, coincided with a sense of perception different from the classical one. Reading Late Roman Art Industry, Benjamin criticized Riegl for stopping short of discussing what motivates the alleged new perception.36 What was intriguing to Benjamin was the contemporaneity that would emulate Riegl’s writing a decade later through expressionism. Benjamin’s reading opens an opportunity for making a similar claim: that Riegl was not just reformulating Wölfflin’s ideas. Central to Riegl’s discourse is the contemporaneity of Semper’s position on history and style. Semper and Riegl agreed on one point: that techniques, skills, and the forms developed in the applied and decorative arts are important for artistic production beyond their contextual constraint. Their difference, however, points to the art historian’s concern for surface and image, and Semper’s concern for the tectonic. This is how Alina Payne articulates the ways in which these two important figures of the late-nineteenth century established a complex rapport between fabrication and surface. For Riegl “the carpet was not an example of fabrication, of manipulation by the

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hand, tied into an anthropological explication of the development of shelter-making as it had been for Semper. Instead, he looked at the carpet as a decorative, painting-like surface, displaying a will-to-form that reached all artistic production and manifested itself in the predilection for a particular range of decorative motifs.”37 The difference is obvious: abstraction in Riegl’s position opens a new horizon for discussing painting. Abstraction itself figures, in the first place, in the virtual space sought by the painter (Rembrandt in his “Dutch Portrait” paintings, for example). Accordingly, the painted image embodies both the space of the beholder and that of the canvas. Thus, we see, as Benjamin wrote, “Riegl’s masterly command of the transition from the individual object to the cultural and intellectual geistig function.”38 In the second place, abstraction is recognized as a cognitive tool for periodizing history. In contemplating art’s transition from the haptic to the visual, Riegl failed to recognize the import of modern institutions for any production activity. His main focus was directed towards a discussion of architecture not as a self-reflecting object but as one that includes the spectator. Semper, instead, underlined the “thing” character of the artefact whose aesthetic is not seen as an autonomous entity perceived by the beholder but rather is revealed through the embellishment of material and purpose (ur-form). From this perspective, the surface of the carpet has no life of its own: it is woven into the technique of fabrication, even if the latter is not visible, or implied as understood in Semper’s formulation of the relationship between the artform and the core-form. Furthermore, contrary to Riegl, Semper’s theorization of architecture does not end in a closed system or structure as such. Once the tectonic is recognised as being particular to architecture, the autonomy of architecture is located in the matrix of the disciplinary history of architecture and techniques developing outside of that history, with both having close ties to History. The discussion presented thus far does not attempt to pit Semper against Riegl. The aim rather is to show how architects’ understanding of the disciplinary history of architecture differs from that of art historian. Mention should be made of the specificity of the suggested “openness” in Semper’s theory. Not only did he theorize architecture beyond the historicity of the nineteenth-century debates on style; more importantly his discourse on the tectonic places architecture squarely in relation to modernization. That architecture should re-think its own history according to the available techniques of making maps architecture in the vicissitudes of the nihilism of technology. This is one reason that the tectonic has become of interest to most contemporary critics and historians, especially those wanting to formulate the thematic of critical practice. Paradoxically,

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those who are interested in theorizing the present architecture along with the spectacle generated by the digitalization of architecture do also start with Semper’s ideas.39 The aforementioned concepts of “openness” and “closure” are not exclusive to Semper. Many modernists who wanted to avoid making a one-to-one correspondence between the spirit of time and architecture also sought to re-think architecture’s interiority according to the demands of time. A point of view nurtured by a number of historians, in particular Manfredo Tafuri and Kenneth Frampton. As we will see later in this volume, these two theorise history according to the problematic relation of architecture to capital, technique, land, and institutions of capitalism. An argument could be made that there are other historians who were also inspired by a particular architect’s work. The obvious examples can be Bruno Zevi’s admiration for Frank L. Wright, or Le Corbusier’s influence on Giedion. In these two cases, the issue was not reconstruction of the history, but construction of a future based on a normative practice. While one sought to perpetuate the Zeitgeist, the other opted for a holistic practice as inspired by Wright. There is a lesson to learn from Charles Garnier, the architect of the Opera House in Paris, who discussed architecture both in historical terms, and according to the significant role it plays in the construction of history. In his words, “Architects who build monuments must consider themselves to be the writers of future history; they must indicate in their works the characteristics of the time in which they create; finally they must, through duty and through the love of the truth, inscribe in their buildings those indisputable signs of the period of construction.”40 This observation takes note of the importance of the disciplinary history of architecture for architectural historiography—how, firstly, the topicality of a particular theme at a given historical junction is understood by architects, and how, secondly, architecture becomes the object of knowledge waiting to be unlocked by the historian. This argument foreshadows a discussion that concerns the idea of time, and its role in mapping the task of the architectural historian. In two instances, Benjamin’s text on history suggests images of time as a stationary phenomenon. The first instance is marked by the angel’s reception of the wind of progress, a move that pushes the angel into “the future to which his back is turned.” The angel looks at and contemplates what the storm leaves behind. The angel’s body and the direction of his gaze indeed “block” the movement of the time-forward. Here, the time of contemplation is not presented in its apartness from the past, but the past is infused, or recognized, in the now of the present. The second moment occurs when Benjamin likens the ways in which fashion evokes the

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costumes of the past to “a tiger’s leap into the past.” Again the continuity of time is interrupted by the collision of the expected natural forwardlooking movement of the tiger with its unpredicted jump into the past. Benjamin does not want “to establish the standpoint of the angel as the standpoint of critique, but the reverse. It is a part of the critique of the concept of progress.”41 Peter Osborne makes a critical distinction between the figure of the angel and that of the historian. While the historical avantgarde demonstrated a special concern for the “new”, that which is located behind the back of the angel (the future), what the historian should save is its specificity, a strategy of resistance against the drive of progress. Andrew Benjamin suggests that criticism should not concern itself with the factuality of history, but “with the temporality that such facts display and within which such facts are able to be displayed. History cannot be thought of other than as a philosophy of time.”42 Both images presented in Benjamin’s text ask the historian to explode the continuum of history. Reflecting on the July Revolution (1830) Benjamin made insightful reflections differentiating calendar from clock. Against the transient nature of the time registered by a clock, the calendar suggests a notion of present in “which time stands still”, and this is also the time in which a historical materialist “is writing history”43, a task that could only be fulfilled through “dialectical image”, a construction whose principle is the act of montage. According to Susan Buck-Morss, “When historical references are called ‘natural’ in uncritical affirmation, identifying the empirical course of their development as progress, the result is myth; when prehistoric nature is evoked in the act of naming the historically modern, the effect is to mystify.”44 Therefore, the task of the historian should be concerned with how to dismantle the work, and to demonstrate the ways in which architecture’s interiority (tectonics) is seen in a particular time. The task challenges the work’s claim for standing on a par with the demands of the time of its construction. Adhering to the ethics of truth to material and construction, an architect also faces the demands of the time. The historian, instead, should question the architect’s claim for the work’s ability to arrest the spirit of its time, and the alleged unity claimed by the work. According to Benjamin, “The products of arts and science owe their existence not merely to the efforts of the great geniuses who created them, but also, in one degree or another, to the anonymous toil of their contemporaries.” He famously wrote: “There is no document of culture which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.”45 One implication of this statement can be this: dismantling the work, the historian ends in construction of a montage

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of stories, each demonstrating the contradictions involved in the process of the work’s design and construction. Now, how does architecture relate to institutions, for instance? As a document, the work should be read, as Benjamin’s remarks on history suggest, against the network of intentions that create the condition for the work’s production. Only in this way, Carlo Ginzburg reminds us, “will it be possible to take into account, against the tendency of the relativists to ignore the one or the other, power relationships as well as what is irreducible to them.”46 Secondly, attention should be given to how the work “translates” material and technique into tectonic figuration. The tectonic as theorized by Semper allows for deconstructing all kinds of unities and continuities essential for the humanist discourse on architecture. Distancing his theory of architecture from the theological aspects of Riegl’s ideas implied in Kunstwollen, Semper formulated the tectonic (architecture’s interiority) in consideration of factors extraneous to architecture. What the tectonic means to architecture can be associated with the manifold consequences of the mechanical reproduction of the artwork and the loss of aura. This involves a historical passage from poesis to techne, establishing a critical dialogue between architecture and modernity. This passage, according to Andrew Benjamin, is historical. Noting the difference between time and the object, he writes, “Poesis involves a different relationship than the one at work in art defined as techne. Indeed, it is because the relationship between them is formulated in this way that the temporal considerations at work in the latter—the conception of the work of art determined by techne—are such that they open up as historical.”47 Another implication of Benjamin’s observation concerns the durability of the work: how the work survives beyond the original intentions of the architect, and the physical strength of the building, but through the material content of architecture, what we have characterized as architecture’s interiority. Leaving aside the architect’s intentions, it is important to turn to another dimension of the historian’s task. What is particular to the work, to a building, that invites criticism? And, given the disjunction between autonomy and historicity implied in the theory of tectonics, what is the particularity of a work that stands historical? Firstly, a distinction should be made between the work of a connoisseur and that of a historian. The former’s interest is limited to detecting the presence of the hand of a genius, and issues relevant to the notion of style. Before the rise of art history, most discussion concerning architectural history would characterize the particularity of the work of art in association with the “style-determined” period, and the artist’s skills in capturing the essence

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of mimesis in the work.48 After Benjamin, one can claim that the historian should cut through the work and produce knowledge. And yet, the knowledge one captures from architecture is constructive if it does not stand as historical. If “historical” does not concern style, then what could it stand for? In the first place, “historical” concerns the question of modernity in its many manifestations, including “criticism as a negative court of judgment”49, and Benjamin’s articulation of the loss of aura. His argument suggests, on the one hand, an end to the symbolism permeating the Renaissance art and architecture. Reproduction destroys “the shrine to the arcane secret it was believed to hold, but also it sundered art’s links to the divine place (topos) on which the temples or shrines were formerly built.”50 On the other hand, Benjamin’s discourse on technology is consequential for any discussion concerning the “destiny” of architecture in modernity. Essential to his claim is this, that since mechanical reproduction of artwork, construction techniques are inflected by technologies developed outside of the culture of building. Furthermore, the knowledge of architectural praxis handed down from one architect to another, and the fact that in pre-modern societies a building could have been completed during the life span of more than one architect, frame a historical situation that could not continue (for many reasons that should not be discussed here) into modernity. This is another reason to highlight tectonics, if the subject is not qualified in association with the architect, but is the work of the historian. The distinction Benjamin makes between the histories of the artwork and human history channels the discussion towards the specificity of architectural historiography.51 Wölfflin wrote: “All paintings owe more to other paintings than they owe to direct observation.”52 His statement supposes that the knowledge criticism produces should address the ways in which architecture relates to architecture’s interiority. The parallelism drawn here between critique and the thematic of architecture’s interiority qualifies the historian with a historical knowledge of architecture. What criticism says further relates to the historian’s knowledge of the problematic of the time of his/her world, and the projection of that knowledge into the body of work under examination. Only in this way is an architectural analysis saved from its claim for absolute truth, and thus from the possibility of opening itself to criticism. The degree to which the work of the historian addresses the dialogical relationship between truth and criticism underscores “a process that first makes what is known into that which has to be known.”53 That which is known is the disciplinary history of architecture; and that which has to be known is how, through critical reading of a chosen work of

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architecture, the thematic of the culture of building is seen in a different light. The “light” is already in the work itself and the task of the historian is to extract it from its context and present it as historical. What does the argument presented in this chapter entail for architectural historiography? Firstly, the work of the architect should be seen as a document in its own right, and as a project re-presenting its historicality. The latter concerns the architect’s meta-narratives, and the body of work, the culture of building, whose themes and strategies distinguish architectural praxis from other artistic activities. This last point is essential for a semi-autonomous understanding of architecture. Secondly, the idea of the project should be understood as a failed attempt to present a totalized picture of the manifold stories involved in its own realization. This demands inflicting the historicality of the work with the problematic of the present architectural praxis, that is, technification54 of architecture, and the level of abstraction involved in the process of design as architecture enters into the age of digital reproducibility. Finally, the future that a project assigns for itself should be regarded as the architectonic realization of a past whose traces can be recovered by the fleeting moments of the present. In this reconstruction, architecture loses its autonomy and becomes a fragment in the constellation of a broader knowledge, the constructive principle of which is montage.55 Architecture is indeed recognized when construction opens itself to the world. Thus, architecture saves its claim on history, playing a critical role in the construction of the conditions of life.

CHAPTER TWO NIKOLAUS PEVSNER: THE OPENING CLOSURE

This chapter explores the two themes of periodization and historicism, and maps the vicissitudes of Pevsner’s historiography. While the architects associated with the modern movement architecture attempted to capture the formal aspects of the Zeitgeist, the historians tried to register the architectonic manifestation of the Zeitgeist if only to prove the originality of the buildings supporting their narrative. Beyond the shared concern for the spirit of the time, these architects and historians operated on different plateaus. What was important for architects was to formulate a proper answer to the search for the new style. The historian, instead, wished to discuss the early modern architecture in terms of categories mostly borrowed from the traditions of art history. In spite, or because of this difference, periodization and formal analysis of the work remained central to the early historiography of modern architecture. Equally important to the objectives of this chapter is the significance of the early historiography of modern architecture for contemporary architectural praxis. Furthermore, the proliferation of theories, such as structuralism and post-structuralism, demands revisiting available historical documents, and exploring the ways in which a particular architect’s work overshadowed the historian’s narrative. Among historians who have influenced the contemporary vision of early modern architecture Nikolaus Pevsner (1902-1983) has not received due attention. In his 1957 lecture addressing the problematics of a theory of modern architecture, John Summerson, for one, does not mention Pevsner’s book in conjunction with his recognition of the essentiality of Sigfried Giedion’s presumed unity between time and space, if not the notion of the organic permeating László Moholy-Nagy’s The New Vision (1928). Reading between the lines of Summerson, one might conclude that unity for him was essential if theory had to reconcile itself with the architect’s search for style.1 Published in 1936 and reprinted several times since then, Pioneers of the Modern Movement, from William Morris to

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Walter Gropius (to be titled Pioneers of Modern Design in subsequent editions) does not display the coherence of Giedion’s Space, Time, Architecture (1941), for example. German in origin, Pevsner was informed by the late-nineteenth-century Germanic art history discourses. Particular to his historiography are a number of issues that allowed Panayotis Tournikiotis to include him amongst the historians who wanted “to prove the historical legitimacy of the modern movement.”2 His reading is an improvement on David Watkin’s who believes that Pevsner was an analyst when he wrote about art, but a “protagonist of a certain type of art and architecture,” when attending architecture.3  Tournikiotis’s doctoral thesis (written in 1987) is exemplary in demonstrating the structuralist approach to history. From his reading of various texts on the historiography of modern architecture, the author frames his methodology in reference to “…the shifts of meaning in the relationship between architecture and its history over a period of some forty years.” The phrase “architecture and its history” dismisses the core problem of the history of modern architecture if mapped within the historicity of the project of modernity. Any interpretation of architecture’s history should not be taken for a contained text (structure), and without regard for the dynamics underpinning a modern capitalist system. It is also not enough to structure architecture’s narrative according to the traditions of art history and its concern with the internal laws of artistic productivity. One can argue that the limits of structuralism resurface in the Tournikiotis text through themes and concepts such as “enunciation of different discourses” or the “shift in discursive formations.”4 In an essay written in 1992, Watkin showed his dedication to the historiographic conventions preceding structuralism. He wrote: “I will say now, as I did not in 1977, that my book was in part generated by my intense dislike of the modernist architecture which I saw was deliberate violence to English historic towns, and which had been continuously, relentlessly, and, it must be said, successfully, promoted by Pevsner from 1936 onwards.”5 Watkin’s criticism is founded on three things: that Pevsner overstated the role technology plays in architectural transformation; that Pevsner’s aspiration for the Zeitgeist and the latter’s force in shaping modern architecture is moralistic; and finally, that the implication of German traditions of art history for Pevsner’s speculation on the direction the modern movement should take has little to do with British cultural and aesthetic history. Reflecting on historicism, Watkin accused Pevsner of drawing from Karl Popper’s discourse. It is beyond the objectives of this chapter to speculate as to whether Popper’s ideas were part of the tradition of historicism Watkin embraced.6 Similar voices, however, hold Pevsner

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accountable for his engagement with moral issues at the expense of excluding most of what should be considered the subject matter of a broader understanding of what might be called design history.7 The fact that the word architecture is not included in the title of Pevsner’s book promises a discussion that plots the art of building in the purview of ideas and techniques essential to the formation of modern design culture. Other critics consider generational and geographic variance a major incentive behind Pevsner’s Pioneers. The book, according to Paul Crossley, presents “the roots of Modernism in conflict—in Morris’s rejection of the machine, and the Victorian engineer’s insensitivity to social deprivation, synthesized in Gropius’s embrace of both mechanization and social responsibility.”8 With the above provisional prelude one can argue that central to any critical understanding of Pevsner’s vision of history are two issues. On the one hand, critical attention should be given to the closure implied in the subtitle of the book, from William Morris to Walter Gropius. On the other, what is unique to Pevsner’s narrative is the hesitancy to theorize a deterministic agenda, except when he pictures modernity as an historical event. Neither does he discuss modern architecture’s evolution through the smooth transformation of romanticist ethos into the new tradition, a subject explored in the next chapter where Henry-Russell Hitchcock takes the stage. The suggested hesitancy, however, is the key to a critical reading of Pevsner’s narrative. What this means is that only in hindsight can one claim that Pevsner was not able to see the historical disjunction taking place between the project of modernity and the emerging reproductive system of capitalism soon to encapsulate the manifold dimensions of every aspect of culture, including one’s vision of the near past. Like many of his contemporaries, Pevsner was locked within the founding principle of the bourgeois society framed by the Kantian will to Reason. Not having experienced capitalism directly, the young bourgeois class felt “confident of its ability to achieve things by virtue of the power of its own reason.”9 Apropos of this, we can argue that Pevsner’s narrative does not follow a deterministic agenda. And yet he seems to be doing exactly this when his narrative is revisited today. This is not relativism. It rather promises a dialectical reading of history seen through eyes equipped with retrospective lenses. From this point of view, periodization (closure) is a useful concept when it comes to making autonomy a meaningful paradigm, be it Heinrich Wölfflin’s juxtaposition of the intrinsic aspects of art (form?) with the extrinsic (national culture), or Alois Reigl’s artistic will, a concept which weaves form with the material and psychological dimensions of a period.10 Periodization allowed Pevsner to dismiss

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transcendentalism, and historical narratives of the “once upon a time” model. The idea of periodization is indeed endemic to art history’s discourse on style transformation. One is reminded of Emil Kaufmann’s Von Ledoux bis Le Corbusier (1933)11, where the modernity of Claude-Nicolas Ledoux is seen in the light of Le Corbusier’s work. His was in anticipation of recent theories picturing history as an enclosed system of structures, each floating in the spatial infinity of history, if only to remind us of the futility of any attempt to resolve historical contradictions.12 We will return to these issues shortly. For now the discussion should turn to the nature of closure to which Pevsner subscribed. Pevsner saw the design development informing the period from Morris to Gropius as historical in its own right. To understand this claim it is useful to discuss Pevsner in association with the Viennese school of formalism. The association allows for understanding the way in which Pevsner distanced himself from the aesthetic of historicism while maintaining a different appreciation of aesthetics associable with a linear vision of history. Riegl, for one, believed that “all genres and all periods of art history enjoy an equal right to our attention.” In its tacit criticism of relativism, the statement reveals Riegl’s tendency for an understanding of periodization that is structured by the internal cohesion of each artistic genre. One is reminded of his formulation of the evolution of art from haptic (volumetric) to optic (spatial) where Riegl departs from the traditional discussion of style associated, more often than not, with the creative mind of the artist.13 These issues will be further elaborated in the following two sections of this chapter, time and history and periodization. The idea is to argue that the crisis of modern architecture was endemic to its two major internal contradictions. Firstly, if the history of architecture is discussed in terms of themes internal to its disciplinary history, then we can conclude that the crisis of contemporary architecture has little to do with the conditions of postmodernity (the near past), let alone the work of the early masters of modern movement. What should be added here though are the limitations imposed on architecture by a formalistic interpretation of history. In the context of ever-sharpening dichotomies of modernity, architecture does not have many choices: it either has to accept the full implications of technification,14 or else remain marginal to the available operational fields as capitalism moves from one set of contradictions to another. Secondly, even though the historiography of architecture should be written according to the disciplinary history of architecture, the narrative must allow the reader to grasp how other histories, technical, ideological,

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but also historical events, influence complexities involved in the processes of construction and re-construction of architecture. Presented as such, the argument is not tailored to undermine the idea of closure. Rather does it address the historicity of the following questions: why is Pevsner’s 1936 text not central to current architectural debates? And, why is Gropius absent from the scene of contemporary architecture? Perhaps for a long time to come Gropius’s contribution would remain relevant only to that period of modern architecture which happened to be central to Pevsner’s periodization. Again, one thinks of the architect’s ghost, and how the work overshadows the historian’s mental life.

Time and History Pevsner was born in Leipzig where, in 1924, he took a PhD in the History of Art and Architecture under the supervision of Wilhelm Pinder at Leipzig University. In Leipzig’s Institute of Art History, Pevsner had the opportunity to emulate August Schmarsow’s discourse on empathy, the psychological experience of art. According to Stephen Games, Pevsner preferred to read the implications of empathy through the pen of Robert Vischer.15 Before leaving Germany for England sometime in 1933, Pevsner taught at Göttingen University.16 An interest in English art had its own history at Göttingen where Pevsner was asked to lecture on English art and architecture. To flesh out what Englishness meant in his lectures, Pevsner planned to visit the country. In addition to finding an answer to the British place in what after Pinder was considered the “moral chain” of Europe,17 what drove Pevsner’s intellectual affinity to England was the idea of Romantic modernism propagated by Pugin, John Ruskin and William Morris. Also appealing to him were the romanticist esteem for the medieval guild system, pictured as a productive engine for a homogeneous social system. Mention should also be made of the German intellectual milieu, one characteristic of which was to see art history as a major aspect of cultural and social history. What this meant to Pevsner is twofold. Firstly, it enabled him to reinterpret the British stronghold on the Arts and Crafts movement through Reigl’s ideas.18 In the second place, it reaffirmed Gottfried Semper’s interest in the applied arts, a subject that helped Pevsner dismiss Victorian style and its fate for the individual artist. Pevsner had read Semper and wrote a short essay discussing the architect’s position on various subjects along with the lectures Semper delivered during his self-imposed exile in London. Considering the host of scholarly books published on Semper in recent years, Pevsner’s remark on Semper is minimal and not thorough. In spite of his awareness of

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Semper’s collaboration with Richard Redgrave and Henry Cole, Pevsner came short of discussing Semper’s influence on the Arts and Craft movement, especially through Philip Webb who, in Pevsner’s words, “believed in intimate and serviceable,”19 issues important to Semper as well. Reigl’s relevance to Pevsner’s historiography has already been noted. According to Marlite Halbertsma, Pinder argued that the ideals of each era are defined by one of the three major artistic activities of painting, sculpture, and architecture. That Pinder’s theoretical position differed from Riegl’s and Wölfflin’s, but also that of August Schmarsow, is evident in Pevsner’s interest in discussing stylistic changes in association with the spiritual, “geistig perception of art” rather than the visible world. Halbertsma wrote, “In this view art is the account given of the psychological experience of the moment rather than its assimilation.” His interpretation of the nature of artistic styles invests in the psyche of an age rather than its spirit.20 Instead of discussing style as the work of a genius, or positioning it along the continuity of the traditions of humanism, Pevsner channeled the idea of autonomy of art into the transformational path of modernization. This much is evident from his dissertation where he studied Leipzig’s Baroque-period houses most of which had no art-history significance. Rather he wanted to demonstrate the role trades and manufactures played in the realization of workers’ housing and how it stimulated the emergence of a particular urban phenomenon that was different from those of the Italian Renaissance centers, for example.21 Pevsner articulated his observations using various art-history techniques. Similar to Riegl, he saw the transformation of artwork in conjunction with the potentialities embedded in the generic type, structure, or Kunstwollen. For Riegl, the latter connotes a gestalt of continuous flow of thought in reciprocal dialogue with socio-technological transformations. According to Margaret Iversen, “For Riegl, different stylistic types, understood as expression of a varying Kunstwollen, are read as different ideals of perception or as different ways of regarding the mind’s relationship to its objects and of organizing the material of perception.”22 And yet, Pevsner’s reluctance to see the work of art as a by-product of the creative mind of the artist was an additional blow to the separation of art history from the traditions available since Giorgio Vasari.23 The crucial role the Viennese school of art history has played for contemporary art and architecture is obvious. To assess Pevsner beyond the rhetorical nature of Watkin’s criticism cited earlier, one should historicize Pioneers in the intellectual milieu of the 1930s. Among other things, the decade is famous for its saturation with theories of surrealism,

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psychoanalysis, and cultural Marxism.24 Enumerating the discussions taking place among British architects and critics of the third decade of the last century, J. M. Richards, for one, underlined the role architecture could play for the realization of a new society - call it socialism.25 To get a better picture of the intellectual atmosphere of the 1930s one should recall Meyer Schapiro’s review of Kunstwissenschaflich Forschungen published in Berlin, 1933. The book combines essays by various historians which discuss painting and architecture with an emphasis on the underlying structure of form and “the prevailing principles according to which the work of art becomes an organized expressive whole.”26 Schapiro presented a balanced review of the book, saving his admiration for Kaufmann’s essay, “The City of the Architect Ledoux”. That Schapiro was sympathetic to Kaufmann’s discussion of Ledoux speaks for his own interest in the state of architecture within the rising bourgeois society. What is useful in Schapiro’s review, however, are his concluding remarks on the subject of the autonomy of architecture.27 Even though it does not relate directly to Pevsner’s narrative, Kaufmann’s discussion of the autonomy of architecture is important for a critical understanding of the way Pevsner appropriated the German traditions of art history. Before further examination of Shapiro’s review, it is important to note that for Kaufmann, Ledoux’s work was autonomous in many ways: the absence of ornamentation and the idea of block in Ledoux’s work; the architect’s aspiration for bourgeois society as an entity composed of isolated and individual elements (pavilion type); and, more importantly, the fact that Ledoux’s architecture differed significantly from the symbolic or representational qualities Kaufmann attributed to Baroque painting and architecture. Disregarding the problem posed by style architecture, Kaufmann’s methodology focused instead on “the relationship between the several components and the whole architectural composition itself.”28 This, according to Anthony Vidler, allowed Kaufmann “to distinguish between architectural systems of different periods.”29 However, Schapiro faults Kaufmann on two fronts: firstly, that Kaufmann did not explain what aspect(s) of the eighteenth century was/were central to Ledoux’s architecture; secondly, that Kaufmann’s attribution of autonomy to architecture is Platonic (geistig?). Interestingly, Schapiro went so far as to express his own concern for the use of the word autonomy. To him artists might use the idea of autonomy to justify “absolute independence of their activity.”30 For Schapiro, instead, autonomy is meaningful when the work of art is able to separate itself from the premodern society. That autonomy of architecture can be discussed in terms

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of principles inherent to architecture is obvious to Schapiro, even though this could lead to an understanding of autonomy that is dismissive of the tectonic, the artistic dressing of the physical structure of a building. Schapiro’s reference to the tectonic is in criticism of Kaufmann’s association of Le Corbusier with Ledoux. To make his point, Schapiro underlined the centrality of technique for the realization of Le Corbusier’s architecture, a historical fact obviously not available to Ledoux. Kaufmann’s position on the importance of periodization and autonomy will be discussed in the next section of this chapter. What needs to be said here relates to Schapiro’s reading of Kaufmann’s text: that Schapiro was sympathetic to Kaufmann’s discussion of architecture in relation to the imperatives of a given society; and that he underlined the question concerning technique. The latter allows us to speculate on Semper’s legacy for Pevsner for whom the objective and aesthetic aspects of modern society were endemic to the emergence of new architecture. Semper’s discourse on style and its relation to the tectonic sheds a different light on the particulars involved in Pevsner’s appropriation of the Viennese tradition of art history. In addition to Semper’s tectonic formulation of architecture’s rapport with technique, there is another side to the inclusion of Semper in a discussion that concerns Pevsner’s historiography. Not only do the discourses of Reigl and Semper unravel important commonalities, but what made Pevsner more interested in Reigl was a regime of visuality that in Semper’s tectonic is more historico-theoretical than of the geist of time or period. Herein lies the merit of a semiautonomous architecture in Semper’s theory, which will be revisited in the last chapter of this volume. In Pioneers of the Modern Movement, Semper is mentioned twice. The first time in reference to the Dresden Opera House, and the second time in a discussion that concerns the use of cast iron elements in the facade of commercial buildings. The second citation is in reference to Semper’s text titled, Wissenschaft, Industrie, und Kunst (translated as “science, industry, and art,” 1952). Semper’s text discusses the four technical motives informing architectural creation, and maps the artistic, and tectonic implication of techniques available in an industrial age. The title of the chapter from which Semper’s text is mentioned reads, Engineering and Architecture in the Nineteenth Century. Here too as part of his general strategy, Pevsner avoids theorizing his own position on issues raised by the German architect. Both citations, however, are presented as evidence seemingly from the eye of an “innocent” observer whose only task is to trace the path of history as it happened. Semper is not the exception to this role, and is mentioned mainly to prove that “there is then a gap in

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evidence,” wrote Pevsner, and this in reference to Semper’s demonstration of numerous buildings, most of which were erected in America during the mid-nineteenth-century, each using cast iron structures “stuccoed all over.”31 Thus the two references to Semper complement each other, directing the reader towards Pevsner’s objectives. The reference to the Dresden Opera House and the Gallery (both designed by Semper) is used to prove the evidence, and that, in order to fill the gap between structure and ornament, architecture has to internalize the spirit of the machine age. Provisionally we can suggest that the issue of skin and structure was for Pevsner part of the aesthetic of abstraction permeating the visual world of modern zeitgeist. Pevsner’s analysis of Dresden architecture, according to Ute Engel, is centred on a stylistic comparison “between bourgeois Leipzig and feudal Dresden,” which, interestingly enough, was motivated by the concept of tectonics, as opposed to “plastic-organic.” To gain a better grasp of Pevsner’s formulation of architecture’s relation to technique, suffice it to recall his characterization of the facade of the Katherinestrats. As he put it, the facade “announces a combat against any reasonable relationship between support and load.” We are also reminded that the comparison says something about Pevsner’s inheritance from his doctoral advisor, Pinder, who “developed a multi-layered art-historical development” combining characteristics of landscape and climate with the formal and psychological aspects of a given region.32 That the dichotomy between cladding and the building’s structural system is discussed in a chapter dedicated to the work of engineering says enough about Pevsner’s strategy. Like most of his contemporaries, Pevsner presented engineering as a work devoid of dichotomies essential to late-nineteenth-century architecture, in general, and the search for a proper style age, when it comes to using new materials and techniques. Paradoxically, central to Pevsner’s argument is the legacy of that school of German architecture whose various characteristics are manifested in the work of diverse architects including Semper, Karl F. Schinkel, Henrik P. Berlage, Otto Wagner, and Adolf Loos.33 Also dismissed are Le Corbusier’s ideas discussed in an essay published in 1931. For Pevsner, Le Corbusier’s work was in pursuit of art, and not as a consideration of the social and functional aspects of architecture. Instead, Gropius’ architecture and his mission at the Bauhaus are recalled to beef up the association Pevsner made between the work of Morris and the epochal character of the nineteenth century.34 Now, what did Pevsner see in Morris that was worth aligning him with Gropius, and this at the expense of dismissing Semper’s criticism of the

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stuccoed facades of iron structures used in commercial buildings? For an answer we should turn to Pevsner’s opening statement of the first chapter of Pioneers titled, Theories of Art from Morris to Gropius. John Ruskin and George Gilbert Scott’s ideas are recalled to disclose the main theoretical problem underpinning the nineteenth-century architecture, in particular the issue of ornamentation and its relation to structure and labour. Recalling Ruskin, Pevsner wrote, ornament “is the principle part of architecture,” impressing on building “certain characters venerable or beautiful, but otherwise unnecessary.”35 He then qualifies Ruskin’s position reminding the reader of the British Government offices in Whitehall, designed by Scott between 1868 and 1873. We are also reminded that the idiom of past styles, understood as ornament added to a constructed form, was topical to any discussion concerning the realization of modern architecture. All this suggests that by the mid-nineteenth century, it was common practice among architects to use iron for structural element, though mostly in the roof-work of public interior spaces. One is reminded of Henri Labrouste’s Bibliotheque Sainte-Genevieve and Berlage’s Stock Exchange building, to recall two prominent examples. Of this development mention should be made of the fact that in those years architects were not yet in a position to articulate the architectonic language proper to iron, to say the least in support of Semper’s assertion that iron was not a suitable material for civic architecture.36 One is also reminded of the fact that the building industry was unable, at the time, to provide roofing materials and building strategies capable of resisting the effects of weathering beyond the conventional techniques of carpentry. It is worth recalling that in Labrouste’s building, a wooden truss system stands between the exterior cladding of the roof and the ceiling, sitting above interior iron trusses (Fig. 2.1). The urgency to find a solution to these problems was also stimulated by products that might be called industrial kitsch, exemplar of the speculative appetite of the emerging industrial manufacturing.37 It was not until these issues reached a critical point that architects felt the necessity to underline the merit of simple and unadorned forms similar to the industrial buildings and the bridges designed by engineers. Again, one is reminded of Kaufmann’s fascination with the absence of ornamentation in Ledoux’s architecture, and the speculative connection he makes between the French architect’s design and the architecture Sachlich, or matter-of-factness. In passing, it should be noted that, in spite of Pevsner and other critics who wanted to see modern and unadorned forms as a by-product of the industrialization of the production process, the tendency for Sachlichkeit

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had as much to do with the marriage between aesthetics of abstraction (visuality?) as with the use of industrial materials.

Figure 2.1 Henri Labrouste, Bibliotheque Sainte-Geneviève, Paris, 1854-875, section drawing.

At this point it is useful to recall Semper’s characterization of the crisis of artistic production as discussed in his 1851 text, Science, Industry, and Art, mentioned earlier. It reads like this: “Ivory is softened and pressed into forms. Rubber and gutta-percha are vulcanised and utilized in a thousand imitations of wood, metal, and stone carvings, exceeding by far the natural limitations of the material they support to present.”38 Faced with the architects’ dilemma in handling iron structure for civic architecture, Semper did not choose the nostalgic path pursued by some British designers. In Supplementary Report on Design, Richard Redgrave wrote: “Whenever ornament is wholly effected by machinery, it is certainly the most degraded in style and execution; and the best workmanship and the best taste are to be found in those manufacturers and fabrics wherein handicraft is entirely or partially the means of producing

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the ornament,… .” He concluded that the solution to this problem resides in finding forms proper to the new materials and techniques.39 Semper, instead, wished for the day when science would bring law and order to the prevailing confusion. He claimed that, “the existing art types must be completed by industry, by speculation, and by applied science before something good and new can result.” 40 Nothing short of the architectonic implication of this statement of Semper stands for Wagner’s Modern Architecture, published in1905, and Walter Curt Behrendt’s The Victory of the New Building Style, published a decade before Pevsner’s book. Behrendt believed that modern forms were the result of technique rather than the fruit of pure creativity. His was an attempt to distance himself from his own past interest in expressionism. Wagner did almost the same: after a short period of lust and love with the secessionists, his 1905 book made a plea for simplicity pertinent to modern needs. Essential to Wagner’s plea for modern style architecture were the forces of new technologies, and a conscious attempt to avoid eclecticism. He went so far as to blame Semper for failing to emphasise construction sufficiently.41 There is another side to Semper’s legacy, important for any formulation of the genesis of modern architecture. The tectonic rapport between the art-form (cladding) and the core-form (the constructed form) not only alludes to that which is internal to the disciplinary history of architecture, but also addresses the importance of science and industry for an architecture that should run counter to the speculative nature of modern commercial buildings. One might claim that Semper’s demand for constant renewal of architecture’s urforms through techniques developed outside the realm of architecture was also essential to Pevsner’s historical vision in Pioneers where, in addition to Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement, he presented the work of nineteenth-century engineering as the third inspirational source for the formation of modern architecture.42 By the 1930s, however, it was a common belief among the vanguards of the modern movement that an organic relationship between material and technique was essential to the aesthetic of modern architecture. In 1931, and in praise of the rationalism embedded in the work of engineering, Ozenfant wrote, “everything that is not organic is ornament.”43 Again we see the centrality of Sachlichkeit for any possible association between utility and the rationalism attributed to organic forms, issues directly related to the discourse of tectonics. Also important is the distinction between beauty implied in utilitarian objects and the aesthetic delivered in tectonic forms. The latter poses an inquiry into the nature of aesthetics in tectonic form. Are aesthetics innate to the dialogical rapport between the art-form and the core-form, or should the subject be

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considered a derivative of the Zeitgeist? An appropriate answer to these questions raises another question: Did Semper’s discourse on art and science suggest appearance, the visible form of architecture, a visual phenomenon theorized by Riegl and the second generation of the Viennese art historians? Or was he thinking of the rapport between skin and structure of an edifice in organic terms and thus devoid of ornament, to recall Ozenfant’s statement cited earlier. As noted earlier, we need to discuss these issues just to understand the historicity of Pevsner’s interest in Gropius’ architecture and its link to Morris. Addressing the problematic of Pevsner’s periodization, Paul Zucker makes a plausible distinction between architects and theoreticians who contributed to the formation of the modern movement. He considers the plea for functionalism as the outcome of a line of thinking that was initiated by Schinkel and Semper. In his opinion, Pevsner did not pay attention to the theoreticians who, following Riegl and Wölfflin, would seek the aesthetic dimension of architecture in association not with material and technique, but with space and volume. While the implied distinction is a good one, Zucker’s criticism of Pevsner is motivated by his own theoretical agenda: that, as the basis of all architecture, the integration of space and volume represents the aesthetic aspect of building which more often than not changes by the factor of time.44 Again we are reminded of the nature of aesthetics in modern architecture, and Riegl’s contribution to the subject. Here is what Christopher S. Wood has to say on this subject: “Riegl’s writing had a robust afterlife in Weimar Germany,” and “the architects Walter Gropius and Peter Behrens repeatedly invoked Riegl’s thinking on ornament.”45 Having expressed his reservation concerning Semper’s theory, Riegl had already mapped a regime of visuality that was marketable in a wider spectrum of artwork. One should also underline Riegl’s contribution to the epochal experience of art. To avoid discussing the subject merely at a formal level, as Wölfflin did, Riegl wished to locate the historicity of Kunstwollen (will to form) in the perceptual shift from the tactile to the optical. At a particular stage of history, he claimed, the experience of art took place not through touch but through a kind of spatiality that would make things visible within themselves, and in relation to the beholder. This is evident in Riegl’s discussion of the Dutch Group Portraiture where his earlier studies on ornament and style are supplemented with the concept of Rezeptionsasthetik, or aesthetic of reception.46 There are two points in the shift Riegl formulated, and the following pages will demonstrate their significance for presenting a different reading of Pevsner’s qualification of

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the Model Factory, a proto-modernist building, designed by Gropius and Adolf Meyer (Fig. 2.2).

Figure 2.2 Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer, The Model Factory, Cologne, 1914.

Riegl attributed the “internal cohesion” of the Dutch Group portraiture not to the symbolic purpose of the image, but to the relationship it establishes among various constituent elements of the painting’s composition. On the other hand, he recognizes the fullness of the internal cohesion of the painting in its inevitable relation to the viewer. The subordinating elements of the painting were indeed used to coordinate the rapport between the internal content and the beholder. What is involved here is the desire to unify the time registered in the image (painting) with that of the spectator. Furthermore, Riegl discusses the visual reciprocity between the internal and external coherencies to formulate an aesthetic of reception that is not driven by time or the genius-artist. The “visual regime” of an age is grasped, he argued, by “schooling and gratifying the eye” toward “achieving a satisfactory relationship with the world.” In Riegl’s words, “the shaping, artistic volition regulates man’s relationship with the palpable, sensible manifestation of things. It is the expression of the specific way in which man wants things to be shaped or coloured.”47

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The theoretical agenda presented here is definitely beyond Pevsner. It, however, sheds critical light on the last chapter of Pevsner’s book, and demonstrates the historian’s debt to the Viennese school of art history. To read Pevsner through Riegl requires one to start with the last two illustrations of the final chapter of Pevsner’s book. The Model Factory, built for the occasion of the Werkbund Exhibition, Cologne, 1914, is depicted from two perspectives, both viewed at an angle. Any picture of the north or south facade of this building reveals nothing more than its symmetrical composition. Obviously the entrance door should be centred along the main axis of the façade. This classical strategy is balanced by the placement of identical elements at equal distances from the central axis. It is significant that Pevsner does not write about this compositional aspect of the building. To avoid the obvious classical nature of the internal cohesion of both facades, Pevsner prefers to focus on and discuss the angle view of the building. The frontal view of the north side of the Model Factory recalls Peter Behrens’s AEG Factory building where the image of a classical temple is instrumental to the architect’s intention to establish a tectonic rapport between new building techniques and the symbolic connotation of the profile of its roof (Fig. 2.3). The angle view of the Model Factory, instead, allows for a different aesthetic reception: it connects the frontality of the facade to the side view of the roof. The image draws attention to the shape of the roof, the extension of which evokes the aesthetic aura of “modern” industrial building. In Pevsner’s words, “The reduction of motifs to absolute minimum and the sweeping simplification of the outline are patent. The replacement of Behrens’s heavy corner piers [in the AEG Factory] by thin metallic lines is especially impressive.”48 This is Pevsner’s decisive move toward a modernist will to project a unified effect of time. The intention was to end the experience of multiple temporalities as one moves to the main façade of the Model Factory. Equally problematic is the south façade of the Model Factory. Again an angle view of the building is used to draw attention away from the classical composition of the main entry façade. Located at the centre and set in a brick wall, the entrance is brought forward from the façade wall, as Wright did in the Winslow House, Chicago, 1893. Open glassed round staircases flank the entrance of the Model Factory. The image evokes an empathic relationship between the beholder (Pevsner) and the space behind the glass enclosure. The beholder’s eye is directed to the dynamic posture of the stair as if she/he is experiencing an upward spiral movement. One is reminded of the images depicted by Oskar Schlemmer where a phenomenal experience of space is implied in the body ascending

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the stairs, or the mechanical movement of various parts of the bodies the artist depicted in several paintings. Mention should also be made of Robert Vischer’s theory of empathy. According to Harry Francis Mallgrave, to cement his argument and drawing from Karl Bötticher’s ideas on organicism, Vischer suggested that “the mute masses that the architect fashions and manipulates appear to move, lines rise and fall, and circles flow in space—so much so that it is,” now in his words, “as if the ear hears the echoing sounds that reverberate from these movements.”49 The angle view and the transparency perceived in the round stairway of the Model Factory debunk the classical idiom of frontality, and dismiss the hybrid dimension of the building.

Figure 2.3 Peter Behrens, AEG Turbine Factory, Berlin, 1908-09.

Pevsner’s selected views of the Model Factory aim to integrate time and space. To him, the glass wall and the steel frame alluded to the “creative energy of this world in which we live and work and which we want to master, a world of science and technology, of speed and danger, of hard struggle and no personal security, that is glorified in Gropius’s architecture, and as long as this is the world and these are its ambitions

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and problems, the style of Gropius and the other pioneers will be valid.”50 Here Pevsner goes beyond Wölfflin who, in formulating an answer to the question concerning architecture’s expression of a period, took an anthropocentric position. Instead of material, technique and purpose, he associated form with the costume of a nation and time. This was the principle by which historical judgement was expected to avoid the “materialistic nonsense,” thus opening the path for “psychology of art.”51 Pevsner did indeed associate the new style with the aesthetic materiality of steel and glass. His choices, however, raise the following question: why, among all the buildings discussed in the fifth chapter of the book, should only the Model Factory be chosen to re-present modernism in architecture? Even though the time when the building was realized might place the Model Factory in an advantageous position, this, however, does not suggest that Pevsner’s selection was primarily informed by a linear vision of progress. What attracted him to the Model Factory was two-fold: like the best work of engineering, the building cancels out any borrowing from historical motives; also, it does not decorate the constructed form with ornamental elements. That certain aspects of these two principles were already practised in the architecture of the Chicago School is not the point. Even Pevsner’s recognition that the aesthetic novelty of G. T. Greene’s design in Boat Store (1858) was due to “extensive and completely even use of glass”52 was not convincing enough for him to consider the building as a prototype for the modern movement. Still, Gropius’s and Meyer’s Fagus Factory, designed in 1911—a building whose language was more in tune with Greene’s design—was not, to Pevsner’s eye, expressing the world he saw; or should we say, the world he wanted us to see.53 It was suggested earlier that one objective of this chapter is to save Pevsner from Watkin’s reductive reading. I would like to add that the discussion thus far makes two additional contributions. Firstly, and in recollection of Zucker’s argument, the realization of the modern movement was the result of the work of both creative artists/architects and theoreticians who were mostly associable with the second generation of the Viennese school of art history. Harry F. Mallgrave correctly argues that the “fruitful interaction between aesthetic thought and the practice of architecture has not been sufficiently appreciated. More generally, the decade of the 1880s can be viewed as the vibrant crossover point between nineteenth-century aesthetic tendencies and twentieth-century visions of abstract art and architecture.”54 Secondly, the content of the 1914 debate between Hermann Muthesius and van de Velde was essentially ideological. While the latter passionately defended the role the artist plays in design, Muthesius, who was familiar with the pragmatic and purposively oriented

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works of the British Arts and Crafts movement, put the notion of type at the heart of modern design and scored a major point among architects. His was to re-interpret design in association with new techniques, and to advocate the aesthetic of Sachlich—simple and unadorned forms.55 That Pevsner chose a building, the date of which coincides with the Werkbund debate should not be accidental. Without making a case, Pevsner did indeed charge his historiography with ideological agenda. This is evident in his narrative in which the multiplicity of time is dismissed at the expense of establishing a closure identifiable with the Zeitgeist. Architecture as ideology is indeed the only vision Pevsner pursued. For him the idea of sachlichkeit was the embodiment of time, the history of which he surveyed as an historian who could see “the creative energy of this world,” as noted earlier. Secondly, although Semper did discuss the tectonic primarily in association with material, technique and purpose, there is, however, an aesthetic dimension involved in any discussion of construction that bonds material to the world of perception. The latter was transformed drastically when, in the late-nineteenth century, the symbolic and representational idiom of classical architecture collapsed. This development does indeed speak for the theoretical shift from “how we perceive form and space” to how “we come to appreciate or take delight in the characteristics of form and space.”56 Furthermore, one can claim that, since then, beauty has no longer been conceived in relation to the forms of nature; rather has it been subject to technique and its implications for the dialogical rapport between seeing and making, and this in apprehension of form as an entity in itself and of itself. Again one is reminded of Wolfgang Kemp’s argument that, in order to sustain the autonomy of art history, Riegl had to undermine the idea of classical style, thus opening a path for discussing art in transitional periods. Riegl also had to jettison the need for art to imitate nature. This enabled the historian to argue that ornament is more a part of the imperative of the design process than related “to traditions of symbolism or to the imitation of nature.”57 In all this the weight of the Viennese School of art history is unavoidable. Also detectable is the ghost of debate running between Riegl and Semper, particularly with respect to the need to close the gap between aesthetic and construction, a theme central to the “rise of German theory,” which Pevsner could not avoid, at least during his years of writing Pioneers.58

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Periodization What does it mean to periodize architecture? The question requires discussing Pevsner’s historiography from a particular position. To this end, it is useful to submit the closure implied in the subtitle of his book, from Morris to Gropius, to the structuralist discourse of history. The intention is not to associate Pevsner’s text with Michel Foucault’s concept of rupture, for example. To undermine the causal link between events and their linear development, Foucault introduced the discursive rupture as a paradoxical notion; it “is both an instrument and object of research,” enabling the “historian to individualize different domains that can be established only by comparing those domains.”59 Most recently, Fredric Jameson has developed what he calls a “formalistic” discussion of periodization. He states that a back and forth from “the break to the period and period to the break at least allows one to frame a first, provisional maxim, about periodization as such. For it has become clear that the terms “modern” and “modernity” always bring some form of periodizing logic with them, however, implicit it may at first be.”60 At stake is the contemporaneity of the idea of closure, and the particular rapport Pevsner establishes between architecture and modernity. Consider Pevsner’s lecture, Modern Architecture and the Historian or the Return of Historicism, delivered at the RIBA, January 10, 1951.61 The significance of his talk can be summarized in three points: that architectural transformation is conditioned by social change; that post-war architects maintained a revisionist approach to the major tenets of the modern movement; and finally, that the historicism of the 1950s should be differentiated from the eclecticism of the nineteenth century. Though stated clearly, the last point deserves further attention. In “showing” evidence (to use Pevsner’s word), and charging the architecture of the 1950s with historicism, Pevsner had said enough to encourage a colleague and an ex-student, both present at the gathering, to offer a vote of thanks. However, from a historicist point of view, Sir John Summerson and Reyner Banham could not but disagree with Pevsner’s message (Fig. 2.4). Even though they had nothing but praise for the historian’s book published in 1936, they saw the situation of the post-war architecture as being sharply different from the work produced during the early decades of the previous century. Interestingly, their criticism was coloured by ideas essential to one of the objectives of this chapter. Consider this: to say that “One can always [emphasis is mine] find pretty well exactly what one is looking for,” Summerson was indeed criticizing Pevsner’s methodology and, at the

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same time, fulfilling his own task as an historian. Revealing was Summerson’s statement that as an historian he could not write about modern architecture because he was no longer designing. Banham also confessed that his lectures on history might have misled students toward historicism, and that architects should take a more constructive role in architectural education. Their position speaks for the complexities involved in historicism, a concept with both positive and negative connotations for historiography. Their response to Pevsner’s lecture, one could say, was in anticipation of the problematic role historians would play in the architectural praxis of the coming decades.

Figure 2.4 Portrait of Nikolaus Pevsner, Reyner Banham and Sir John Summerson, 1951.

If understood in terms of the eighteenth-century romanticist discourse on history, historicism connotes an understanding of architecture that is associable with the prevailing values and techniques of a given time. We have already noted in previous chapters that Alan Colquhoun recognized two tendencies within historicism.62 While one view sees style merely as a by-product of the particularities of a socio-cultural situation, the second view presents a normative interpretation of eclecticism, using it as a

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springboard towards future possibilities. According to Colquhoun, the artistic avant-gardes could be faithful to the future only by turning their back on tradition, and giving “expression in their works to the spirit of the age.” He concludes that, Pevsner, among other historians of the modern movement, subscribed to “this developmental aspect of the avant-garde.”63 Here Colquhoun fails to make a distinction between architects’ and historians’ appropriation of the concept of historicism. This is an important charge: firstly, because, as noted earlier, both Summerson and Banham declined to dirty their hands with the 1950s architecture, leaving the task to architects. Secondly, knowing the alleged tendency of the Hegelian School of history, how should one interpret Pevsner’s criticism of the post-war architecture? Did he have a particular picture of contemporary architecture in mind that was absent from the world he experienced at the time of lecturing at the RIBA? Or was he representing a contemporary vision of eclecticism embedded in Colquhoun’s definition of historicism? A positive response to the last speculation is valid if one takes into consideration Banham, who not only maintained a developmental view of history, but also saw the post-war architecture as being in tune with the emerging mass culture.64 Pevsner, instead, attempted to present evidence to prove the contrary. In criticizing historicism Pevsner scored two points: firstly, that he was not a dedicated determinist historian—to him the historicality of the project of modernity was fait accompli. Secondly, that modernity was an ongoing project with no terminating point, a closure in itself. Associating architecture with the prevailing values and technologies of the time, Pevsner excluded the role architectural conventions might play in the production of modern design. Here is what Manfredo Tafuri has to say about Pevsner’s concern for the reappearance of history when modern architecture had not yet lost its linguistic hegemony. According to Tafuri, “The neat cut with preceding traditions becomes, paradoxically, the symbol of an authentic historical continuity.”65 Sympathetic to modern architects’ search for a new style, and this against the background of the nineteenth-century architectural theories,66 Pevsner had no choice but to emulate what Tafuri called “operative criticism.”67 To solidify his position, Pevsner’s text had to dwell on architects whose work showed enough evidence (image?) to stand clear from both the eclecticism and expressionism despised by the Art Nouveau movement. One intention of the implied evidence was to refute Banham’s sympathetic appreciation of the emerging mass culture of the post-war era.68 At the expense of overestimating Pevsner’s position, one can associate Pioneers with texts written circa 1930 when, according to Tafuri, their authors retained an

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uncompromising vision of modernism, making no attempt to introduce “historiographical arrangement” into their writings. For Tafuri, the narrative written by A. Behen, E. Persico, Le Corbusier and others holds the seeds of operative criticism. Instead of making history, “one makes ideology: which besides betraying the task of history hides the real possibilities of transforming reality.”69 Even though Tafuri included Pevsner among historians who advocated a developmental vision of modern architecture, his criticism was mainly directed at Giedion and Bruno Zevi. In retrospect, Pevsner was wrong to say that the social conditions of the 1950s were not changed, and that the rationalism attributed to modern architecture should not be challenged by “the new post-modern antirationalism” of the kind he noted in Hans Scharoun’s work, for example.70 And yet, he was right in saying that the present architecture lacks the courage to further expand the project of modern architecture.71 What is missing in his judgement is a historical interpretation of why his expectations did not take place. Was it because the architecture of the late 1930s had already exhausted the style issue experienced by most architects of the nineteenth-century? Or was it that the suggested idea of exhaustion was already implied in Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock’s formulation of The International Style? The famous exhibition launched at MoMA, New York, tacitly declared the beginning of the end of a vision of modernism that was dear to many modern architects. Of further interest is Alison and Peter Smithson’s partial response to the above questions. In a 1965 text they claimed that, “In the period before and just after the first world war a new idea of architecture came into being. In an amazingly short time it mastered its necessary techniques and produced buildings which were as completely realized as any in the previous history of architecture.” The Smithsons continued, “The period ended when absolute conviction in the movement died, around 1919. There were a few “chance” buildings before 1915, and there were buildings with the genuine spirit after 1929 away from the main centres.”72 Whatever Pevsner’s response to their historical observations might have been, he should be credited for initiating the idea of closure, even though he neither recognized its significance nor made an attempt to theorize it as did Wölfflin. The question for this German art historian was: “How can architecture express the character of a period?” Wölfflin maintained that there is a will to create form in everything, which eventually finds its outlet through analogical correspondence to the human feelings stimulated by the body’s confrontation with the forces of gravity.73 Perhaps Pevsner

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had Wölfflin’s theological vision in mind when he decided to subtitle his book, from Morris to Gropius. Any further discussion of Wölfflin should concern the disciplinary differences between art history and architectural history.74 Furthermore, Pevsner’s criticism of historicism and its characterization in terms of the architect’s return to the ideas that were already present by the time of the publication of Pioneers opens a discussion that should focus on the double nature of closure. In the first place, Pevsner’s understanding of historicism anticipated that aspect of the debate on the end of modernity that prompts an experience of temporality (time?) when things are recycled within a void perpetuating the myth of progress. Any orthodox vision of modernity, one might speculate, meets the conditions of postmodernity on the surface of a time capsule from where the future is seen retrospectively. In the second place, Pevsner’s periodization of the modern movement, from Morris to Gropius, not only anticipated his argument on historicism—or the latter was based on the premise of the earlier book—but also, and this beyond his intentions, allows one to think of contemporary architectural history as the sum total of many short but closed periods. This argument can be contested for its retrograde position much of which is informed by contemporary theorization of the idea of periodization.75 This is a valid charge. Nevertheless, the argument presented here aims to destabilize Watkin’s image of Pevsner, and to open the closure implied in Pevsner’s text into contemporary theoretical debates. The strategic goal is to underline the urgent need for a historical criticism of Pevsner. One should accept, for example, that he was correct in associating Morris with a movement underlining the collective dimension of architecture. He was also correct in seeing Morris’s historical incapacity to appreciate the rationalism of modern technique and its aesthetic connotations beyond the vicissitudes of the Arts and Crafts movement. Once these charges are established, then the question to ask should be the following: if opened, would not the closure implied in from William Morris to Walter Gropius unfold a linear vision of history? The question leads to reiterating the theme of time and history, discussed earlier, though from a different angle. That both architects and historians understood modernism in association with the spirit of time adds nothing substantial to the general practice of architecture taking place before the war years. One of the dichotomies in modernism was that the work is informed by the conflict between conventions essential to the national character, and the forces of modernization attributed to the Zeitgeist. Wölfflin famously claimed: “It is too well known to require comment that styles are not created at will by individuals but grow out of popular sentiments and that

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individuals can create successfully only by immersing themselves in the universal and by representing perfectly the character of the nation and the time.”76 Pevsner did indeed follow Wölfflin in his English period. According to Barbara Miller Lane, Pevsner played a powerful role in promoting the British Arts and Crafts movement, smoothing the path for the realisation of modern architecture. She further claims that “Pevsner’s thesis has dominated research of modern architectural scholarship in every country,” and that he has inspired “studies that explore the influence of Ruskin and Morris on the arts and crafts movement of the later-nineteenth century.”77 However, essential to the formation of modern architecture was the distinction made between the first impulses of modernity and its actualisation through the national romantic movement of late-nineteenthcentury Europe,78 and architecture’s entanglement with the universal dimensions of capitalism. Consider this, in the German context the Werkbund represented the predominant characteristic of the National Romantic movement, and promoted a concept of design that was attuned to the demands of machine production processes. Most British thinkers, active in the formation of modern architecture in their country, however, maintained a conservative if not hostile position against modernity. Nevertheless, Ruskin, Pugin and Morris were aware that human knowledge is temporal and historical. Influenced by Ruskin, Morris believed that “the art of any epoch must of necessity be the expression of its social life, and that the social life of the Middle Ages allowed the workman freedom of individual expression.” On another occasion, Morris blamed architects who promoted Gothic revival without realizing that the Gothic cathedrals were the product of a particular society distinct from theirs.79 Subscribing to the ethics and values of the guild system, most British architects and thinkers, however, sought to avoid the rift between science and art, and this in the context of an ever increasing influence of technology in the future path that the bourgeois state capitalism would travel. To recall the conflict between national identity and modernism is not to endorse Pevsner’s discussion of the subject in a rather tedious book titled, The Englishness of English Art (1956). Here Pevsner discusses the “geography of art” in association with the spirit of the age. The initial idea came from Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s discussion of the importance of climate for the origin of architecture. This was due to the mentality fostered by political freedom and physical environment permeating the eighteenth century. Winckelmann’s contribution went beyond this. He offered a model of historiography that was focused on the “very nature of art itself,” a development that is considered “significant for the ambitions

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of later art historians.”80 Thus the plausible claim that Pevsner was motivated by the Viennese art historian, Dagobert Frey and his book Englisch Wesen in der Bildenden (1942).81 One can list Pevsner’s book among others that present a more profound argument concerning the regionalism of the post-war era.82 Nevertheless, Pevsner’s descriptive and non-argumentative reflections on the polarities separating national character from the spirit of the age are worth considering. The book formulates a strategy for dismantling the suggested linear progression implied in the subtitle of his 1936 book. The link between Morris and Gropius did speak for Pevsner’s dedication to rationalism and matter-offactness that was theorized through the Werkbund, and put into practice by Gropius. This is clear from a text Pevsner published in the early 1970s. In a volume of collected essays addressing selected architectural writings from the nineteenth century,83 Pevsner capitalized on Morris, arguing that the latter belonged to a school of British thinking in which “eye-reactions” were considered to be a step towards the social act.84 Like Ruskin, Morris’s observation of the visual consequences of a degenerated life and labour allowed for an argument in favour of justice and happiness. Secondly, Pevsner saw Morris as part of a much broader artistic vision of those decades when simplicity and purposefulness of human products were considered essential.85 Even though the selected authors of the book share Semper’s argument that necessity is essential to artistic creativity, Pevsner’s main interest in Morris was motivated by the designer’s futureoriented vision. Morris’ advocacy for “honesty and simplicity of life,” and his aspiration for “happiness to maker and the user” speak for the realism which, according to Pevsner, is devoid of negative radicalism, and thus we see his interest in Morris’ usual quest for “what can be done” next. His was “realism” with a limited operative agenda. It excluded the contesting dimension of the historical avant-garde whose vision and imagination equal, if not surpass, radical scientific discoveries of the time. Morris’ aspiration for socialism was not good enough to invigorate Pevsner either. Still, Morris’s dislike of historical revivalism could not score more points than what was already achieved by Semper and Violletle-Duc. What did draw the historian’s attention to Morris, even as late as the 1970s, was a vision of future attainable by bridging the temporal gap between Morris and Gropius. This was one reason that Pevsner saw in Morris the gist of modern architecture. Committed to the Ruskinian idea of an holistic relationship between society and architecture, Morris’ social criticism ended in speculations of the following nature: that under the new society—in his own words—“architecture, as part of the life of people in general, will again become possible, and I believe that when it’s possible,

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it will have a real new birth, and add so much to the pleasure of life that we shall wonder how people were able to live without it.”86 While this might be a desirable scenario even today, the fact remains that Pevsner’s reading of Morris reveals his own vision of modernism: a movement that cuts itself off from historical eclecticism and remains optimistic concerning a future informed by rationalism expressed in the matter-offactness and simplicity of the frozen forms of machinery. This is clear from Pevsner’s remark considering the architect’s inability in the midnineteenth century to utilize new materials as engineers did. Similar to Ruskin, but more forward-looking than him and Morris, Pevsner correctly saw architecture’s close ties to its social conditions as being very different from the situation with the other arts. In a lecture highlighting the difference between Ruskin’s and Viollet-le-Duc’s approaches to Gothic architecture, Pevsner argued that, while in the painting of the nineteenth century “the split is familiar between progressive and traditional,” such a distinction in architecture calls for a clientele that is ready to compromise with the world.87 One might claim that only from a retrograde position could Pevsner have taken note of Morris’s advocacy for utility and pragmatism, issues equally radical to those of modernism’s advocacy for simplicity of form that was put into practice in the Bauhaus under the directorship of Gropius. These observations prompt discussing two issues. Firstly, as far as the question of periodization is concerned, any periodic break unleashes anxieties concerning the future. It also casts a different light on the past.88 Pevsner saw Morris’s relevance to modern architecture through the rupture implied in the work of Gropius. According to Panayotis Tournikiotis, “Morris and Ledoux were in some sense a reconstruction of Gropius and Le Corbusier.” He continues, “this feature of reversal,” emblematic to the genealogies of modern architecture, is “in opposition to the linear development of the histories. The beginning as the reconstruction of the end, already contains all the historian’s positions on the being of architecture, society and history.”89 While one should agree with him that there is no objective history, nevertheless, to write history within the antinomies of modernity demands an investigation, the objective of which is not “what architecture should be” in the future, but the very issues involved in holding onto the autonomy of architecture as its own field of knowledge. Secondly, a retrospective reading of history should question Pevsner’s unqualified claim that the new style was based on the work of late-nineteenth-century British architects and designers, with particular emphasis put on Morris, Philip Webb and Charles Voysey.90

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Even if the argument for the national character is presented as alternative to the historicism of the 1950s, Pevsner’s position still remains controversial. Nowhere is this judgement better qualified than in Pevsner’s formulation of the English esteem for the picturesque.91 In a revealing comparison between two pairs of paintings and buildings, Pevsner fails to recognize the importance of fabrication and artificiality informing the modernist articulation of the subject and its context. Comparing Courbet’s Stonemakers, 1848, and Wright’s design for Henderson House (1901) with Voysey’s “friendly and human style,” and John Brett’s Stonemaker of 1857, Pevsner reapproaches the idea of closure, although this time with a conservative view of what he believed to be essential to British culture.92 Now what conclusions should we draw from Pevsner’s argument in Pioneers of the Modern Movement? Any answer to this question demands rewriting the historiography of early modern architecture. The project requires a task to be carried out on two fronts: on the one front, intellectual labour is needed to rescue Pevsner’s text from reductionist interpretations of the kind Watkin advocates. On the second front, we need to cast historical judgement on Pevsner’s assessment of historicism, and his will to formulate a singular period style. What this criticism asks for is to discuss Pevsner’s text in association with manifestoes written by architects and theoreticians who worked during the first decades of the last century. That modernism was not counter-history but a critique of the revival of historical styles is suggestive of Pevsner’s intention to write the history of modern architecture beyond the vision of art history. In discussing the protagonists of modern architecture, Pevsner’s intention was neither to search for the new style nor to theorize the historiography of modern design. If these observations are taken seriously, then Pevsner had no choice but to follow the ghost of the most progressive architects of the time and to formulate a point of view that is devoid of historical criticism. It is perhaps correct to say that, in formulating that which was considered essential to Englishness, on the one hand, and his sympathies with modernism, on the other, Pevsner could not but divide himself into two persona—“he was both the architect-critic and the historian.”93 This assessment prompts the following question: how should one characterize Pevsner’s Pioneers today? Pevsner’s narrative does not discuss its subject based on the idea of the first time, which, according to Jameson, defines modernity without any concern for periodization.94 Rather, Pevsner’s vision travels simultaneously along two paths. On the one hand, his eye glosses over examples of design and buildings that were central to the formation of modern architecture. He presents these examples as historical facts without casting judgement on

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them. Each building discussed in his text is already informed by history, and placed within a chain of events essential to the formation of modern architecture. On the other hand, Pevsner’s investigation does not say anything about his own understanding of modernity, and the ideas he attributes to a particular project. In writing modern architecture, Pevsner was not operating as a critic. What needs to be recognized is that Pioneers demonstrates Pevsner’s attempt to reconcile the universal aspects of modernization exemplified in German institutions such as the Werkbund with those qualities of the past, which for him, were essential for the realization of the matter-of-factness and purposefulness of products designed by major figures of the Arts and Crafts movement. In juxtaposing these two poles (at a conceptual level) a space is opened for seeing Pevsner in a different light. It also allows for the consideration of a project that is central to the present discourse on architectural historiography. That is, the possibility of re-thinking modernity within the remnants of what might be called its other, or its near past; and this, one might argue, should be considered the most important aspect of Pevsner’s contribution and one which has generally escaped the critic’s eye. Essential to Pevsner’s discourse is a vision of modernity that allows for the historicizing of architecture dialectically: that is to position architecture in the matrix of difference and identity. This is evident, for example, in Pevsner’s inclusion of Morris in the scope of the modern movement. The inclusion does two things: it allows for deviation from the understanding of modernity that sees itself in absolute departure from the conditions—the breakaway central to the phenomenon of modernity; it also nurtures that which might be called the ideology of modernity. While the absence of doubt can be qualified as the characteristic of most manifestoes written in favour of a uniform understanding of modernity—particularly the narratives written during the first two decades of the last century—Pevsner’s case needs further clarification. In a radio broadcast of March 194995, Pevsner took the opportunity to underline, one more time, the importance of including Morris in the perspective of modern architecture. Accordingly, what made Morris relevant to Gropius relates to Morris’s advocacy for the collective nature of art and architecture. This Pevsner saw in anticipation of the Werkbund and the Bauhaus’s intention to marry art with industry. In retrospect, one might suggest that historically the time was not ripe for architects and theoreticians to think otherwise. The project of modernity as understood today could not have been formulated without the institutionalisation of what seemed to be the most radical aspect of the near past. Pevsner remained faithful to the project of modernity as such.

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Nevertheless, it did not take much time or effort for one of Pevsner’s best students to see modern architecture from a distance. Of interest is the following statement of Banham. Characterizing Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s work as transitional, Banham observed that, Mackintosh is numbered among the Pioneers of the Modern Movement, as Professor Pevsner termed them in the title of the first edition of the book in which he traced what is, in many ways, an apostolic succession from the great architectural moralists of the mid-nineteenth century, John Ruskin, Viollet-le-Duc and Gottfried Semper. This apostolic succession, the conscious handing-on of the message of a reformed attitude to design, is of vital importance to the concept of modern architecture: if only because there are times and places where modern architecture cannot be defined except as “what is done by modern architects” and because the modern movement can always be more rigorously defined by naming its members than by attempting to list its methods.96

What remains of critical importance in reading Pevsner’s narrative is how to comprehend modernity as a project and construct/construe the present for a potential future, utopia if you wish. While this might be a point of view extracted from the concept of Modernity, a re-reading of Pevsner’s book today allows us to clarify our contemporary understanding of the history of modern architecture, and the need for periodisation in a situation when architecture is thriving under the forces of globalisation, and where the tendency exists among some neo-avant-garde architects to theorize architecture from the problematics of the digital zeitgeist, if not from the first time. It also allows us to make a good use of Pinder/Pevsner’s tendency to align the history of art and architecture with the larger history though mapped beyond racial and nationalistic prejudices coloring the mental life of the nineteenth century, and the concept of autonomy propagated by art history.

CHAPTER THREE HENRY-RUSSELL HITCHCOCK AND THE PASTORAL VISION OF MODERNITY

Henry-Russell Hitchcock’s Modern Architecture, Romanticism and Reintegration was first published in 19291, at the end of a decade when many authors had already mapped the theoretical vicissitudes of modern architecture. Sigfried Giedion published Building in France Building in Concrete in 1928; Le Corbusier’s Vers une architecture was available in 1925; and Adolf Behne’s Kunst, Handwerk, Technik was published in 1922, to mention a few texts fundamental to the formation of modern architecture.2 What makes Hitchcock’s book different can be summarized in the following two points: firstly, Hitchcock’s narrative remained too close to the work of architects advocating modernism, and thus failed to maintain the distance central to a critical approach to architectural history. Theory as understood today, and its significance for historiography was generally not tangible then and even so less for an American historian whose educational horizon did not extend beyond the canon established by the educational portfolio of the French École des Beaux-Arts. Hitchcock secured an undergraduate degree in art history in 1922 when he first visited Europe. By 1924 he received a Masters degree in Architecture from Harvard University, which in his words, was “an extremely conservative school, then run on diluted École des Beaux-Arts lines.”3 His education at Harvard, however, gave him the opportunity to learn an “objective” and formal approach to architecture. Among that of others, the influence of Arthur Porter, a medievalist expert, can be traced in Hitchcock’s Masters thesis. Searching for the rethinking of building’s traditions in the purview of new techniques, however, remained a continuous theme in Hitchcock’s approach to architecture.4 Theory per se was not important to him. Having acknowledged the difference between architectural history and architectural criticism, what interested him the most were the ways in which ideas are translated into built-form.5 Secondly, running through Hitchcock’s text is what might be called “geographic psychology” of the New World, a theme that became the most

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distinguished aspect of his historiography. This subject will be discussed in the second part of this chapter. However, in spite of, or because of this, absent in his text, and this is the second dimension of Hitchcock’s vision, are the traditions of art history central to European writings on the history of arts and architecture.6 The situation left Hitchcock with no choice but to subscribe to a pastoral vision of modernity promoted by the discourse of Romanticism. The subject of Romanticism will be taken up shortly. What should be addressed first is that, instead of exploring the conflict between architecture and modernity’s urge for a technologically based vision of progress, Hitchcock proposed the idea of “New Tradition” as a transitory phase to smooth the path for the realization of an architecture that would sublate the project of modernity. By “pastoral” I also have in mind Hitchcock’s recognition of the need to undo Romanticism while juxtaposing it with the idea of reintegration as indicated in the subtitle of his book. Acknowledging the historicity of Romanticism, reintegration remained central to Hitchcock’s historiography.7 To qualify this claim the influence of the Chicago School, and H. H. Richardson’s work on Hitchcock’s pastoral vision of modernism will be addressed in this chapter.8

Background The following questions open the way to an understanding of what is singular to Hitchcock’s narrative: which thematic of Romanticism did Hitchcock consider important for his discussion of the New Tradition; and, how might one associate the pastoral approach to modernism with the ethos of Romanticism? Neither Hitchcock’s introduction nor the bibliography compiled at the end of his book helps the reader to locate the theoretical roots of “Romanticism” included in the subtitle of the book. One might speculate that he was familiar with the English literature on Romanticism, and the subject’s importance for the art and literature of the late-nineteenth century. He might also have had a vague familiarity with the theories of German Romanticism.9 Recalling Logan Pearsall Smith’s Four Romantic Words, Hitchcock suggested that photographic invention suspended the romanticist concept of “genius”, and thus the possibility of making a distinction “between scientific technics and artistic expression” and those of the literary-pictorial.10 As we will see in this chapter, the coupling of technique with expression is critical to Hitchcock’s idea of periodization. Also important is the formativeness of the concept of organicism for the discourse of Romanticism. These ideas provided Hitchcock with the tools needed to bridge the gap between what was

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happening in Europe and the ideas discussed in American intellectual circles. Hitchcock’s understanding of Romanticism is in accord with Fiske Kimball’s discussion of the movement and its influence on American architecture. According to this American architectural critic, with Romanticism comes the tendency to glorify the idea of the individual that is “rooted in American democracy”, and the openness of the country’s landscape. He wrote that the term also recalls Gothic symbolism and the picturesque, and implies a sense of naturalness, which is evoked in the esteem for national identity.11 Kimball would take up the subject in 1944 and discuss it in conjunction with classicism. In “Romantic Classicism in Architecture”12 Kimball provides a chronological account of this subject. The term romantic classicism, however, intended to demonstrate the hybrid roots of Romanticism. For Kimball, both Gothic and Greek revivalism were the two sides of the same coin, the 1830s English Romanticism which then expanded into other countries. Kimball’s argument is convincing on several counts: his demonstration of the inclusion of Chinese, Gothic, and Greek structures in the landscape of the time; his claim for the introduction of Romanticism into Germany through the work of Friedrich Gilly and Karl Friedrich Schinkel, and thus taking on Giedion’s thesis, a subject discussed in the next chapter; and finally, his conclusion that there is something of Romanticism deep in modern architecture which is delivered through the suggested pastoral view of modernity. According to Kimball, “we are romantic by our cult of the organic, and even of the creative itself, of the original—which as conscious artistic motives were quite foreign to many earlier periods.”13 Likewise, and in the image of earlier periods, a pastoral vision of modernity wanted to respond to that which is central to the discourse of Romanticism: the conflict between the desire and drive to create original works of art, on the one hand, and the esteem for the distance in space and time, on the other. Of further interest is Romanticism’s drive for progress and its endeavour to reconstruct “the distinctive life and art of peoples in time or space”14 both historically and imaginatively. This latter was recoded in the nineteenth-century idea of national identity, and emulated later through the notion of regionalism. In consideration of Kimball’s suggestion that Romanticism landed in America through the work of Thomas Jefferson, it is useful to recall the work of H. D. Thoreau and R. W. Emerson, and a school of thinking central to Lewis Mumford’s writing on American architecture, especially his advocacy for regionalism. Aspects of Mumford’s discourse allude to the American “transcendentalism”—the sympathy for “ordinary”; the call

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for common and the “near”; and the latter’s implication for temporality. What comes before, according to Stanley Cavell, has nothing to do with the future if you tune to Thoreau. One might rather reach out to the future by “reading” what is in front of one. For Cavell, Thoreau and Emerson are fundamental for understanding Romanticism in America.15 This is important because it sets a theoretical agenda for discussing the difference between Hitchcock and Mumford, especially when the subject concerns the early state of modern architecture in America. In raising these issues, the intention is not to discuss Romanticism in its entirety. It suffices to limit the scope of discussion to the paradoxical rapport between the pastoral and Romanticism’s approach to modernity. The pastoral, Marshall Berman suggests, projects a unified picture of modernism, one devoid of any contradictions that, in the last analysis, should be considered as having the power to ignite the engine of modernity’s urge for progress. While Romanticism too, as far as one can extrapolate from the work of Pugin and William Morris, upheld an organic picture of Gothic architecture’s relationship to the medieval guild system (prototype for a holistic vision of socialism), their retrospective vision stimulated a critique of modernity that was unfolding in England in the late-nineteenth century. To gain a better picture of Hitchcock’s intellectual background, it is useful to map the conflation between Romanticism and pastoral in the romanticist idea of “reintegration.” It is also important to note the weakening, if not the loss, of the theological hold on art that was cemented throughout the late-eighteenth century. Since then, the significance of art was seen either “as an image of what the world might look like, were we to realize our freedom, or as the only means of creating an illusion that would enable us to face an otherwise meaningless existence”.16 In this mutation, both architects and historians welcomed modernity’s will for disintegration, and the resultant cry for the bygone unity attributed to Gothic or Greek architecture. Alternatively, the fate of a promised unity was sought in the marriage between art and technique, advocated by the Werkbund and then the Bauhaus school. There is enough evidence throughout Hitchcock’s text to claim that he discussed American architecture in conjunction with the intellectual developments taking place in Europe. In the introduction to the book, for example, he says that “historical criticism” should brush aside the illusion that the present architecture has nothing to do with the past. What “past” meant to him, however, embodies aspects of the discipline upon which he would construct his historiographic narrative. Mention should also be made of the way architecture was taught at the Harvard Graduate School

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of Design during the early decades of the last century. Of these latter influences mention should be made of Hitchcock’s emphasis on architectural history, and architectural drawings, understood as documents disclosing the architect’s intentions. In the second place, still following the genealogies of Romanticism, Hitchcock considered High Gothic as the beginning of the modern style. Essential to this claim is the specificity of “intellectual experimentation” that took place in the aftermath of the “Age of Romanticism”. According to Hitchcock, since 1750 and from the time when the early tendencies of Romanticism were evidenced in art,17 intellectual experimentation could not divest itself of two things—the new methods of construction, and the need to find architectonic solutions for the problems posed by modernization. Giedion shared his observation and marked the date as the beginning of the modern architecture. The year 1750 highlights a change in European architecture, the main features of which can be summarized in the following words: that the homology attributed to the architecture of the pre-modern era had to do with the fact that construction methods in those periods remained almost unchanged. On the other hand, in spite, or because of the geographic and historical space separating America from Europe, Hitchcock did his best to theorize the modern style in the matrix of abstract forms and experimentations whose subject matter was motivated by traditions inherited from the art of building as it had evolved in Europe. Of interest here is a sense of periodization centred on 1750: the time when the pre-modern linguistic unity permeating classical architecture had disintegrated, and when the need was felt for a process of re-integration based on the new construction techniques. Romanticism is important to Hitchcock because it promises the dialectics of disintegration and re-integration.18 The influence of European traditions of modernism can be traced to the organization of Hitchcock’s book as well. Of interest here is his tacit recognition of the critical nature of the logos of making for the formation of modern architecture.19 The discussion of the first part of his manuscript focuses on the “New Tradition” where the idea of “integration” is used for two purposes: firstly, to underline the criticality of pre-modern techniques of construction (wall construction methods) for the realization of the architecture of the New Tradition; secondly, in plotting the evolutionary nature of the New Tradition within different countries. For the latter Hitchcock used the regional dimension of architecture as a strategy for cementing the American contribution to the formation of the idea of the New Tradition. The second section of the book, instead, concentrates on the specifics of the language of modern architecture informed by industrial techniques, materials, and the aesthetic of abstract painting. .

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Provisionally, one can argue that essential to Hitchcock’s vision of history is the challenge technological developments imposed on the disciplinary history, and the need for the latter’s modification. Mention should also be made of the fact that he was one of the first historians to consider geographic difference as an important classificatory mode for the examination of the linguistic multiplicity of modern architecture, a point of view which is brushed aside in his next book, The International Style Architecture (1932), co-authored by Philip Johnson. The book’s advocacy for a homogeneous architectural language recalls the idea of closure implied in Pevsner’s Pioneers of the Modern Movement, discussed in the previous chapter. And yet, lecturing in 1946, Hitchcock told his audience of the fact that there is a “danger of monotony,” and thus the need to reapproach the “new style” through traditions internal to each country’s regional particularities. The examples Hitchcock provided are, by now, the familiars: Frank L. Wright, Alvar Aalto, and a number of architects from other countries peripheral to the modernism evolving in Europe.20 One might speculate as to whether the doubling involved in Hitchcock’s discourse on “closure” is of the kind that Pevsner would have subscribed to. For an answer to this, the difference between these two historians will be taken up at the end of this chapter.

What is new in the New Tradition? Romanticism was central to the formation of modern architecture when the question concerns Hitchcock’s vision of the history of modern architecture. What needs to be stressed, however, is the particular in Hitchcock’s appropriation of the ethos of Romanticism. Central to Hitchcock’s esteem for Romanticism are the rise of the eighteenth-century historical consciousness, and the vision of history that challenged the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns. Historicism involves the process of looking at the past in order to question the social and intellectual conditions of mid-nineteenth century Europe. The romantic aspiration for freedom of the individual concerned, among other things, issues such as artistic freedom and the autonomy of stylistic change. These two subjects were seen as a barometer for checking the impact of modernization on the production of art and architecture. Nevertheless, the key to Hitchcock’s vision of modern architecture is the idea of reintegration: how to sympathize with the “disintegrating” 21 aspect of Romanticism without dismissing the benefits promised by new techniques and the aesthetic sensibilities that were not available until the end of the mid-nineteenth century.

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The disintegrating aspect of Romanticism was even recognized by those who criticized the movement. According to Geoffrey Scott, “In architecture, although the Romantic Movement of the nineteenth century dealt the final death-blow to the tradition of the Renaissance, yet that tradition, it must not be forgotten, was itself a romantic movement.”22 Scott’s dislike of “historicism” is strong enough to make him say that nothing new had taken place since the Renaissance. Here is his argument against the picturesque, for example: “If the wild and the accidental are absent from Renaissance architecture, it is certainly not because the men of that period were blind to their attraction. The term pittoresco was, after all, their invention. It stood, on its own showing, for the qualities which suggest a picture, and are of use in the making of it.”23 Scott did not even take note of the historicity of his own argument when highlighting the psychological aspect of the aesthetic dimension of architecture: that a building could “attract” or just “absorb” the viewer, for example. For Hitchcock, instead, the fallacy of humanism is based on the assumption that everything that happened in “Europe before 1750 is familiar and more or less acceptable…”24 The task ahead was to recode the so-called familiar through the Romanticist urge for disintegration. The inquiry mapped thus far allows for discussing the two tenets of Hitchcock’s pastoral vision of modernity. What counted most for Hitchcock was to highlight the historical moment when architectural traditions had to be submitted to the process of modernization. While it might be argued that the most progressive architects and theoreticians practising in those decades expressed the same tendency, it is essential to discuss the particular in Hitchcock’s appropriation of the subject. Particular attention should be given to his shortcoming to see the conflict initiated by the infusion of technique into the craft of architecture. Equally important is his tendency to classify themes central to the periodization of the time spanning 1750 to 1850. This period speaks not only for the aforementioned discussion concerning the evolution of Romantic Classicism in architecture,25 but also for the fact that by the 1850s, the associations made between Greek and Gothic styles and national identity coincided with the end of Victorian architecture in England and the emergence of what Hitchcock would later call “triumph of the historic attitude.”26 Accordingly, he put forward “a proposal for a genealogy that could compete in the coming years with the lines of argument already articulated by Giedion, and those soon to be voiced by Nikolaus Pevsner.”27 To solidify the American contribution to modern architecture, however, Hitchcock associated those decades with the rise of the New Tradition in H. H. Richardson’s mature work.28 Following an exhibition of

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Richardson’s work (organized by the Museum of Modern Art), Hitchcock published a major work on Richardson in 1936.29 His intention was to present Richardson’s work beyond Schuyler Van Rensselaer’s (1888) biographical account, and Mumford’s The Brown Decades (1931), in which the years between 1880 and 1895 are considered crucial for the formation of modern architecture.30 Before discussing the Chicago School’s contribution to the formation of the idea of the New Tradition, the following question needs to be addressed: why did Hitchcock attach such importance to Romanticism? The question allows for disclosing that aspect of Romanticism, which is dismissed in most accounts of the history of modern architecture. Progressive modernists, but also the historians and architects who saw some virtue in reiteration of the Renaissance humanism, were equally critical of the nostalgic tendency nested in Romanticism. As mentioned earlier, it was Geoffrey Scott’s The Architecture of Humanism (first published in 1914) that introduced the concept of humanism to the discourse of modern architecture. It is worth noting that the publication date of this book coincided with the Werkbund’s debate, an event of lasting influence on the historicity of modern architecture. The American debate on humanism, instead, resurfaced during the 1930s. The idea received currency among disciples of Irving Babbitt and Paul Elmer Moore, and was promoted in a symposium titled “The Critique of Humanism”, which was published in book form in 1930. Both in Hitchcock’s presentation to the symposium and in his book, Scott’s contribution is mentioned only in the last paragraph of the text. What stands out in both references, however, is Hitchcock’s claim that Scott’s ideas are not applicable to the goals set by modern architecture. Thus, both Hitchcock and Mumford felt the need to present an alternative view to those aspects of the discourse on humanism that concern issues such as art and social theory. Noteworthy is Hitchcock’s take on many American authors who advocated a humanist approach to the fine arts. Hitchcock’s essay is indicative of his interest in Romanticism and the movement’s contribution to the formation of modern architecture.31 For Hitchcock, Romanticism presents a historical phenomenon whose destiny for the most part was to challenge the singular significance attributed to classical canons, and the universal norms established by premodern architecture. Hitchcock, however, did not acknowledge that aspect of the movement, which in architectural theory is discussed in terms of “organicism.”32 This is evident in Montgomery Schuyler’s statement where, speaking of what he calls “Chicago construction”, the author underlines the idea of organism discussed by Georges Cuvier. Schuyler’s

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discussion discloses the particular place “nature” occupies in Emerson’s work. For Schuyler, the analogy between architecture and organism relates to “an imitation not of forms of nature but of the process of nature.”33 Dismissing the debate on organicism on all fronts, including the essentiality of the subject for the tectonic discourse, Hitchcock’s interest in technique and the need for establishing a dialogical relationship between construction and expression remained limited to the vicissitudes of a positivistic approach to technology. The implied contradiction suggests a further investigation into the genesis of the New Tradition. In an essay written in 1928, Hitchcock presented a summary of the state of architecture later to be developed in the book under consideration here. Starting from America, he saw the future of architecture in the ways in which architects will reconcile traditions of architecture with new building techniques. If in America there existed a sharp distinction between the works of what Hitchcock calls Traditionalists and those of engineers, it is in Europe that the seeds of The New Pioneers can be traced in the architecture of the New Tradition. This said, he did acknowledge two American architects whose work contributed to the formation of the New Tradition. We are reminded of Richardson and Wright, and the fact that the latter was one of the four founding architects of the New Tradition. The other three architects are P. Berlage, A. Perret, and J. Hoffmann.34 Nevertheless, it is the work of Sir John Soane in Europe that consolidated the major characteristics of the architecture of the New Tradition. We are reminded that the “essential principle which governs both their retrospective and their modernity is the belief that not any one period of the past as a whole offers the surest guide.”35 For Hitchcock it was the developments taking place in painting and technologies that eventually would enable architecture to move from the intermediary situation of the New Tradition towards a unified language permeating the architecture of new pioneers. To qualify the above claim one needs to recall the usefulness of the nineteenth-century discourse on organicism. In the first place, the discussion should reiterate the centrality of nature for theories of imitation: that contrary to the classical use of the idea of imitation, art should not copy nature but use it as an analogue for transforming “dead matter into living being”.36 In the second place, organicism, as a concept, had the potential to sustain a “reasonable” relationship between the diverse agents involved in the realization of an entity. In both zoological types and building forms, the organizational structure that relates one member to another and to the whole was considered essential for a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon under investigation.

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Of the greatest interest in organicism is the drive for singularity and individuality whilst putting into consideration the totality involved in any historical reconstruction. Here is how Caroline van Eck describes the significance of organicism for nineteenth-century architecture: organicism presented “a strategy of invention, by which stylistic decisions are made and justified, or as a strategy of interpretation, through which the meaning of architecture, and especially the architecture of the past, can be formulated.”37 These issues are not discussed directly, but their architectonic implications are implied in Hitchcock’s criticism of the picturesque and the universal norms advocated by the Gothic and Greek revivalist movements. Again, Caroline van Eck’s discussion of organicism comes to mind, and the subject’s importance for a comprehensive understanding of the main figures of the Chicago School architecture, Henry Sullivan, J. W. Root, and Wright, with each contributing to the formation of the New Tradition.38 The implication of organicism for Wright’s architecture needs no emphasis here. What should be recalled is Mumford’s vision of organicism, a subject relevant to Hitchcock’s interest in Wright, but also the historian’s criticism of humanism. Criticizing both “new humanism” and “new mechanism”, Mumford argued that “the world known to personal intuition and that described by science are, rather, aspects of a single experience”. He goes further, differentiating “growth” from progress. He wrote: “It is in the nature of all organisms to carry, in any given reaction, anticipatory responses and movements which merge with the previous registrations of memory, and in turn alter both the past and the future by the direction taken from moment to moment.”39 How does the concept of organicism work, then, through the Chicago School architecture? According to Alan Colquhoun, Thomas Tallmadge used the term “Chicago School” in 1908 to identify architects like himself and Wright who were active between 1893 and 1917.40 Hitchcock also claimed that Tallmadge’s book, Story of American Architecture, provides a valuable source for the early development of the New Tradition in Chicago.41 Needless to say the Chicago School architecture had a profound impact on the formation of American modernism advocated by thinkers like Mumford. In his 1929 lectures at Dartmouth College, Mumford presented Richardson as the architect who combined Romanticism with the pragmatic aspects of the new building types. He considered Richardson as the architect who opened the road “towards modern architecture,” to recall the title of the third chapter of his book, The Brown Decades (1931), mentioned earlier. Noteworthy is the similarity between the titles of

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Mumford’s text and Le Corbsuier’s Towards a New Architecture (1923). It is not clear if Mumford had read the French architect’s book when writing his lecture. What is important is Mumford’s vision of modernity, and his emphasis on landscape, architecture, and engineering, topics recognized and associated with the work of Frederick Law Olmsted, Richardson, and John Roebling, respectively. His vision, however, was formative for an organic (pastoral?) interpretation of the idea of modernity. It also demonstrates the contextual dimension of Hitchcock’s interest in the regional character of modern architecture unfolding in different countries, a subject explored in the second part of his book. This subject of regionalism will be discussed in the last part of this chapter. For now, it suffices to say that central to the understanding of the work of the aforementioned American designers and thinkers, but also to Hitchcock’s vision of the New Tradition, is the dichotomy between form and construction formulated in the nineteenth-century German theories of the tectonic. Although his writing does not heavily rely on German literature, Hitchcock was familiar with architectural theories advanced in Germany. What makes it pertinent to recall Gottfried Semper’s theory of the tectonic is the discussion presented in the concluding section of Hitchcock’s book on Richardson’s architecture published in 1936, seven years after Modern Architecture. According to Hitchcock, Semper’s writing and the architect’s inclination for “eclecticism of taste” overshadow Schinkel’s formulations of a “theoretical system of rationalism” that were based on non-Classical structure, and the work of those architects he associated with the New Tradition.42 What should be added here is that Semper’s discourse on the tectonic presented a viable alternative to Romanticism and Humanism permeating the late-nineteenth-century architectural discourses. Aside from his theories, Hitchcock claimed, Semper “was really no more than a competent architect of the eclecticism of taste.”43 Obviously, “eclecticism of taste” was used in reference to Geoffrey Scott’s aspiration for Renaissance architecture. One is also reminded of Scott’s criticism of what he calls “the mechanical fallacy,” and his sympathy with psychological issues (the theory of empathy) discussing the dialogical relationship between construction and expression. Hitchcock was, nevertheless, correct in saying that neither Gothic nor Greek buildings were pure representation of construction. What is missing in his assessment is the significance of the tectonic, and that the aesthetic involved in construction, a subject that should not be reduced to “taste”, was emulated through Renaissance theories of architecture.44 Interestingly enough, Kimball underlined Semper’s emphasis on material and

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technique. He also supported Semper’s argument that the “solution to modern problems must be freely developed from the promises given by modernity.”45 Hitchcock’s dislike of Semper’s architecture, however, refers to his own belief that there should be no gap between an architect’s ideas and his/her design work. Only from this point of view could he cement the historicity of both the New Tradition, and the Pioneers, but also the difference separating these two moments in the evolutionary process of modern architecture. Hitchcock’s book on Richardson is useful at another level. It discloses his methodology in analysing a building. As well as to biological notes, Hitchcock gave importance to the books written on cultural histories, and the architect’s purchase or possession of particular architectural journals, or books that were published at the time of the realization of a particular project. Notable is his immense interest in illustrations accompanying a text, where he believed a good number of relevant illustrations are crucial for placing a given book in a good light. The conclusion of his book on Richardson, however, is of the most interest to us: it raises many issues central to any discussion of the tectonic, including subjects such as ornament and monumentality. These tropes are central to Hitchcock’s decision to place Richardson at the top of the list of forerunners of the New Tradition. They also provided him with the means to formulate a theoretical paradigm casting judgement on the work of the other two important figures of the Chicago School architecture, Sullivan and Wright whilst highlighting Richardson’s relevance to their work. Mention should also be made of the sense of self-criticism implied in Hitchcock’s association of the language of the international style with the canonical language of classicism, or for that matter, with any established style that, according to him, was expected to be brushed aside by Romanticism. That Richardson’s architecture was informed by the architectonic elements of diverse origins is obvious. While this aspect of his work can be associated with the general situation of America, that is, the absence of architectural styles of the kind European countries enjoyed the most, what was of interest to Hitchcock was the emergence of a “third style” in Richardson’s mature years exemplified in the Marshall Field Wholesale Store, 1885 (Fig. 3.1). There are two reasons for choosing this particular building from among others also attributed to the mature period of Richardson’s career. Firstly, for Hitchcock, the Marshal Field Wholesale Store discloses the French connection: the building’s monumental quality, informed by the urban characteristics of most buildings that Richardson had the chance to visit in Paris while studying architecture. Also of interest

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Figure 3.1 H. H. Richardson, Marshall Field Wholesale Store, Chicago, 18851887.

is the language of monumentality. What is Romanesque in Richardson’s architecture are the architectonics of the wall, the most form-giving element of the masonry construction system whose tectonic importance was not only discussed by Semper, but also theorized by Henrik Petrus Berlage. Here is Berlage’s remark on the importance of construction in a lecture delivered during his 1911 visit to the United States. He said, “it is very remarkable to notice that, as regards architecture, it was exactly the pure principle of construction which led both the Greeks and those of medieval times to a sublime architecture, whilst the Renaissance, which abandoned this principle, could do no more than approach the beautiful.”46 We will shortly notice in the following pages Hitchcock’s appropriation of the ideas addressed by the Belgian architect. While the tectonic genesis of Berlage’s Amsterdam Stock Exchange Building (1897-1903) can be traced in Richardson’s Brattle Square Church, Boston (1870), what should be highlighted, for theoretical purposes, is Richardson’s use of the so-called Rundbogenstil, the architectonic virtue of which was discussed in Heinrich Hübsch’s famous essay “In What Style Should We Build.”47 Secondly,

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any discussion concerning the singularity of the Marshall Field Store, should necessarily address the significance of the tectonic discourse for the project of Romanticism. This is important since the idea of “singularity” was of great significance for Romanticism. The discussion also alludes to the singularity of Richardson’s later work and its role in the formation of the idea of the New Tradition. Hitchcock’s following statement allows for further exploration of the theoretical underpinning of his interest in Romanticism. In the concluding remarks on Richardson’s work, Hitchcock reiterates what was already suggested in the introduction to Modern Architecture, that Richardson exemplifies an architect who lived in modern times though his work was not “modern.” The question should concern not only Richardson’s qualification as the forerunner of the New Tradition in America, but also what “modern” meant to the American historian. To understand the implied “schism”, Hitchcock’s following remark is useful: Richardson “was interested in the visual expression of construction rather than its engineering… and should have taken no active interest in the technical experimentation that was going on.”48 Interestingly enough and on the same page, what is described as Richardson’s “interest” turns out to be Hitchcock’s own vision of modern architecture. The mid-eighties are significant to Hitchcock because those years, at least in the landscape of American architecture, amount to the scope of technical developments that were crucial for the emergence of new building types. These techniques also unleashed aesthetic sensibilities that are embedded in the “appropriate expression of steel skeleton construction”.49 Mention should also be made of a cosmopolitan life-world practised in the Chicago of those decades, the architectonics of which can be detected in Richardson’s late architecture.50 Hitchcock’s observation benefits from the views expressed by other American critics: As early as 1891, in reference to Richardson’s architecture, Schuyler wrote: “Romanesque may be commended as a point of departure for modern architects precisely because it has never reached its ultimate perfection, as Gothic did.”51 This statement alone qualifies Richardson to be the architect who put to good use the traditions of the art of building without subscribing to any particular style. Richardson did not reject linguistic innovations forbidden by academicians for whom the universal values of humanism were the most significant aspect of the past styles. Noteworthy is Richardson’s embellishment of the tectonic of the culture of brick construction system without using the formal and ornamental elements characteristic of the historical styles, Greek and Gothic architecture in particular. One can suggest that, in the Marshall Field Store, the ideas of monumentality and ornament are welded into the

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artistic expression of the wall construction system. Equally important is the urbanistic dimension of the building, a phenomenon that would put Richardson’s mature architecture in line with the best of the Chicago School architecture. Any further elaboration of the essentiality of organicism for the New Tradition necessitates recalling Hitchcock’s assessment of Sullivan’s work. Of interest is Sullivan’s Wainwright Building, St. Louis, 1890, (Fig. 3.2), where, according to Hitchcock, monumentality and ornament were conceived beyond what was achieved in the Auditorium Building. Two points arise from the comparison of Sullivan’s architecture with that of Richardson. At this point, it is important to note that during the 1930s, architecture’s relationship to new structural techniques was considered topical on both sides of the Atlantic. In addition to Mumford’s publication of Techniques and Civilization in 1934, the November issue of Architectural Review (1932) was devoted to various implications of the steel structure system in architecture. J. M. Richards, the journal’s editor in the 1960s, for one, assessed the state of architectural criticism in the 1930s. His observation should be quoted in full: In the revolutionary situation - such as architecture found in the 1930s critics are bound to concern themselves with basic intentions and restatement of principles. But the obligation was to ally oneself with one side or another, and as the period progressed there were signs of greater willingness on the part of critics to look at buildings through other than partisan eyes and to write in other terms than those of rigid confrontation between the Modern Architectural Research Group on the one hand and the traditionalists of the Royal Academy on the other. This rather unproductive confrontation was however prolonged right up to the end of the decade… .52

On the basis of this, it is important to give attention to Hitchcock’s appropriation of the thematic of tectonic discourse. The proposition sheds light on that side of Romanticism that is nurtured by theories of organicism. Mention should also be made of the theoretical underpinning of Hitchcock’s rejection of the picturesque, and his dislike of the Baroque’s inclination for “surface design.”53 Secondly, Hitchcock’s dislike of the Wainwright Building had nothing to do with the design’s use of frame structure. He points, in fact, to the building’s hesitance to re-present the art-form of its construction system in non-rhetorical terms.54 In Hitchcock’s words, the building stopped short of meeting the aesthetic of abstraction, one of the main demands as architecture confronted the metropolis, even as early as the turn of the last century.

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Figure 3.2 D. Adler & Louis Sullivan, Wainwright Building, St. Louis, 1890-92.

In the Marshall Field Store Building (Fig. 3.1), instead, Hitchcock observed that the architect’s free interpretation of Rundbogenstil endows the art-form of a masonry-wall-construction method with monumentality. Sullivan’s design, however, inclines for an “abstract symbolic form.”55 Again, what is missing in Hitchcock’s assessment is the fact that the brickclad piers of the Wainwright Building are suggestive of the tectonic expression of a construction system, the structural support elements of which are embellished similar to those filling the space between them. This is plain from Kimball’s observation: contrary to Hitchcock, he

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considered the abandonment of the wall surface in Sullivan’s design a positive move, and that the “steel occurs only at alternate piers, yet all are alike. The architect felt, not calculated.”56 The complexity involved in the aesthetic interpretation of the art-form’s rapport with the core-form is discussed elsewhere.57 What needs to be added here is the following: for Richardson the aesthetic dimension of technique should not exceed the “moment” when the form achieves its autonomy either through abstraction, or in reference to a symbolic form. Only in this line of consideration could Richardson, in most of his mature work, and Sullivan in the Cage Building, according to Hitchcock, “control the undisciplined picturesque in which contemporary English and American architects were indulging”.58 Furthermore, the Wainwright Building reminded Hitchcock of the picturesque, if not of Baroque’s fancying with surface. This is also implied in Ruskin’s distinction between architecture and building. The former, according to him, is marked by the embellishment of surface. Paradoxically, what motivated Hitchcock to show occasional sympathy for the picturesque had to do with that aspect of the movement which is expressed in words such as “nature unadorned”, “primitive taste”, and the esteem for simple elementary forms. Hitchcock took it on himself to carry these tropes of picturesque forward, and to ramify their architectonic implications in the work of late-nineteenth-century architecture. Even though he remained focused on the artistic expression of construction, he was more interested in the tectonic of matter-of-factness than in those complex cases where the cladding simultaneously covers and reveals the structural elements, as is the case with the Wainwright Building. What should be addressed now are the two aspects central to the historicity of Hitchcock’s narrative. That his interest in technique and construction was informed by the general tendency of modern architecture is obvious. What needs to be underlined is Hitchcock’s belief that the modernists’ internalization of new techniques is the only way to get away from the power of historical styles, including the picturesque. The latter tendency, according to Pevsner, was concerned with reinventing Palladianism, “a style as ordered as God’s (and Newton’s) universe and as simple as nature.”59 Furthermore, recalling Hitchcock’s training at Harvard, one cannot but agree with the claim that aesthetic was central to Hitchcock’s distinction between building and architecture. He wrote in 1927 that, “We must accept all of technics; but we need not accept that technics are all.”60 Secondly, whilst Hitchcock’s analysis of Richardson’s work resonates with the discourse of the tectonic, his overall view of the early history of modern architecture is devoid of any vigorous theoretical work. Again, one is reminded of the Wainwright Building, and the ways in

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which Sullivan’s building differs from the work of other Chicago School architects. Convincing is Caroline van Eck’s argument that, as far as the issue of monumentality and ornament is concerned, John Wellborn Root’s Monadnock Building, Chicago (1892), has more to do with the thematic of Hitchcock’s interpretation of the Marshal Field Store. She also observes that, even though Root used a steel-frame structure, the ornament in his case is absorbed in the building’s emulation of the wall as an element of enclosure typical of Egyptian monuments. In her words, “In the subtle system of correspondences between the sloping of the base, the bending of the cornice, the convex curves of the bays and the cove cornice, none of which have any demonstrable practical necessity, we can discover a system of ornament, the product of free invention, that is inseparable from the structure of the building.”61 Her position accords with Hitchcock’s insistence on the importance of technique and form for the architecture of the New Tradition. Caroline van Eck also indirectly supports the historian’s reservation with the Wainwright Building. This building of Sullivan communicates with the viewer through an abstract form whose poetics exceed the exigencies of its construction method. Root, instead, imparts life to his building by strategies intrinsic to construction and function. The difference sets the theoretical premise by which van Eck marks the end of organicism and the beginning in Sullivan of an interpretation of themes such as technique, monumentality, and ornament that is motivated by theories of empathy, but also ideas that are driven by social and functional considerations.62 The point is not to agree with her position in its entirety, but to underline the difference between her periodization and that of Hitchcock. For her, Sullivan’s work marks the end of the hegemony of the classical concept of “purposive unity”. Hitchcock’s periodization, on the other hand, relies on the historicity of modern techniques and their aesthetic implications. Of further interest, as far as Hitchcock’s case is concerned, is the return to a picturesque that, as discussed previously, concerns themes such as “nature unadorned”, and the importance given to the unity between ornament and structure of the kind visible in the Marshal Field Store and the Monadnock Building. Any further discussion of the specificity of Hitchcock’s pastoral vision of modernity necessitates a return to his Modern Architecture. The first part of Hitchcock’s book summarizes major developments taking place in the nineteenth-century architecture of Europe and America. The argument presents a distinction between the architectonics of the New Tradition and those of style revivalism permeating the eclecticism of taste. Without

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discussing this subject, Hitchcock explores the first and second generations of the nineteenth-century architects whose work, according to him, preceded the New Tradition. One is reminded of John Soane, F. Schinkel, and H. Labrouste, architects practising in England, Germany, and France, respectively. Soane, for example, is presented as the champion of the “new generation of nineteenth century architects.”63 Even though his remark on Labrouste is outdated, the French architect is important to Hitchcock not only in regard to his analysis of Richardson, but in presenting a case for underlining the building’s good construction permeating the work of engineering. Hitchcock discusses these architects mainly to cement the importance of the idea of disintegration for “eclecticism of taste” exemplified in the revival of medieval architecture (the first generation of nineteenth-century architecture). He also wanted to highlight the seeds of reintegration nested in the work of the second generation of architects of the same period. Here is how Hitchcock summarizes the distinction: “The disintegration accomplished by Romanticism was therefore more complete than anywhere in Europe by the late sixties. But there appeared immediately afterward in the architecture of Richardson an extraordinary complete reintegration.”64 This, in essence, discloses Hitchcock’s appropriation of Romanticism for making a case for the idea of reintegration that he attributed to Richardson’s mature work. If one accepts that “purposive unity” was central to architectural theories formulated since Leon Battista Alberti, and its re-formulated later in the organic theories of the Chicago School architecture, then, what needs to be advanced here is an argument that concerns the problematic nature of the idea of the New Tradition. A brief reflection on the first part of Hitchcock’s book allows for discussing the disintegrating nature of Romanticism. Notable in Hitchcock’s account of the architectural history of the decade’s ending to the New Tradition is the association he makes between particularities of any “style” and aesthetics. According to Hitchcock, Baroque’s inclination for the surface, and that of picturesque for “fabrick”65 are blended with the “Piranesian cult of the sublime.”66 The suggested aesthetic commonality, however, does not stop Hitchcock from further emphasizing the importance of picturesque for the rise of Romanticism. Relying on the bibliographic references provided at the end of his book, one can suggest that for Hitchcock, philosophical and aesthetic theories fundamental to the rise and fall of Romanticism are “common sense”, if not pure historical fact, especially where the idea of modernity is concerned.67 Furthermore, Hitchcock stops short of exploring the genesis of modernism beyond the importance he gives to technology. He does not discuss, for example, if

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the aesthetic inclination for the picturesque and the sublime had anything to do with the eighteenth century’s rupture with the classical wisdom, and therefore, the possibility of viewing nature as an entity of its own value. One consequence of this development was to consider history as being independent of the Judeo-Christian eschatology.68 Furthermore, the sublime formulated by Edmund Burke was in the first place an attempt— regardless of the criticism he received from different agents—69 to theorize the aesthetic expression of anxieties generated by the same historical rupture, which in the second instance had to be domesticated in the design of gardens,70 or else, an attempt to be associated with the aesthetic qualities of the work of those architects Emil Kaufmann termed the “revolutionary architects”.71 The absence of any critical argument on these issues confirms the assumption that in theorizing modern architecture, Hitchcock aligned himself with the positivistic side of the project of the Enlightenment. It is crucial for the objectives of the argument presented here to recall the concept of the singular. In opposition to the uniform juxtaposition of an orderly building with landscape, Burke suggested that singularity demands magnitude, greatness of dimension, and geometric clarity of the kind exemplified in Étienne-Louis Boullée’s work.72 Since the time of the so-called revolutionary architects, “character” of a building was defined not only in reference to its function, but also in association with the sublime beauty of its geometry, and erasure of the Orders. The suggested void imparted radical transformation in the theorisation of nature. This necessitated, as far as the wisdom of the Enlightenment was concerned, seeing the object as an entity in-itself.73 The erasure also promoted a different perception of the order governing the part/whole relation of an object. To follow Ernst Cassirer, in the mental life of the enlightenment, “the part not only exists within the whole but asserts itself against it, constituting a specific element of individuality and necessity”.74 The marriage between “necessity” and “individuality” is crucial for understanding the roots of diverse theories of modern architecture unfolding since the eighteenth century. Equally important is the consequential departure of nature from a “whole” that was sustainable only within the bond perceived between theology and physics.75 Singularity necessitated a different economy of order, one that was considered essential for the apprehension of the object. Only in this line of consideration was the alleged vitality of the phenomenal world distinguishable from the dead matter, dead because a void was left by the loss of the bond between theology and physics. The loss had also an aesthetic dimension: it set the stage for the spectator to play a constructive role in both criticism and appreciation of architecture.

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These observations enable construction and technique, themes central to Hitchcock’s discourse, to be seen in a different light. In the context of the suggested historical unfolding, it is not too farfetched to argue that construction signified a conscious attempt on the part of the architect to fabricate an object that would communicate with the viewer. Whatever other reasons were involved in the historical transformation presented in these pages, the tectonic remained the sole factor designating that moment in the history of architecture when architecture was observed and judged by the tropes constructive to the art of building. Rationalization of construction remained endemic to the modernity of architecture even when it had to justify demolition and/or to dwell on the disintegrating particularities of Romanticism,76 to mention a movement that is critical for Hitchcock’s vision of history. Thus we have the two vectors of Hitchcock’s discourse on the New Tradition. In the first place, he would give ample attention to the work’s singularity, in particular the building’s capacity to demonstrate the absence of those elements that might contradict the clarity expected from the tectonic expression of construction. In the second place, mention should be made of the historicity of theories advanced by Romanticism, in particular the mid-century’s understanding of the concept of history which, according to G. G. Scott,77 the previous generations could not fully comprehend. Scott is of interest to Hitchcock on many levels. The American historian would weave his ideas into Scott’s remarks on “the architecture of the future”, setting the stage for his own discussion of the New Tradition. Scott is also of interest to Hitchcock because he speculated that a new architecture might arise, which would be different from both the classical and Gothic revivalism. Scott went further suggesting that this new architecture would integrate the achievements of engineering into its language. Also noteworthy is the date of publication of Scott’s book, which coincided with the date Hitchcock marked as the beginning of the New Tradition. As mentioned earlier, even though Hitchcock presented Richardson as the forerunner of the era of New Tradition, this did not stop him attributing the same linguistic qualities to diverse architects such as Auguste Perret, and Berlage.78 To these two vectors a third should be added: the new emerging aesthetic sensibility (though different from that practised since Baroque) required, according to Hitchcock, “much conscious analytical investigation.”79 The suggested theoretical triad does indeed form the basis of a project, the main objective of which was to formulate an aesthetic judgement. The historicity of this judgement, according to Hitchcock, can be found in the

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work of Richardson, and in the developments taking place in “architectural craftsmanship” in England, but also traceable in French metal construction. In addition to the implied regionalism, what is also of interest here is Hitchcock’s tacit association of aesthetics with construction. Not only the work of engineering is seen to be delivering a different aesthetic sensibility, but the need to apply the same principle of aesthetic judgement to the past styles. One way of getting around the eclecticism of taste, Hitchcock maintained, was using new methods of construction and materials without a systematic theorization of the above-mentioned three points, key issues for any discourse on modern architecture. Hitchcock contended that the New Tradition “is a formula only historically, existing on a posterior analysis.”80 Accordingly, the New Tradition necessitated re-approaching historical styles not as frozen forms, but as “traditions” whose basic constructive elements should be revised based on the available techniques and materials. Only in this way could Hitchcock justify his proposed transitory stage before the full realization of modern architecture. It is the logic underpinning the same justification that allowed Mumford to ensure, in his review of Modern Architecture, a place for what he called imagination. While praising the book, Mumford refuted Hitchcock’s linear and developmental process of modern architecture. To him, Wright should be considered a successor to the Pioneers rather than the other way around.81 That Hitchcock subscribed to a linear vision of progress says nothing more than framing him within a broader and more general picture held by architects and historians who practised in the last decades of the previous century. What should be underlined, instead, is the force of “progress” unleashed in his argument, and its drive to map a totalized vision of modern architecture that would exclude tendencies such as Art Nouveau and Expressionism. The exclusion was justified, based on the initial inclination of these two tendencies to invent a modern architecture with scant regard for the traditions implied in what Hitchcock termed the “eclecticism of styles.” The latter’s essentiality, in principle, according to Hitchcock, was like the Art Nouveau, not “a matter merely of theory nor a matter merely of detail.” It was, he claimed, “a reintegrated architecture, in intention as all-inclusive as that of any pre-Romantic period. It gained moreover very definitely from the analysis of the Age of Romanticism.”82 The exclusion was indeed a necessary step towards the rationalization of the “formula” of the New Tradition, and towards the solidification of his pastoral vision of modernity. What then were the architectonic implications of this move? The esteem to dismantle ornament, for example, was one

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dimension of the process of the reintegration of the new culture of engineering into the eclecticism of styles. The other side of the same tendency wished to emphasize the drive for formal simplicity. Last but not least, mention should be made of the residue of “subjectivity”, call it individualism, detectable in the Art Nouveau and Expressionism which Hitchcock found somehow to be a hindrance to the full integration of form with technique. This last point recalls Hitchcock’s care for the modalities of regionalism, a subject discussed in the second section of his book.

Regional Modalities of Modern Architecture What is involved in qualifying modern architecture with regional characteristics? In the first place the discussion should concern the two problematic themes: the idea of the Zeitgeist, and the question concerning technology. In different ways, each issue was central to the formation of the discourse of Romanticism and art history. Romanticism sought to establish a harmonious integrity between techniques and the ethics of handcraftsmanship. The late-nineteenth-century art historians, instead, tried to reconcile the concept of autonomy with social context, formulating a strategy for analysing the art of the past. Their goal was to periodise the history of art and architecture. In the second place, attention should be given to the fact that architecture is regional by definition even though its universal characteristics were won, first, by the advent of industrial building techniques, and then, by the International Style Architecture. The exhibition held at MoMA in 1932 epitomized a vision for unifying style with industrial techniques. It also popularised the idea of periodization. In different ways, periodization underpins the organization of Hitchcock’s Modern Architecture. The author’s main thesis, the New Tradition, is followed by a discussion that explores examples of modern architecture flourishing in different countries. His classificatory strategy comes to fruition in the final section of his book, The New Pioneers. The point is not to show Hitchcock’s vision of the developmental process of modern architecture. One should rather give attention to the particulars informing his vision of modernity, and the absence of the traditions of style-architecture. Both these topics enabled him to write the history of modern architecture, relying merely on the achievements in America. If this proposition is accepted, then, the question should be of the following nature: how successful was Hitchcock’s project in demonstrating the contribution of different regions to the formation of modern architecture?

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It is important at this point to remember that less than a decade after the 1932 exhibition of the International Style Architecture, Lewis Mumford charged Richardson’s Glessner House, Chicago (1885), with what he called a “new sense of modern form.”83 How did he qualify the claim? Like Hitchcock, Mumford identified the year 1878 as marking a turning point in the American architect’s career. Mumford goes further, saying that the form of Glessner House is in harmony with the landscape of New England, and yet the building improves the region’s ‘established wood tradition’.84 In making his observation, Mumford stated that the “Romantic theorists” sought “an organic connection between the forms of an age and the rest of the culture …”; also, that “architectural forms, to be valid, must not merely be beautiful but timely.”85 Here Mumford reiterates ideas fundamental to Romanticism, a subject that needs no further elaboration beyond what was said in the previous section. What makes Mumford different from Hitchcock, however, has to do with his inclination to underline the singularity of American achievements in art, literature, and architecture, independently of Europe. Even though he borrowed the idea of organic from Sir Patrick Geddes, the Scottish town planner, it is the notion of “useable past” that motivated Mumford to seek the seeds of modernism in Wright’s architecture, as well as in the work of Richardson, John and Washington Roebling, and Olmsted, to mention designers who in different fields contributed to the formation of Mumford’s vision for an American built form. His position also alludes to the ethos of the early modern German architects’ debate concerning the idea of Sachlichkeit.86 Both Mumford and Hitchcock conjugated modernity with the concept of necessity, cementing the idea that the culture of building should submit itself to the forces of secularisation. In the 1920s, the concept of necessity was instrumental in legitimising modernisation and the use of industrial techniques. By the time of World War II and after, the term had lost its historicity and was used to urge modification needed to qualify modern architecture with regional and expressive qualities. To elaborate on this point, we should now turn to Hitchcock and Mumford’s difference on the subject of regionalism. In February of 1948, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) held a symposium called “What is Happening to Modern Architecture?”87 As the title suggests, the question concerned the future of architecture postulated under the rubric of international style architecture. At the time of the symposium, new directions in architecture were already questioning the linguistic monologue that haunted some sectors of modern architecture. Both the British New Empiricism, and Mumford’s regionalism (discussed in his “Bay Region Style” article) underpin the importance of “expression”

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for architecture. It was not Erich Mendelsohn’s expressionism, but the ways architecture expresses its relation to the particularities of a given program, place, and monumentality. Concerning the two major sources for expressionism, German Expressionism, and that delivered by Romanticism, Mumford used the term in conjunction with the discourse of organicism at work since the nineteenth century.88 Pleased by Alfred H. Barr’s praise for his contribution to the exhibition of the International Style Architecture, Hitchcock, however, maintained a middle ground in the symposium. Acknowledging the new directions taken by Swedish, Swiss, and Dutch architects, he described the “problem of expression in architecture” as a major issue facing architects. It is of interest that Wright, who had hardly secured a major place in the 1932 exhibition, was singled out by Hitchcock as the architect whose work demonstrates wealth and variety of expression “in modern architecture at the present time.”89 In light of this, two points need clarification: the difference between Mumford and Hitchcock on the issue of expression, and Hitchcock’s position on Wright. Drawing from the work of John Gales Howard and Bernard Maybeck, Mumford characterized the “Bay Region Style” in the following words: “a free yet unobtrusive expression of the terrain, the climate, and the way of life on the coast.” He wrote, the “style is truly universal since it permits regional adaptations and modifications.”90 His position not only was to critique Wright’s tendency for total design, it was, in retrospect, intended to challenge Giedion’s advocacy for symbolism, the new monumentality, and the regionalism formulated in 1954.91 From Mumford’s point of view, the relation between architecture and its terrain is organic. For Wright, architecture is an organic phenomenon whose relationship to the place is determined by the building’s organicism. Needless to say, Wright was not an advocate of genius loci. In a Symposium organized at Columbia University, 1962, “expressionism” was discussed as an important subject for historicizing modern architecture. At this gathering Hitchcock suggested that, “Expressionism was intended to be a new architecture as Art Nouveau had been, with a certain ‘form will’. Some forms delight, others do not. Expressionistic architecture is overtly emotional, and not Sachlich. It is aimed at an emotional response. It is not subjective, but it has some subjectivity in it.”92 The expressionism Hitchcock spoke of was of an operative nature. Similar to his discussion of Richardson’s architecture, Hitchcock saw expression as integral to the structure of a building. Evidently he was not concerned with making a distinction between organicism as understood by Romanticists, and organicism as a concept. The latter alludes to the dialectics of expression and technique, if not the dialectics between form and content central to the

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Enlightenment view of natural products. As organism, a flower, for example, was seen as “mechanical” in that it expressed the laws governing its form. Thus, the “life” permeating organic unities was found to have strong bearing on any future discussion of the tectonic93, a point dismissed by Romanticists. The distinction also discloses the genesis of Mumford and Hitchcock’s debate on the subject of expression in architecture. Even though American architecture of the late 1920s does not occupy a major place in the third section of Hitchcock’s book, Wright’s architecture is praised for its contribution to the formation of the architecture of New Tradition in his country. Criticising available languages of skyscrapers built in major American cities, only Wright’s Larkin Administration Building received Hitchcock’s endorsement. The building, according to him, “has an expression in design truly integral with the engineering.” The other tall buildings “display the futility of attempting to leave aesthetic expression to the surface without truly affecting the economic and functional principles which determine the development of the whole.”94 Again, while the work of Richardson and Wright is essential for the discourse of Mumford and Hitchcock, their disparity involves two different systems of thought: one closed and the other open, speaking relatively. This is apparent from Hitchcock’s remarks on Wright in the MoMA’s symposium mentioned earlier. As impressive as Wright’s expressionism was, the American historian made no bones about reminding the audience that one cannot learn anything from his architecture.95 Hitchcock revealed his interest in a body of work that would be instrumental in formulating a theory of expressionism. Central to any theory of expressionism, however, is the tectonic rapport between structure and form. Thus we have Hitchcock’s distinction between the expressionism involved in Wright’s programmatic “destruction of the box” and his own interest in an architect’s attempt to express structure in the final form. It is worth noting that Hitchcock had to revise his monologue on technique and expression. In the introduction to his collected essays addressing the “decade 1929-1939”, Hitchcock acknowledged the multifarious nature of architectural practice unravelling since 1930. He concluded the essay by claiming that “the extreme, or polar, topics do not seem to be the most important ones historically, but rather those national institutions or cases of individual architects that reflect several not necessarily closely related aspects of the contemporary scene in the 1930s.”96 Notable here is an attempt to distance himself from internationalism, and “regional nativism” flourishing in the California Bay area, and northern Europe.

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Implicit in Mumford’s difference from Hitchcock, however, is the fact that Hitchcock tacitly overvalued the aesthetic of abstraction, even though his understanding of modernity still remained pastoral as discussed previously. Here is Mumford’s review of Hitchcock’s Modern Architecture: “there was far more of the New Pioneer in John Root’s Monadnock Building than there was in the subsequent work of Wright and Sullivan.” Seeing the “modern spirit” in organic terms, in the same review, Mumford expressed his dislike of the American historian’s periodization of modern architecture into successive schools of thought, from the New Tradition to the Pioneers, as previously mentioned.97 Furthermore, Mumford’s esteem for an organic understanding of regionalism was “subjective.” Subjective because he used the idea of organic to establish “a system of living in which man was in harmony with nature, the machine, and most importantly, himself.”98 Even though Mumford highlighted the achievement of the Chicago School of the 1920s, his position, as demonstrated by Francesco Dal Co,99 excludes the Metropolis, a phenomenon central to any critical understanding of the contradictions internal to modernity. The advocates for a pastoral vision of modernity, including Hitchcock, dismissed this subject. The discussion presented thus far wishes to address the doubling essential to the discourse of regionalism. On the one hand, fundamental to the question of the American contribution to the formation of modern architecture is the dialectics of region and modernity. On the other, in criticising the universalising tendency of the body of work “comprising” International Style Architecture, Mumford’s discussion of regionalism centres on an understanding of the tectonic that is moulded into the idea of place making. Essential to his position is a non-formalistic understanding of the autonomy of architecture. Once this is established, one might argue that Mumford’s claim in Bay Region Style (1947) is critical, but to a limited extent. Accepting the universal dimension of modernity, Mumford saw the California Bay region architecture in association with, what he called, “our growth … which is so native that people, when they ask for a building, do not ask for any style.”100 The statement belies the nihilism of modernity whose operative scope remained hidden to advocates and critics of modernisation alike. The implied historicity is useful because it allows for extrapolating two formative ideas that inform the debate running between Hitchcock and Mumford. Central to the debate is the late work of Richardson, the metropolitan significance of which was dismissed by Mumford’s esteem for regionalism and his attempt to establish a biological relationship between “human-artist and the environment.”

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In reviewing Mumford’s The Brown Decades (1931), Dal Co suggests that the book demonstrates Mumford’s failed attempt to realize “the impossibility of finding a correct synthesis between the consequences of technical and scientific conquests and the values of traditions. How far can such a spirit survive in the new technological age? Or better, up to what point are the original values able to function once more as rails for the development of new technology?” Dal Co’s discussion is useful because he plots Mumford’s discourse within the traditions of American intellectualism that more often than not saw technology as a neutral phenomenon. The same inclination failed to see that, at the turn of the last century, a metropolis like Chicago could live its life independent of the assumption of any cooperation between an architect of the magnitude of Olmsted and a technocrat like Daniel Burnham. Here lies the essence of Dal Co’s criticism, the dimension of which could be fully apprehended after the post-war era. According to Dal Co, the tradition Mumford sought to weave into American architecture “is a rooted anti-capitalist ideology which if exalting the epic era of commerce, does so because it finds in the age of laissez-faire the survival of that individualism that industrial capitalism wipes out by photographing its own silent face in the indifference of the masses and in the apparent chaos of the metropolis.”101 Dal Co’s criticism unfolds the oppositional nature of Mumford’s discourse. The same can be said about the image of modernity of the early modernists, including Hitchcock’s, that is, a totalised entity devoid of internal contradictions. Any further reflection on Hitchcock’s ideas on expressionism should recall his discussion of Richardson’s work, and the importance of Romanesque for the realization of the idea of the New Tradition. Wishing to formulate the modernity of architecture in the light of technique and the achievements secured by abstract painting, Hitchcock failed to see the tectonic potential he read into Richardson’s later work where form expresses nothing but construction. Romanesque architecture was of interest to Hitchcock for two reasons. In the first place, it presented, as pointed out earlier, a third structural alternative against the nineteenthcentury historicism. Romanesque architecture also had the potential to weaken the long aesthetic domination of the Greek and Gothic styles. In the second instance, mention should be made of the place of the element of the wall in Romanesque architecture, and its capacity to present a different tectonic form from those developed by historical styles. The two constructive elements of Romanesque architecture, the wall and the roundarch, presented Hitchcock with a generic prototype by which he was able to advocate the need to reintegrate engineering (technique) into

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architecture. His prototype was beyond what one could have expected from the classical orders, the tectonic figuration of which was based on the exclusion of the element of the wall. Hitchcock had also no faith in Gothic architecture where its buttresses put considerable limitations on the expressive potentialities of the enclosing wall.102 The style of these two construction systems had exhausted itself historically, leaving no room for any re-thinking of the dialogical rapport between construction and expression. Furthermore, in the Romanesque architecture, the wall functioned simultaneously as the structural and covering element. It also could be moulded for an expressive purpose in reference either to regional traditions of the art of building—especially when the issue concerns the lawful handling of material— or else, for articulating forms that would, in one way or another, adhere to sentiments associable with national identity. Here is how Hitchcock describes the architecture of the Dutch architect, P. J. H. Cuijpers in reference to both national and regional characteristics. According to him, the Dutch architect made an attempt to “return to national building methods - which meant in Holland exposed brickwork and by use of decoration dependent on handcraftsmanship to regain the honesty and autochthonous quality which the various Classical Revivals had all but destroyed.” He wrote: Cuijpers “provided even in his most completely reminiscent work a tradition of sound building in brick which has been the central point of interest in the architecture of Berlage and the Amsterdam school”.103 Here again, Hitchcock attempts to highlight Richardson’s contribution to the formation of the New Tradition in Europe, exemplified in Berlage’s Stock Exchange Building.104 As an early example of the reintegration of engineering into architecture, the architecture of Richardson and Berlage brings together ideas and forms motivated by rational planning of structure while using traditional materials. The difference between these two architects, as far as the issue of regionalism is concerned, relates to the particularities of craftsmanship, which Hitchcock would later discuss in terms of “a surplus of technical excellence over immediate needs of the moment which the good workman provides.”105 It is now worth noting that Hitchcock was at pains to consolidate his theory of the New Tradition when he had to discuss the subject in reference to the architecture of Germany, Austria, and France. The difficulty is expressed in the following: how should one discuss the attributes of regionalism in the early developmental stages of modern architecture? Auguste Perret’s architecture is highlighted to demonstrate the architect’s attempt to crystallise the achievements of engineering for

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architecture.106 The associations Hitchcock makes between Perret, Wright, and Berlage, but also Otto Wagner, are limited to that aspect of his definition of the New Tradition that relies on rationalism, and the use of techniques emanating from the work of engineering. He fails to note the cosmopolitan dimension of Wagner’s and Josef Hoffmann’s architecture, let alone the absence of the element of wall in Perret’s work, topos essential to Richardson’s mature architecture. Mention should also be made of the singularity of Perret’s work, the richness of which draws from tectonic dichotomies such as structure and infill, or structure and ornament.107 Having dismissed the importance of the tectonic in the formulation of the New Tradition, Hitchcock had no choice but to characterize the transitional phase in French architecture in lieu of the country’s strong hold on Art Nouveau and engineering. The supposed connection of Perret’s architecture with the New Pioneers reemphasizes the importance of the machine techniques and the latter’s impact on the traditions of craftsmanship. Instead of introducing an abrupt break with the culture of building, the New Tradition set in motion an important passage by which the masonry tradition of the art of building would be reinvented. This is clear from Hitchcock’s opening statement, when he tries to cement the presence of the idea of the New Tradition in Scandinavian countries. According to him, “Even where Danish and Swedish architects have availed themselves of engineering, they have sought even more than the Germans to clothe [italic is mine] new forms elegantly with subtle eclectic reminiscences of the past.”108 Thus, it is not an exaggeration to say that Hitchcock’s discourse on regionalism was framed as a strategy for cementing the idea of New Tradition. At this point it is useful to recall Hitchcock’s remarks on the notion of the surface of the cladding/clothing with its implications for the New Tradition, and its transition into the work of the New Pioneers. This is important because of the dual role surface plays in the formation of modern architecture. In the first phase of modern architecture, the surface was seen as the plane where the architectonics of reintegration of engineering into the art of building should take place. In the latter period, the same surface is used to unravel the evaporation of the reminiscence of the traditions of the art of building rooted in craftsmanship, and the latter’s radical modification by techniques and aesthetics that were not available to the architects of the New Tradition. To grasp the scope of the suggested aesthetic transition it is enough to think of the difference between the early architecture of Wright and Le Corbusier. The dual function of surface motivated both by the work of engineering and by abstract painting, according to Hitchcock, was instrumental for the transition of the

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architectonics of mass to that of volume, and the banishment of ornament of the kind that is commonly associated with handcrafted products. Drawing an analogy between the imitative traditions in painting and the architect’s attempt to design buildings similar to the classical or Gothic styles, Hitchcock saw the artistic freedom and the creativity permeating abstract painting as by-products of the technique of photography. This observation led him to argue that, since the new building techniques had already exceeded the limits of masonry construction, it was then up to architects to use creativity and design worthy of the name of the new architecture. 109 Thus, we can claim that aesthetics is central to differentiating the architecture of the New Tradition from that of the New Pioneers. As noted earlier, the latter’s aesthetic was motivated by visual sensibilities of abstract painting, and the shift from the architecture of mass to that of volume. This is evident from Hitchcock’s comparison of Perret’s and Le Corbusier’s use of ferro-concrete. Even though the suggested aesthetic was motivated by the work of engineering, Hitchcock wrote that the “aesthetic of the New Pioneers has already shown a definite continuity of values independent from, and even on occasion in opposition to those derived purely from the practical and the structural.”110 Hitchcock’s statement discloses a major problem when the discussion turns to the subject of aesthetics in architecture. One might propose three sources to explain the profusion of aesthetics in architecture. It can be associated with the subjective skills of the designer; or discussed in reference to modern abstract painting; or else, one can think of aesthetics as part of what is essential to the distinction between the work of an architect and that of an engineer. Whilst the work of an engineer, as hinted in Hitchcock’s statement, is motivated by practical and structural considerations, essential to architecture is the distinction between building and architecture. Aspects of these considerations provided Hitchcock with enough evidence to observe that, by 1927—the year of the competition of the Palace of the League of Nations— the “eclecticism of taste”, prevailing in the middle of the nineteenth century, had no place in modern architecture. Gone also was the issue of regionalism central to Mumford’s discourse on architecture, and to Wright’s vision of organic architecture. For Hitchcock, regionalism was nothing but a strategy for identifying various modalities of the New Tradition produced in European countries. Now, keeping in mind Le Corbusier’s Vers une architecture, published in 1925, the discussion should turn to the opening chapter of the last section of Hitchcock’s book, Towards a New Architecture. Beyond its

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obvious reference to Le Corbusier’s book, the title might have been motivated by Le Corbusier’s and Pierre Jeanneret’s design entry for the League of the Nation’s competition, where according to Hitchcock, “the manner of the New Pioneers was epitomized”.111 Nevertheless, and in spite of coining the term, The New Pioneers, with the publication of Le Corbusier’s Vers une architecture, and the architect’s design for the Pavilion de l’Esprit Nouveau (1925), Hitchcock draws one’s attention to the year of 1914, underlining the importance of three entries submitted to the Werkbund Exposition, Cologne. Mention is made of Walter Gropius’s Model Factory (Fig. 2.2) for the Deutz Gas Motor Company; Henry van de Velde’s theatre design; and Bruno Taut’s the Glasshaus. Even though each of these projects embodies aspects of what would be considered the architectonics of the New Pioneers, it is Gropius’s Faguswerk, completed in 1914, that, according to Hitchcock, “gives aesthetic expression to engineering without thought of the architectural effects of the past.” The entire building is treated, Hitchcock continues, “as volume rather than mass, and the ornamental and architectural features are reduced to the clock bay of the entrance which was nevertheless exceedingly simple.”112 Again one is reminded of Pevsner’s position in the Pioneers of Modern Design and the centrality of Gropius’s work for his vision of modern architecture, discussed earlier in chapter two. The difference between Hitchcock and Pevsner will be explored shortly. What needs to be noted here is the impossibility of discussing regionalism, and/or presenting a different interpretation of “expressionism” when modern architecture enters the stage of the New Pioneers. At this point, however, it is useful to map the work of the New Pioneers in the matrix of the Zeitgeist and technique. The intention is to demonstrate the ways in which architecture’s assimilation into the suggested matrix dismantles the regional dimension of architecture. Regionalism in architecture is usually checked by the building’s expression of a given terrain and the visual and tactile traditions of craftsmanship. Speaking of the developmental phases of Gothic architecture, Hitchcock wrote, “…. but the new spirit of the fourteenth and early fifteenth century buildings of Italy is not manifested in quite the same way as in the North. On the one hand certain features, such as permanent polychromy of wall surfaces, which have the significance of free experiment in the North were traditional in Italy. On the other hand there is the Italian tendency to treat all the Gothic they borrowed from the North not as real Medieval architecture, such as their Romanesque had been and in most places continued to be the fourteenth century, but as an ornamental novelty.”113 Having explored the genesis of regionalism in pre-

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modern architecture, what now needs to be looked at is Hitchcock’s position on ornament, a theme with close ties to the skills and materials used in handcraftsmanship. This observation is obviously inspired by Adolf Loos’s famous crusade against ornament, the theoretical importance of which for the formation of the New Pioneers did not escape Hitchcock’s attention. The introduction of Loos here is fundamental to the canonist vision of the early historiography of modern architecture. The beauty of industrial products so important to Le Corbusier’s early work was in part inspired by Loos’s 1908 essay “Ornament and Crime”. According to Hitchcock, after the war, Wright, van de Velde, and Loos, among others, “had begun to see and to say that handcraftsmanship had become more and more anachronistic except as a final luxury, and they had urged the possibilities of the machine as an art-tool”.114 Even though Hitchcock wrote in the appendix that “good Modern architecture can well exist without” handcraftsmanship,115 it is the work of Le Corbusier that overshadows that of Loos. That Le Corbusier overshadows Hitchcock’s discussion of the New Pioneers is indicative of two issues instrumental for the realization of the movement. Firstly, for Le Corbusier, machine techniques possessed a logos of making whose universal extension was epitomized in the Greek temples. Obviously the French architect was aware of the fact that contrary to craftsmanship, machine techniques were more dependent on scientific discoveries; and thus, they evolved independent of the skills and craftsmanship of a particular region. Modernism’s tendency for simple forms was stimulated both by machine-products and a theory of architecture that had close ties to technique. Loos’s criticism of the decorative arts, instead, disclosed a theory of design that would question any attempt to identify form with values derived from the inventive mind of an artist/individual, let alone forms directly linked to technique. The cosmopolitanism expressed in the Looshaus (Fig. 3.3), for example, endows architecture with a collective dimension, such that the best work of the New Pioneers wanted to reduce its aesthetic dimension to the universal demands of machine techniques. To Hitchcock’s eye, Le Corbusier should be the forerunner of the New Pioneers mainly because he, and not Loos, emulated the beauty of machine through the aesthetic of abstraction embedded in the architect’s painting, Purism. Loos, instead, believed that it is not the task of the architect to invent new forms, but to recode the traditions of the culture of building anew. This in part explains why Loos remained outside the circle of the architects associated with the New Tradition and the New Pioneers, and why his work did not come to the attention of the three historians discussed in this volume.

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Following Le Corbusier in France, J. J. Oud in Holland and Gropius in Germany - the main figures associated with the New Pioneers - Hitchcock did not hesitate to qualify the Zeitgeist with machine-techniques and the aesthetic of abstract painting. According to Hitchcock, in restricting the influence of painting to the aesthetics of abstraction, any attempt to renew architecture should centre on technique.116 Only in this way could one move on from the “picturesqueness” dimension of the New Tradition. And yet, Hitchcock’s overview of the work produced by the so-called Pioneers was not total. The coupling of utility with technique is so crucial to Hitchcock’s historical judgement that his praise for Oud concludes with the following concerning Le Corbusier’s Villa Garche, which he suggests looked “like a photograph brought back from an aeroplane flight over new territories!” 117 Even though Le Corbusier’s Villa demonstrates a sense of volume apparently essential to the architecture of the New Pioneers, the building’s lack of solidity and “reality” stands for the symptom of a situation when formal freedom wins over “necessity” and technique.118 Expressionism too, according to Hitchcock, should limit its operative domain to the structural system. Again, speaking of Gropius’s competition entry for the Chicago Tribune Tower (1925), Hitchcock criticized the project on the grounds that the applied “constructivistic expressionism” was arbitrary, and “as in the projects of de Stijl, the expression was more or less independent of the technique.”119 Aesthetic experimentation in the transitional phase of modern architecture, according to Hitchcock, should be integral to utility and the functional needs of contemporary life. If reintegration of technique with architecture once helped architecture to retain a regional quality that was also inspired by Romanticism, by the time of the New Pioneers, according to Hitchcock, architecture should be reintegrated into the realm of Rationalism. He did attempt to justify and qualify utility, structure, and abstraction with what in the late 1920s was understood as the spirit of the time. This is evident from Hitchcock’s characterization of the main facets of the architecture of the New Pioneers when he says that “instead of composing in three dimensions in values of mass, the New Pioneers compose in values of volume; instead of complexity as a means of interest they seek a strenuous unification; instead of diversity and richness of surface texture, they strive for monotony and even poverty, in order that the idea of the surface as the geometrical boundary of the volume may most clearly be stressed.”120 Thus two things can be expected when the emphasis on the architectonic

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Figure 3.3 Adolf Loos, The Looshaus, Michaelerplatz Vienna, 1909-1911.

elements of volume and surface are conjugated with the rationalism implied in a utilitarian understanding of building’s structure and function: firstly, a dissociation of architecture from regional aspects of the art of building; and secondly, a demolition of the element of the wall so crucial to the formation of the New Tradition. What is interesting in Hitchcock’s discourse, however, is that the transition to the New Pioneers is linked to historicism. To him, the end of the era of Romanticism triggers a Zeitgeist through which a balance is established between the abstract aesthetic of painting and the logos of industrial technique. The idea of introducing the concept of historicism into a discussion that concerns architecture’s transition to the New Pioneers has other connotations. It highlights the ways in which Hitchcock’s historiography differs from that of Pevsner. Pevsner understood the Zeitgeist in Hegelian terms: a transcendental idea hovering above every aspect of the life of the late-nineteenth century. Like a ghost, the spirit of modern times was expected to persuade arts, including painting and architecture, to move towards its destiny, the so-called end of art. This is not to say that Hitchcock’s vision was immune to Hegel’s discourse on history. What makes Hitchcock different from Pevsner is his tendency to overvalue

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“utility” and rationalism without discussing them in reference to the Arts and Crafts Movement, as did Pevsner. These issues, in fact, were nurtured by American theories of pragmatism. However, Hitchcock was a dedicated pragmatist. He was more comfortable with the discourse of the European Functional-Rationalists and their will to emulate the technical and material fruits of modernization for architecture. The same is true for American transcendentalism. As noted earlier, American Romanticism too was amused by the practical dimension of everyday life. A concern for “near”, exemplified in Mumford’s regionalism and Thomas Jefferson’s vision for a modern agrarian society, speak for Romanticism, albeit in pragmatic terms.121 Also important in the suggested differentiation between Pevsner and Hitchcock is the latter’s coupling of abstract painting with technique, and its essentiality for the formation of the architecture of the New Pioneers. Again, where Pevsner discussed the importance of painting for the formation of the pioneers of modern design, Hitchcock turned the coupling of painting/technique into a tool for reading the near past history of architecture. The dialectics involved in the “turn” to history underpins Hitchcock’s following assessment: As in the opening period of the Age of Romanticism in architecture, it was a point of view developed first with regard to painting that crystallized the new manner. But whereas the painting, baroque or Romantic, which influenced architecture in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was poetically interpreted, and vague and effective in expression, the painting, Cubist or Neo-Plasticist or otherwise abstract, which influenced architecture during the war and immediately after, was intellectually, even cerebrally, interpreted, and exact and specific in expression.122

What is compelling, as far as the difference between Hitchcock and Pevsner is concerned, is that the former did not aspire to a transparent association between architecture and painting. According to him, the point of view of abstract painting may already have appeared to satisfy architecture more than painting. He wrote, “It will be continued in architecture alone, just as the ‘picturesque’ point of view, although it arose in the appreciation of painting, was eventually better satisfied by landscape gardening and has been longest continued in that art.”123 This might be considered an exaggerated claim. What should be underlined, however, and this is another dimension of Hitchcock’s historical vision, is his desire to discuss the developmental consequences of painting’s technique from the point of view of the culture of building: themes and ideas that are endemic to the formation of the discipline, but also critical in differentiating architecture from painting and other arts. Thus, central to

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the transition from the New Tradition to the New Pioneers is the realization of the architecture of volume, and the idea of abstract surface, two developments that would push for the rational plotting of program, the building’s support system, and the need to emphasize an expressive relation between the element of wall/enclosure and the structure. Noteworthy in Hitchcock’s discourse is the shift that took place in his later writing. It discloses the historian’s concern for the aesthetic values of abstract painting and its relationship to technique. If technique was essential for modern architecture’s transition to the New Pioneers, its future is seen, towards the end of his book, in the freedom of creativity made possible through abstraction. According to him, architecture is not just functional in terms of “engineering-architecture”, “but also enjoys visual effects… Form and patterns of architecture are the survival value of architecture and not the engineering…”. Also, architectural, “as distinguished from strictly functional values are at best a gamble; but in them and in related values of craftsmanship lies the only hope that cultural obsolescence can be definitely put off.”124 What is involved here is of a paradoxical nature: Hitchcock’s interest in “craftsmanship” had to be recalled in the context of the joy of visual effects that he endeavoured to attain through abstract surfaces regardless of whether the structural system behind the surface was a masonry wall (Oud), or frame-structure (Le Corbusier). Any further assessment concerning the particularity of Hitchcock’s vision of the New Pioneers should focus on the dialectics between aesthetic and technique, though this time in reference to the work of Mies van der Rohe. Even though the Barcelona Pavilion was completed by the time Modern Architecture was published, Mies, according to Hitchcock, “remains still a man of promise”.125 One might argue that the dismissal of Mies’s Pavilion among works associated with the New Pioneers in German architecture might be associated with the architect’s tendency to articulate the dialectics of expression and structure in tectonics, rather than cash in on visual sensibilities permeating the work of abstract painting. Hitchcock was aware of Mies’s interest in Paul Klee’s work,126 nevertheless, it is the tectonic of the column and wall in the Pavilion,127 the expressionist quality of which did not appear to fulfil the historian’s aesthetic expectations. The Pavilion is also ambiguous as far as Hitchcock’s interest in volume and surface is concerned. The tectonic of column/wall, and the expressive quality of the roof in the Pavilion undermine the prioritisation of an enclosed geometry internal to the visual experience of the volume, let alone the fact that Mies’s tectonic completely evades the surface of the volume.

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The same problematic can be traced in Hitchcock’s discussion of Le Corbusier, and the Villa Garche, noted earlier. Hitchcock’s cautious approach to this building might be related to the large opening of its main façade, the aesthetic of which undermines the clear expression of its volume. Unlike the Citrohan houses, the surface at Garche crosses the line separating volume from mass. One might speculate that Le Corbusier’s exploration of “Four Compositions” (1929) was, to Hitchcock’s eye, less focused on the practical and aesthetic implications of machine techniques. These observations are indeed encouraged by Hitchcock’s mixed comments when he moves from one project to another, and when he wants to solidify the architecture of the New Pioneers. Even though Le Corbusier is praised for his theoretical work, and for his entry project for the League of Nations, the architect’s tendency for lyricism and dualistic thinking128 is seen as a hindrance to the necessary clarity of expression of technique, and the aesthetic sensibilities Hitchcock preferred. His ideal was an architecture that was devoid of any expressionism of the kind traceable in the work of constructivist, neo-plasticism, or even the picturesque, ideas central to his argument for the New Tradition. It is worth noting here that the architect whose work comes closest to Hitchcock’s ideal is Gropius’s whose aesthetic research, in his words, “was definitely controlled by technical possibilities and related to the means of organizing a new architecture on a large scale.”129 This is not to say that he endorsed everything Gropius built, but only the projects whose aesthetic, in one way or another, expressed the structure directly. What all this means for the objectives of this volume can be summarised in the following two points. Firstly, contrary to Pevsner, Hitchcock had no intention of singling out any architect exemplifying the idea of New Pioneers. Only Richardson’s mature work is highlighted as the forerunner of the New Tradition. Secondly, Hitchcock’s differentiation between the New Tradition and the New Pioneers involves the dialectics running between aesthetics and technique, and the dismissal of the importance of regionalism for architecture. Whilst technique plays a deterministic role in the formation of the first stage of modern architecture, the second stage is marked by the aesthetic of abstraction. This differentiation, from Hitchcock’s point of view, opens the path for the late 1920s to establish the importance of the aesthetic of engineering. It was also believed that both ferro-concrete and frame structure were and would be, for the foreseeable future, the only two major techniques of construction. It was left to architects, Hitchcock believed, to make a distinction between the technical aspects and the cultural or visual. He was of the opinion that the technique superior today might be obsolete

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tomorrow; the visual dimension of modernism, instead, was expected to last longer. Hitchcock’s judgement is based on the visual potentialities embedded in abstract painting; and its exploration by architects was seen to be critical for the future of modern architecture.130 On this basis, it is reasonable to speculate that for him the future of architecture rested in the realm of visual. Thus, Hitchcock retained that aspect of G. G. Scott’s discourse on eclecticism of taste that he had previously criticized. When technique is fixated on the particularities of a given construction system, and the visual considered the sole engine of creativity, then, architecture turns out to be nothing but visual. Since the Renaissance, and until the rise of Romanticism, the obsolescence of the culture of stone was emulated in the architect’s skill for the repetition and innovation of tropes derived from the classical language of architecture. The same “closure” is useful for discussing the future condition of architecture, especially after Hitchcock/Johnson’s formulation of the International Style. In retrospect, one can claim that the International Style did not impose an enclosure. It rather established a visual dictum the linguistic variation of which was the task of architects to explore. One is reminded of Hitchcock’s aspiration for regionalism, but also the fact that only after the 1950s, (and when architects were able to abandon the dialectics of aesthetic and technique, but also architecture’s engagement with themes such as utopia, symbolism, civic architecture and monumentality), only then was a vista open to critique the international style. Writing twenty years after his own formulation of the International Style Architecture, Hitchcock noted that “We now stand at another change of phase in modern architecture between a ‘high’ and a ‘late’ period,” and that “our architecture will grow more diverse in kind.”131 His prognosis was based on a historiographic method that departs from an objective observation of buildings and sees architecture as a work of art with particular aesthetic values. It might still be argued that the historiography of the post-war period can be constructive only when the re-writing of the history of the modern movement addresses the problematic of the project of modernity beyond a pastoral view.

CHAPTER FOUR SIGFRIED GIEDION: THE ZEITGEIST CAPTURED

Opening The historiography of modern architecture Sigfried Giedion (18881968) delivered is based on the presumption that the reconciliation between the subject and the world has already taken place. One consequence of which was to see the object beyond the long-standing traditions of perspectival regime, at least until the Baroque period. Another was to perceive form as a montage of planes, the spatial fluidity of which, among other things, was expected to undermine the traditional distance the subject maintained from the work of art and architecture. Still another concerns Le Corbusier’s significance for Giedion’s inclination to present a harmonious picture of modernism. The French architect produced a body of early work where the mass was dissolved and the plane stood out as both the optical and constructive element just to highlight the passage from painting to architecture, and from mass to volume. With these provisional points established, then the particulars of Giedion’s approach to history can be discussed. This chapter does not intend to cover Giedion’s entire oeuvre. The intention rather is to single out the optical and spatial dimensions of his historiography as formulated in Bauen in Frankreich, Bauen in Eisen, Bauen in Esienbeton (1928), and to examine its architectural implications for Space, Time, and Architecture (1941).1 Giedion differs from N. Pevsner and H. Russell Hitchcock in two ways. Firstly, he had a closer affinity with the traditions of art history established by H. Wölfflin and Alois Riegl. Secondly, unlike those who took upon themselves to frame the horizon of the new architecture in reference to the nineteenth-century eclecticism, Giedion interpreted the near history of modern architecture differently. In putting the past at the service of what is particular to the present, Giedion interpreted the idea of “closure” differently. The shortcoming of his approach was revealed by the time of the International Style Architecture exhibition of 1932.

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We have already discussed in previous chapters the essentialness of Romanticism for the historiography of modern architecture. Of obvious concern here is the way historians of modern architecture have discussed architecture’s relationship to past styles. Giedion is not an exception when it comes to exploring the specific ways in which the traditions of art history are applied to architectural historiography. Besides the fact that he was Giedion’s thesis adviser, Wölfflin is of particular interest here. Riegl should also be mentioned. More than any other historian, he was the one who underlined the importance of technique and material for the periodization of artwork. Fundamental to art history is the urge, motivated by the eighteenth-century knowledge of history, to interpret and classify the past beyond the vision established by the literary debate between the ancients and moderns. That art historians were able to conceptualize their readings of the past in the absence of an interlocutor (the so-called ancients) was instrumental for opening the historian’s eyes onto a different visual and spatial landscape. Since then, the distance perceived between now and the past has stimulated a sense of spatiality that, interestingly, was endemic to the discourse of the Enlightenment. The distance also enlivened Romanticism’s esteem for disintegration, a subject discussed in the previous chapter. Paradoxically, the desire to depart from the past, a move essential to modernism, was balanced by techniques used in photography and film, and by Sigmund Freud’s retrospective interpretation of the dream world. Thus, the amalgamation of techniques essential for reproducing images, such as close-up and fragment, and a sense of spatiality delivered by the project of modernity were fundamental to changing one’s view of history. These unfoldings are essential for Giedion’s historiography. The suggested historical development resulted in a change in perception of image. Of interest here is the Kantian idea of parallax2 by which the image is seen neither as part of the past, nor part of the nowtime of the historian. This is evident in Giedion’s Spatbarocker und Romantischer Klassizismus (1922) where he claimed that: Looking at the previous era is like looking at a mirror that can only reflect the features of the observer. This is unavoidably true for the artist who is selecting images and - partially at least - even for the educated observer, who can only approach material with the means of perception of his era and cannot avoid being part of the great continuum.3

Obviously Giedion’s strategy required the historian to get close enough to the hypothetical mirror so the image, or the viewer’s critique of the image, remains intact with the observer’s context. What this means is that

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closer contact with the perception of era must be maintained if one is to grasp the “great continuum” of the progress registered in the technological innovations of the late-nineteenth century. This leads to the following question: why in the same text did Giedion consider the years spanning 1770 to 1830 of great importance to architecture? We have already discussed in previous chapters the historicity of this particular period for Hitchcock and Pevsner’s narratives. Giedion’s response to this question is twofold. Romanticism’s break with the past (circa 1800) was fundamental in opening an historical space that, ironically, would be central for architecture’s ideological partnership with the discourse of the Enlightenment. Giedion’s remarks draw from the experience of Baroque, a period when architecture could still enjoy a sense of internal unity. Contrary to that of Renaissance architecture, the compositional language of Baroque was indeed primarily concerned with space. Giedion is not suggesting that before Baroque space was not a tangible issue. Rather he is saying that excess in Baroque is spatial. One might go further and argue that the very presence of spatial excess in Baroque was indeed central to the unity nurtured by the theological world. One can also argue that Giedion’s intention was to transplant the sublime beauty, attributed to the Baroque’s unity, into architectural space, mapping the modernity of architecture in the matrix of space/time. These observations need qualification. If one accepts the proposition that around 1800 the western world experienced for the first time a caesura with the theological world, then, any mirror image of the past cannot justify its historicity without including the manifold consequences of the alleged rupture. What this means is that the suggested rupture should be considered historical, and examined in its historicity. The fact that around the end of the eighteenth century the subject was able to retain its autonomy from the objective world should be considered consequential for any reiteration of values pertinent to morality, ethics, and aesthetics. According to Andrew Bowie, “aesthetic theory from Kant onwards faces the problem of finding a whole into which the particular can fit in a meaningful way, once theoretical certainties have been abandoned.”4 More important is Harry F. Mallgrave’s assessment of the impact of Emmanuel Kant’s aesthetic theory for the early twentiethcentury architectural theories. In his words, “Kant essentially laid the intellectual groundwork for modern German philosophy and aesthetics.”5 Of particular interest is Kant’s presentation of space and time as a backdrop for the way “form” is perceived. Still noteworthy is the inclusion of feeling and sensation of the body in any discussion of space/time. One is reminded of Robert Vischer’s theory of empathy, and Adolf Hildebrand

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and August Schmarsow’s theorization of architecture as spatial construct.6 Any investigation leading to the ways in which an object is seen and perceived inevitably involves issues such as space and movement, but also the ideas of appearance and depth. A concern for movement, for instance, not only was expressed in the abstract paintings of modernism, but also dominated “all the ‘living art’ of our century, in the same way as ‘ruling taste’ is dominated by speed which has replaced the nineteenth-century belief in progress through production.”7 Central to the work of abovementioned theoreticians is the autonomy of the subject from the holistic values of the past, on the one hand, and the subject’s dissociation of itself from the exigencies of the present, on the other. It is not too far-fetched to say that contemporary historiography of modern architecture is driven by architecture’s autonomy, and the threat launched against that autonomy by the forces of modernization. By now it is acceptable to say that the theoretical underpinning of Emil Kaufmann’s characterization of Étienne-Louis Boullée, Claude-Nicolas Ledoux and Jean-Jacques Lequeu as “revolutionary architects” was indeed nurtured by the aesthetic discourse put forward by late-eighteenth-century theoretical thinkers. Important to Kaufmann was the fact that Ledoux produced a body of work devoid of the ornamentation and symbolism associated with the classical language of architecture.8 His was a case for transferring the technical into an autonomous strategy of aesthetic judgment. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to examine exhaustively the discursive formation of space unfolding since 1800. Suffice it to say that the historical departure from the theological world was instrumental in introducing an early appreciation of space and time, where both notions were considered the modus operandi of knowledge. It has taken the debate on the style permeating nineteenth-century architecture to address the expansion of the theoretical space over and beyond the classical corporeality of time and space. Heinrich Hübsch’s “In What Style Should we Build?” was an important manifestation of the suggested space/time coordinate.9 Another was the esteem for an analytical approach to the past blended with knowledge garnered from other disciplines. Anthropology, social sciences, and archaeology offered a different understanding of historical past. Mention should also be made of Schmarsow’s attempt to expand the scope of the style debate, presenting a paradigm that would incorporate the most advanced theories of the time. In juxtaposing space and construction, what Schmarsow called “the intuited form” was indeed driven by Kant’s aesthetic theory. And yet his understanding of architecture as “spatial construct”10 should be seen in anticipation of the work of engineering. This is evident from Wolfgang Schivelbusch’s

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demonstration of the profound impact new materials (steel and glass), and industrial techniques had on one’s perception of space and time.11 These theoretical developments laid down the thematic of the style to come. They were also instrumental in tuning Giedion’s interpretation of history with the program of the historical avant-garde. These observations are made to show Giedion’s historiography in a different light. The argument presented in this chapter suggests that his approach to history benefited from a hypothetical collapse of the backward looking gaze of the art historian in the wide-angle space opened up by the disintegrating content of Romanticism. In spite, or perhaps because of this, Giedion’s passion (read ideology) for “the perception of one’s era” failed to grasp the now-time critically.12 Thus one sees his move to weave architecture into the spatial and technical continuum of modernity. It took architectural historians not more than a couple of decades after the publication of Space, Time, and Architecture to recognize the book’s problematic formulation of the idea of “reconciliation,” read transparency,13 and to realize that the unity underpinning Giedion’s narrative was to camouflage modernity’s relentless devaluation of all values, old and new. Constrained by the traditions of art history, and the Hegelian idea of the spirit of the time, the urge for transparency was seemingly not negotiable to Giedion. And yet, the Baroque unity he saw in the mirror of history was blended with a perception shared by those who had no doubt of the attainability of a modernist vision of totality. The fact that a totalized landscape of modernity, theorized and historicized by Giedion and presented in Le Corbusier’s vision of the “city of tomorrow,” was not realised suggests that the rupture with the theological past was historical. Meaning that one could not reiterate the bygone unity even if it existed in the first place. This is essential if the historian intends to avoid the trap of “operative criticism,”14 and to avoid promoting an image of modernity that is devoid of contradictions.

Technique: construction material of history In the following statement, from the opening pages of Buen in Frankreich (1928), Giedion establishes the dialogical rapport between technique and the optical, topics central to his vision of history. He wrote; “Construction in the nineteenth century plays the role of the subconscious.”15 The significance of this statement is twofold. Firstly, the word construction as used here has a different connotation from when it was used in architectural treatises. From Vitruvius’s remarks on techne, the art of doing and making, to Gottfried Semper’s formulation of the

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tectonic in the nineteenth century, architects were unable to dismiss the ghost of Renaissance discourse on architecture. Detached from the historicity of the Greek techne, the classical language of architecture was reapproached as a “garment” to cover construction misfits. Techne also denoted a symbolism that was not attainable at the dawn of modernization. Otto Wagner, the architect who coined the term “modern architecture,” was hardly able to distance his work from the major elements of classical language even though he acknowledged the significance of construction for the new architecture.16 To brush the “artistic drapery” of historicism aside was not an easy task. An architect needed at the very least a feeling for modernity in order to be able to see the tip of the iceberg emerging in a situation where “the unity of the subject and object (more precisely, their mutual mediation) in the activity of space creation was experienced as a suspended state of being, an excited hovering in space at the limits of representation and materiality, at which substance dissolved into air.”17 Had Giedion read Karl Marx’s famous dictum: “all that is solid melts into air”? Secondly, the word subconscious plays a paradoxical role in Giedion’s discourse. Placing genealogies of the “new architecture” in nineteenthcentury engineering, Giedion defined the task of the historian as looking into the future through the fog covering the reflective image of the past. If the emerging industrial materials and techniques made construction visible in the work of engineering, architects were expected (read unable) to emulate aspects of modernity that had already conquered a few enclaves in the everyday life of the mid-nineteenth century. “To grasp life as a totality, to allow no divisions, is among the most important concerns of the age,”18 Giedion claimed. Only in this way were the superfluous hierarchies dismantled, the established division between art and science transgressed, and architects enabled to cultivate the fruits of “constructors”—to recall the title of another chapter of Giedion’s book. Giedion formulated his discourse on construction in 1928, three years after the publication of Le Corbusier’s Vers une architecture, a book promoting intellectual aspirations critical to the formation of modernism in art and architecture. More importantly is the fact that the work illustrated in Le Corbusier’s book provided Giedion with substantial visual material. The optical field opened up by the built and unbuilt projects of the French architect, but also of other architects mentioned in Giedion’s book, perform a supplementary role for the Swiss historian. Similar to Freud’s idea of “primal scene,” the works of modern architects were fundamental to Giedion’s appropriation of the critical role construction played for the nineteenth century’s optical regime. To balance this, Giedion reminds us

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of the structures erected by engineers —Gustave Eiffel, for one—but also those structures whose functions override both architecture and the work of engineering. What was of interest to Giedion was not the form of these structures, but their capacity to initiate a different optical field.19 The same body of work demonstrated a perception of appearance and form that differed from what architects had achieved. One can, however, claim that because of its close ties with the traditional craft of building, architecture was unable to reinvent itself even aesthetically. Consider the caption Giedion attached to the illustration of Pont Transbordeur and the Harbour of Marseilles (Fig. 4.1). It reads: “This structure is not to be taken as a ‘machine’. It cannot be excluded from the urban image, whose fantastic crowning it denotes. But its interplay with the city is neither ‘spatial’ nor ‘plastic’. It engenders floating relations and interpenetrations. The boundaries of architecture are blurred.”20 Beside visual strength, the illustrated structures, the Eiffel Tower being the most notable for a contemporary reader, deliver two additional messages: the photographic technique of zooming was used to show the lattice quality of the Tower and the space filling in-between its structural members. Also the close-up image defamiliarized the object. What this means is that the visual frame, itself a fragment, alludes to a state of disintegration that is analogous to what was taking place in the world surrounding the Tower’s footing, the metropolis of Paris. The image also announces the emergence of “a new space and perspective, a new sense of depth”21 best illustrated in the bird’s eye view of two additional pictures, Pont Transbordeur, and the view of houses taken from Pont Transbordeur, Marseilles. The depicted structures frame a visual landscape where architecture is denied its formal corporeality. If there is any critical significance in Giedion’s idea of construction it is associated with an image of architecture whose corporeality is a compromise between the building’s demand for interior space and an inverted inside/outside space legible in the depicted works of engineering. Although most of the century’s achievement in construction tried to link modernity with the idea of “emptied space,” a crucial distinction should be made between spatial and constructive potentialities of surface and line, or volume and space.22 The urban scene, once marked by monuments whose enclosed space was expected to be the site of attraction and discovery, was radically transformed by territorial transformations taking place in the mid-nineteenth century. Since the erection of the Eiffel Tower, Paris offered “a new nature, that of human space: the Tower is not a trace, a souvenir, in short a culture, but rather an immediate consumption

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Figure 4.1 Marseilles (Bouches-du-Rhone) the Transporter Bridge, 1939.

of a humanity made natural by that glance which transforms it into space.”23 The illustrations peppering Giedion’s book (the Tower and Harbour of Marseilles) map the abstract, fragmented, and spatial depth of what Giedion noted is associable with the “word structure; a corpus of intelligent form”24 and the modern city, two primary subjects to occupy him and Le Corbusier for years to come. These observations add up to two points the full significance of which for the historiography of modern architecture Giedion came short of contemplating.25 As noted earlier, Giedion underlined the essentiality of structure when the design’s primary interest concerned issues such as necessity and economy of means. These were considered the unconscious

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side of the emerging structures most of which had the potential to overshadow the designer’s intentions and symbolism attributed to traditional forms. In the second place, mention should be made of the idea of interpenetrating volumes for modern architecture, a phenomenon Giedion traced in the perforated body of the Eiffel Tower. To fully absorb Giedion’s ideas on construction, we should turn to what he wrote under the heading of “architecture.” The text presents an appropriate opening for discussing modernism even today. Noteworthy is the hierarchical approach underpinning his analysis of the processes of modernization. Of interest to him was the necessary drama involved in the transformation of nature into landscape. According to Fredric Jameson, “Fragmentation of the so-called outside world is matched and accompanied by a fragmentation of the psyche which reinforces its effects. Such a fragmentation, reification, but also production, of new semiautonomous objects and activities, is clearly the objective production for the emergence of genres such as landscape, in which viewing an otherwise (or at least a traditionally) meaningless object—nature without people— comes to seem a self-justifying activity.”26 We are also reminded of the perceptual energies released in uprooting earth by machines, and the installation of transient structures with the capacity to introduce permanent changes. These transformations represent aspects of what Giedion called “collective design.”27 Though embryonic to architecture, the process of collective design should move, he claimed, not only into the realm of the city, but into the house, which has close ties with the needs of the body.28 In retrospect, fundamental to shaping the modern everydayness were what Giedion called “a fluid transition of things,” which, he maintained, possesses a logic that at times would merge into or distance itself from various fields of production and consumption activities. Thus it is important to recall Le Corbusier, an architect whose work Giedion followed closely. Similar to the French architect’s claims in Vers une architecture, Giedion suggested that, “if we were to scrape the decorative sludge off these buildings and make it a habit impartially and urgently to inquire into their true nature, we would see that their bodies already contain all the essential building elements that we today describe as new.”29 And yet, no matter how hard Le Corbusier tried to internalize the weightlessness and simultaneous experience of the intermingling spaces (the promenade architecturale for one), nevertheless, by the end of the 1940s he came to realize that a huge gulf separates the three realms essential to modern architecture. These were: the language that speaks for the body’s entanglement with architecture; the language unraveling the socalled spirit of the time; and the logic of capitalism. Like most of his

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colleagues, Le Corbusier was successful in establishing a dialogical relationship between the first two languages. However, the autonomous nature of contradictions essential to the internal transformation of capitalism remained inaccessible to him, and to any other architect—or else, one should say that he was politically naïve and deluded as to how the system worked. Should this judgement extend to Giedion? Yes and no. Most architectural historians writing around 1924 dismissed the preoccupations of those architects practising during the second half of the nineteenth century. Following Le Corbusier’s 1924 emphasis on the role the constructor plays in the new age,30 Giedion swiftly moved to devalue any contribution the debate on style could have had for the formation of modern architecture. His is written in the spirit of a manifesto, with the author avoiding presenting a systematic analysis of the architecture emerging since the nineteenth century (a task fulfilled partially in Space, Time, and Architecture). Giedion’s focus on the achievements of constructors (a concern presented as an anguish in the opening pages of Le Corbusier’s Vers une architecture), and its influence on the work of architects, were in accord with his placement of construction at the level of “unconscious”. What this means is that those who were obsessed with the issue of style came short of “realizing that these formalistic experiments were condemned to failure from the start. Surface frills.”31 The operative energies of “unconscious,” however, remained intact in the work of engineering until 1890 when industrial development, according to Giedion, “had lost the wonder from its time of origin and had become selfevident. The threatening influence of the constructor abated. Underground it continued.”32 Interestingly, the suggested temporal and corporeal “closure” marks the Eiffel Tower’s completion date, circa 1890. Giedion’s statement, however, says more than simply marking a date of historical significance. There is no need to reiterate what has already been said about the spatial and visual significance of the Eiffel Tower. However, it is important to point out the two connotations that one might ascribe to Giedion’s recollection of the Tower’s inauguration date. In the first place, the erection of the Tower allowed Giedion to discuss architecture outside of themes central to the debate on style that occupied architects and theoreticians at two distinct historical moments. If one agrees with Giedion’s observation that at a particular time construction was the “unconscious” of the nineteenth century, and that it operated invisibly as a ghost, then, the first moment of style consciousness should be associated with the rise of the idea of national identity. According to Mitchell

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Schwarzer, “A new form of conservative architectural nationalism emerged during the 1880s and 1890s, in conscious opposition” to the trends that were attempting to deliver internationalism. To this latter group, technology and industrialization were seen as important for architecture in the breaking of boundaries set primarily by national interest.33 Both the Gothic and Greek revival movements adhered to regional aspects of architecture (climate, material and topography) and the historicity of languages and ethnic origins that now had to be measured by the political and economic yardsticks of the emerging bourgeois interest in nation and nationalism. In Giedion’s words, “National differences develop through the influences of climate, material, and formative will, utterly independently and unconsciously.” He continued, “The struggle toward a ‘national’ style, with its desire to retain formal-handicraft details, is fought like the struggle of the Gothicists or Renaissancists, on formal rather than on functional grounds. Screened from the real events.”34 The statement alludes to Giedion’s objective and constructive position in establishing a second moment in the style debate. His explanation of space filling the time separating two moments is confined to what is involved in moving “construction” into the domain of “unconscious” underground (architecture’s loss of corporeality), and thus the possibility of discussing the idea of style from a different point of view. The second moment in the style debate alludes to the notion of interconnectivity, and architecture’s move from mass to volume, already present in the early work of Le Corbusier. Now, to map the broader connotation of the second moment in the style debate, it is useful to recall the discourse of the tectonic central to German architects. Among these, Gottfried Semper and Karl Bötticher display differences from each other, which are helpful in establishing an analytical tool for further understanding the topicality of construction for Giedion’s text. That construction is central to Semper’s idea of the tectonic is implied in the architect’s distinction between the core-form and the art-form. What is involved in the distinction is the transgression of the classical theory of imitation. For Semper, architecture is not an imitative art, the origin of which goes back to the primitive hut, or represented in metaphysical narratives of one kind or another. He rather established a structural paradigm, defining architecture as the art of building whose skills, techniques, and motifs are immanent to the core-form and nurtured by aesthetic and tactile sensibilities developed in other production activities. In associating the art-form with the motifs essential to the weaving and textile industry, Semper saved architecture from both the revivalists’ interest in the imitation of past styles, and the positivists’ dismissal of the

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role aesthetic plays in the tectonic. Construction for Semper was the realm where the architect could legally articulate the relationship between the art-form and the core-form. Whereas the core-form is reinvented according to technical transformations, the art-form evolves from the modification of established architectural motifs either in the form of memories of the culture of building, or visually in the enduring presence of monuments. This last point might blur Semper’s difference from historicism and the latter’s opposition to the Sachlichkeit architecture of early modernism. The fact remains that historicism did not have theoretical access to the dual nature of the tectonic, nor could it appreciate the modification needed to transform the received culture of building according to formal perceptions developed in engineering or other art works. It is not for nothing that Le Corbusier’s actual contribution started with the distinction implied between the Dom-ino frame (core-form) and the free façade (the art-form), and that tectonics achieved a far more radical articulation in Mies’s steel and glass architecture. Semper’s ideas on the tectonic were shared if not formulated by Bötticher. The difference between these two German architects, however, can be expressed in the following: that the idea of “lawful” in Semper’s discourse refers to the “use” of accumulated architectural motifs associable with monuments, most of which were nurtured by the culture of stone and masonry construction systems. On this matter Bötticher had a different take. To him, “the development of new constructional materials propelled architecture to express new artistic forms through an idealization of structure.” This, in his words, “Required maximum visibility of the structural/material frame.”35 Bötticher’s statement encapsulates what Giedion meant by the idea of constructors, and the historian’s fascination with the work of engineers, but also his admiration for architects like Henri Labrouste who used exposed iron structure in the interior of the Bibliotheque Nationale (Fig. 4.2). As will be discussed shortly, central to the difference between Bötticher and Giedion’s views on construction is architecture’s corporeality, a subject that has no place in engineering. The subject of corporeality hardly remains relevant to the issues involved in the calculation, design, and construction of a structure. Any further elaboration of the importance of technique and construction for Giedion necessitates a discussion that concerns the following two points: Firstly, Giedion’s proposition that “Construction in the nineteenth century plays the role of the subconscious” and its subsequent move into the “underground”; and secondly, the need to revisit the aforementioned

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Figure 4.2 Henri Labrouste, Bibliotheque Nationale, Sale de lecture, Paris, 18551868.

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second moment in the style debate though this time in reference to projects realized before the publication of Giedion’s book. Detlef Mertins has extensively discussed the criticality of Walter Benjamin, Bötticher, and the importance Giedion gave to iron construction built during the nineteenth century.36 While his main interest focuses on the issue of transparency beyond Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky’s famous essay on the subject,37 Mertins invokes Benjamin and the early twentiethcentury avant-garde architecture of Sachlichkeit to make a case for Giedion’s contribution to the historiography of modern architecture. Picking on the metaphysics implied in the duality of the core-form and the art-form, the prefix “yet” used in the title of Mertins’s text recalls, on the one hand, the Benjaminian urge to explode the past, and to read the redemptive potential detectable in the wish-images of each period. On the other hand, the prefix evokes the hope for a different sense of transparency achievable through a post-humanist subject comparable to the work of engineering, but also through those works produced by some sectors of the Russian Constructivism. Without wanting to open a discussion that would demand a full assessment of Mertins’s text, suffice it to say that to break the closure established by the metaphysics of humanism is “to pass through it.”38 The theory of the tectonic fulfils this intermediary task and propels architecture towards Sachlich form, noted earlier. Secondly, the production and consumption cycle of the early capitalism was centred on utility and the economics involved in coordinating a means/end relationship. This is clear from the architecture of Sachlichkeit, in general, and the ideas and projects developed by German architects, Hannes Meyer for one.39 In this sense, one might claim that at a particular moment in the history of modernization, the concept of objectivity presented the other side of the coin marked by the work of engineering. The comparison, however, does not go beyond this, and the implied balance is disrupted when historical developments internal to the logic of capitalism are introduced. For no good reason capitalism needed another half century to produce a culture of consumption where excess and spectacle would not only cover the surface of architecture, but also inform the best contemporary structures erected by talented engineers such as Santiago Calatrava and Cecil Balmond.40 What should be added to these observations is the fact that if the engineers were able to entertain iron in conjunction with a utilitarian logic vested in the artefacts of a primitive era, the nineteenth-century architects were unable to forget the long history of their discipline—and this in conjunction with the importance given to representation, and the fact that architecture stands somewhere between a utilitarian artefact and a work of

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art, to recall Adolf Loos’s famous distinction between architecture and art.41 For good reason then, nineteenth-century architecture could not reach the point where the form is emancipated from art (the symbolic world Benjamin alludes to), even though a start was made to see “architecture as engineered construction.”42 Benjamin asks: “Are not all great conquests in the field of forms ultimately a matter of technical discoveries?”43 Benjamin is not clear about what he means by “the field of forms.” Nevertheless, he might have been making a general statement based on his own observations of the nineteenth-century exhibition halls where the duality between the art-form and the core-form (essential for the tectonic) is put aside for the sheer expression of structural elements, the form of load and support. The implied esteem for “nakedness” or transparency might be associated with Mies’s aspiration for the architecture of “almost nothing,” if not with the work of Russian constructivists. Again, one is reminded of the dialogue between nakedness and cladding central to Semper and Bötticher’s discussions of the tectonic. Bötticher’s proposition that “new artistic forms” might “propel through an idealization of structure” suggests that the realization of new forms in architecture should have both material and subjective bases. In putting Semper and Giedion into this picture, one can map the two sides of the style debate, and the role construction played in the evolution of the new architecture. For Semper, the new architecture would be the result of a long-term formal modification and transformation, perhaps first developed in the work of engineering, until finding its architectonic expression through what he called, stoffwechel. Seemingly, if there was a role to be played by the Zeitgeist, it was indirect and facilitated the transformation of image and skills from one field of artistic activity into another. Therefore, one might claim that the aesthetic in Semper’s discourse is not a subjective issue.44 Rather it evolves out of the dialogue between the culture of building and the visual and constructive potentialities offered by new materials and techniques. Giedion, instead, gave importance to transient buildings, department stores, railway stations, and market halls, buildings without historical precedent. For him, these structures had the potential to reveal the century’s “own inner attitude”.45 Accordingly, these buildings represented the subconscious of the century as far as the question of construction was concerned. These new structures made one feel that “construction lacks a certain tautness.” This was one reason why Semper shunned the use of iron for civic architecture. Giedion, instead, was impressed by the “openness instead of spatial enclosure” of these industrial structures.46 When this difference is established then one can claim that Semper’s discourse is useful for understanding why Giedion

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liked to move “construction” to the underground at least for the remaining part of the last century. The difference also helps in grasping the process involved in the transference of abstraction, movement, and fragmentation, tropes central to Giedion’s vision of space and time, into the language of the new architecture. The question now is: In what ways then does “Construction become expression. Construction become form,” as Giedion reminds his readers?47 Similar to those of his contemporary historians, Giedion’s narrative highlights particular dates for establishing a system of periodization, a major facet of which is to ensure the move towards the realization, if not expression, of the Zeitgeist in architecture. The year 1900, ten years after the erection of the Eiffel Tower, is presented as a point of departure for the formation of a period that comes full circle in 1920. Giedion’s periodization is also informed by the conflict between national interest and the zeal for the international as one peruses the work of architects discussed above. Central to the understanding of the period spanning 1900 to 1920 is the “sociological structure” of France, the country whose soil “produced the cross-ribbed vault”48 and which now, at the turn of the century, is able to put concrete to better use than other nations. This statement discloses the essence of Giedion’s vision of history: the past should be used to highlight that which is particular to the modern situation of architecture. In his own words, “when we describe lines arching back in time, we are doing so in order to emphasize the French constructional temperament.” Giedion’s association of architecture with the issue of national identity should not be mistaken for the discourse of National Romanticism. This is clear from Giedion’s criticism of that aspect of the debate on style that wished to make a one-to-one correspondence between architecture and national traditions. Reflecting on the “sociological structure of a country,” among other factors, Giedion’s presentation of the bond between region and architecture raises another issue. The advocacy for international architecture cannot dismiss modernity’s immanent conflict with the culture of building. Modernity’s thrust for devaluation of all values, including the idea of national identity, had no choice but to find a proper outlet through architecture, the most collective artwork in modern society. One can argue that the debate on style and Giedion’s sell-out admiration for the French constructors disclose two different manifestations of the enduring conflict between modernity and the urge to retain some aspects of architectural traditions. Like Hitchcock, Giedion too charted the regional modalities of modern architecture. In addition to Auguste Perret, and Tony Garnier, mention is made of Frank L. Wright, Adolf Loos,

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Henry van de Velde, and Petrus Berlage. Giedion takes note of the work of these architects to underline two things. The first is the centrality of the theme of construction for architects who have taken the first steps towards the recognition of what is called “collective advancement.” This is achievable when a bygone element, the Baroque undulating wall, for example, can constitute a new tradition as a result of the emerging building technologies of the nineteenth-century. The second is the exceptional quality of Garnier and Perret’s architecture in spite, or because of their incapacity to break away from the Beaux Arts traditions. Giedion wanted to underline the inevitable nature of “generational destiny,” cementing the high value of those architects who were able to capture the spirit of modern times. The case in point is Le Corbusier’s advancement of housing problems beyond factors endemic to the individualistic taste and craftsmanship. It is pointless to reiterate Le Corbusier’s importance for Giedion. The final pages of his book speak to this end. The question should rather concern a different subject: what is involved in Giedion’s assessment of generational destiny? To begin with, there is an argument to suggest that Giedion’s account of the architects’ practicing in different countries aimed at two things. Firstly, it aimed to present a different approach to the subject of architecture/nation from those advocating style revival, or for that matter, the ideas popularised by National Romanticism. Instead of associating particular architectural forms with national identity, Giedion’s formulation takes place at an abstract and formal level. We are reminded of “America’s organizational aptitude” and Holland’s “handicraft aptitude.”49 And yet the so-called natural ability of both countries is presented as a byproduct of modernization, thus bypassing the issue of national identity and the way the latter is usually glued to the particularities of its birthplace. What is involved here, and this is the second point, is of interest because it provides a better understanding of Giedion’s interpretation of the conflict between the project of modernity and architecture’s destiny, and the need for a kind of unity characterized in the following words: “its unity, not unity by negation, but by affirmation…, not by considering mind and body as separate entities, but by encouraging both to strive for that difficult, but liberating, unification after which we can find salvation.” Sokratis Georgiadis recalls this statement of Giedion in reference to the Bauhaus program and the school’s emulation for the re-birth of unity in which Gothic architecture played a major role. According to him, Giedion “discovered the first seeds of this positive unity in the volte-face from Expressionism to Constructivism and Functionalism….” and that “this volte-face was also a feature of Giedion’s own development after 1922.”50

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Similar to Benjamin’s views expressed in the philosophy of history,51 Giedion considered Modernity as an encompassing force, historical and inevitable. He suggested that, instead of resisting it, one should internalize the major manifestations of Modernity, first unconsciously and then consciously. This was to him the only strategy by which the spatial implication of construction might have the chance to abandon its corporeality, facilitating the move from the domain of expression to form. Thus, the work of French constructors, permeating the early decades of the century, sheds light on the tectonic significance of Gothic architecture. By the same token, the most advanced aspects of the Eiffel Tower, its linear structure, spatial interpenetrations, and lightness are called on to qualify the portfolio of the “international architecture.” If these remarks present a plausible summary of Giedion’s reception of modernity, then, any proposition concerning radical transformation of form and composition should be considered good, but not sufficient; neither the “breaking of the box” accomplished by F. L. Wright; nor the non-traditional abstract forms of Dutch architect, Robert van ’t Hoff;52 not even Garnier’s design for a “suburban railroad station” where the architect takes into consideration “function and the new material, glass and concrete.” None of these experiments succeeded in internalizing the constructive essence of the Zeitgeist compared to what Le Corbusier had already scored in his early villas. The absence of a dialectical approach in formulating the vicissitudes of the new architecture is also implied in Giedion’s criticism of the American use of frame-structure in tall buildings. That the Dom-ino frame dismantled the conventions of load and support essential to the humanist architecture is obvious. Yet this transgression is not merely of a technical nature, and could not have been achieved without the aesthetic of abstraction implied in Le Corbusier’s Purism.53 Giedion’s criticism also reminds the reader that American experience fell short of appreciating the visuality of “surfaces, lines, air”54 as Giedion’s eyes moved from the work of constructors to the painting of P. Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg. In line with these considerations, the difference between Semper and Bötticher on the tectonic should be recalled once more. Noteworthy is the centrality of aesthetics in any discussion of the tectonic, and the subject’s absence in the following claim of Bötticher. In his opinion, the tectonic of stone is historically exhausted, and new forms might emerge from iron and other industrial materials. It seems the time was not ripe for either Semper or Bötticher to see the aesthetic of abstraction permeating modern painting, or to seek its architectonic implications. Their view on materiality was locked in the traditions of craftsmanship. To turn the balance in favour of

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Semper, however, the centrality of the idea of cladding in his theory of style should be highlighted. This is important because the priority Semper assigns to the element of clothing puts architecture squarely in relation to painting and engineering. Though crucial in changing one’s perception of space, the work of engineering is by definition unable to reach the point where construction would connote a more “real, that is, the construction of the spatial conditions of life.” Aspects of Giedion’s observation of Le Corbusier’s early work do indeed support Semper’s theory of cladding. Consider this: according to Giedion, Le Corbusier’s “houses seem thin as paper” and it reminds us of the “fragile wall paintings of Pompeii.” He continues, what Le Corbusier’s houses “express in reality, however, coincides completely with the will expressed in all abstract paintings, in which things are seen in a floating transparency….”55 That the abstract painting could not serve Semper is historical. But, does not Giedion’s allusion to the wall paintings of Pompeii sound Semperian? And yet Giedion was right: the early houses Le Corbusier designed could not have been seen “thin as paper” without the passage from a heavy masonry construction system to the Dom-ino frame. Likewise, spatial interpenetration and dematerialization of the corporeality of architecture was not conceivable without the advancement of the Dom-ino and its constructive and spatial implications for architecture. Equally important is the fact that intrinsic to architecture is the element of clothing, which brings forth the corporeality of a building. Semper suggested that the idea of clothing should be the primary concern of any architect, and that the choice for structural should be the second task. Not only was Semper’s recommendation an arrow to the heart of the style debate, but also he set the basis for differentiating the architects’ apprehension of construction from that of the engineers. On closer observation, one can argue that the particularity of the Dom-ino frame is related to the detailing of column and slab. This resulted in a freestanding enclosure that gave a paper-like impression. Thus the spatial experience is liberated from the physics and metaphysics of the wall construction system, and the optical regime of modernity enters into that aspect of life,56 the house, which, according to Giedion, has the most intimate rapport with the body. There is another dimension to the tectonic that helps us further understand Le Corbusier’s perception of the Dom-ino frame, and its importance for Giedion’s discourse. One might claim that Le Corbusier’s formulation of the Dom-ino frame is informed as much by the technique of ferro-concrete as by the historicity of the tectonic rapport between the core-form and the art-form, a phenomenon Le Corbusier could not have dismissed from his exploration of Mediterranean vernacular architecture.57

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In addition, that the disciplinary history of architecture was central to Le Corbusier’s work is evident in the architect’s capacity to handle each new commission afresh. Nevertheless, it is important to read Giedion’s words that, “in his theory” referring to the architect’s formulation of the “regulating lines,” Le Corbusier “is often less daring than in his design.”58 Obviously Giedion made his case for modern architecture too early and defined it too narrowly. That he tends to bypass the disciplinary history of architecture is implied in his rejection of the idea of corporeality that speaks for the essentiality of clothing in architecture. Noteworthy is Giedion’s omission of Italian Futurists, and Russian Constructivists,59 the majority of whose projects embody many issues Giedion attributed to what he called “transient structures.” A contemporary reader of Giedion will not dismiss the temptation to associate the bird’s eye view of Pont Transbordeur with Ivan Leonidov’s entry project for the Lenin Institute of Librarianship (1927). More interesting is Giedion’s dismissal of a few German industrial buildings, including Walter Gropius’s Fagus Factory (1914), which in 1954 he would describe in the following words: “a coup de genie of the new architectural movement.”60 The observation presented here is important because it puts the discussion of the tectonic in dialogical relationship with the critique of historicism. Admiring Giedion’s reflections on the work of the nineteenthcentury constructors, Benjamin expressed his scepticism, replacing Giedion’s phrase, “construction plays the role of subconscious” with, “the role of bodily processes, around which artistic architecture gathers, like dreams around the framework of physiological processes.” The conjunction between the body, framework, and the dream quality of what Benjamin calls “artistic architecture” defies Giedion’s aspiration for “unity in affirmation.” According to Mertins, “In reworking Giedion’s dualism into a dialectic between physiological processes and phantasmagoric dreams, Benjamin pointed to the immanence of truth within the expression of bodily labours and the physiognomy of historical event.”61 Obviously Benjamin’s position haunted post-war intellectuals, and for good reason. Here is the seed of a critical historiography in Benjamin’s statement: “capitalism was a natural phenomenon with which a new dream-filled sleep came over Europe, and, through it, a reactivation of mythic forces.”62 As mentioned earlier in this chapter, essential to any critical assessment of modern architectural history is the need to highlight the gap(s) separating languages that relate architecture and the body to the production and consumption spheres of capitalism. Le Corbusier’s early work certainly missed this point—as did Giedion’s. Unable to awaken from “a new dream-filled sleep” which had overtaken Europe, neither had any idea

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whether some contradiction or other might overshadow the ongoing rapport between architecture and capitalism, or whether both Giedion and Le Corbusier, seeking the spirit of the time, had the capacity to override all contradictions, creating a situation where technology would drive and lead modern society towards what is called “unity in confirmation.”63 Noteworthy here is Sokratis Georgiadis’s comprehensive and critical assessment of Giedion. In his autobiographical remarks published in 1989, Georgiadis underlines the singularity of Giedion’s vision in inventing an architecture “that was in harmony with the new realities of industry, science and technology and could nevertheless create the desired cultural fusion.” Given the fact that the author is well informed of the literature concerning the project of modernity, and that to him that which is intrinsic to architecture is nothing but “the tectonic relationship of the construction to a concrete place,” nevertheless, the idea of “desired cultural fusion” seems more in line with the postmodernist “optimism” of the 1980s, rather than a comprehensive response to Benjamin’s idea of the loss of aura, or for that matter to Manfredo Tafuri’s criticism of Giedion’s operative approach to history.64 Also noteworthy is Lewis Mumford’s criticism of Giedion as far as the socio-political aspects of architecture, and urbanism are concerned.65 Giedion’s historical operation has another blank spot. Georgiadis’s concise introduction to the English translation of Giedion’s book is useful for understanding the role German theories played in the formation of the debate on iron-construction. In underestimating the disciplinary history of architecture, Giedion had no choice but to discuss the centrality of the Eiffel Tower for a new architecture, and to relate the idea of construction to the tradition of French Gothic architecture. Another implication of “return” is his total dismissal of that line of modern architecture that evolved from the theoretical work connecting Loos to Semper. Giedion’s sympathy, if not his prejudice for “utility-form,” and the work of engineering were in part the outcome of theories that had shaped modern German architectural discourse since the inception of the Werkbund in 1906, and its culmination in the Bauhaus School of the 1920s.66 The search for the new-objectivity, and the overrated account of the role technology played in the formation of modern-style architecture were indeed the blind spots of institutions that would bet high on the presumed unity between architecture and the ideology of plan.67 Paradoxically, Loos used the same blank spot to criticise the Werkbund approach to technology. The significance of Loos for understanding the fallacies of the international architecture is discussed in another place.68 What needs to be

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underlined here is Loos’s formulation of architecture in the purview of “negative affirmation” of modernity.69 One important consequence of Loos’s position is the way he conjugated technique with style. Considering himself more of a mason than an artist, or for that matter a creative genius, Loos approached technique as something given, the best of which should be realized in the architect’s handling of the economic possibilities of a building site. This, according to Benedetto Gravagnuolo, “does not mean a paralysis of progress, but only a reasonable limitation.”70 One can argue that the implied limit in Loos’s theory is associated with the criticality of the idea of corporeality for architecture, and its capacity to arouse particular feelings and sensibilities notable in the architect’s embellishment of the element of cladding. Loos achieved this not through the aesthetic of abstraction but in the recollection of tactile sensibilities accumulated in the culture of building. Only in subduing technique by the expressive quality of the clothing could Loos question the Werkbund and the Bauhaus drive for the New Objectivity. He famously said that there is no need to invent a new style: the proper style for today already exists. And it is no wonder that his work is not discussed in the first edition of Space, Time, and Architecture. To understand Giedion’s discourse fully, it is necessary to explore briefly the nature and consequences of his rapport with the Bauhaus. Most historians of modern architecture have highlighted the moments fundamental to the formation of modern architecture in Germany. Among other events, mention is made of the famous debate of 1914, the establishment of the Bauhaus school in 1919, and the Weimar exhibition of 1923. This last event is of significance because, according to Georgiadis, it caused Giedion to make basic revisions in his approach to history. One important manifestation of the suggested changes can be seen in Giedion’s belief that contrary to art history’s concern and focus on past styles, the historian ought to investigate the vestiges of the present moment. The historian, while looking backward to the future, should at the same time underline trends in the present that have the potential to propel architecture into the future.71 To make a distinction between his vision of the new architecture and that of the Bauhaus, Giedion proposed the following two considerations. Firstly, in order to rectify the debris of the 1914 debate between Hermann Muthesius and Henry van de Velde, the school, according to Giedion, should put aside the utilitarian approach to machine and, instead, appropriate the aesthetic of abstract geometries evidenced in silos, as Le Corbusier had already demonstrated in his Towards a New Architecture. Secondly, in order to do away with “expressionism” and “organic” vision

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advocated by different groups, the school should explore the achievements of Cubism. The following statement of Giedion speaks to both purposes: “Cubist pictures often resemble cell membranes as seen through a microscope. The efforts of the Bauhaus are aimed at probing deeply into the material in order to expose the life hidden in the amorphous. Dead things take on character and vitality. The absolute rhythm of things is awakened.”72 Thus, the task Giedion set for himself, one to be fulfilled in Space, Time, and Architecture, was to narrow the gap between his vision and the available progressive elements of architecture, with exceptional attention given to Le Corbusier’s work. Writing after the publication of his book, he claimed, “The historian has to give insight into what is happening in the changing structure of his own time. His observations must always run parallel to those specialists of optical vision whom we call artists, because it is they who set down the symbols for what is going on in the innermost life of the period before the rest of us are aware of it.”73 Nevertheless, what is problematic in his formulation is the historian’s approach to the past. In particular, mention should be made of Giedion’s consideration of those aspects of the history that are helpful in marrying the formal and aesthetic implications of the Zeitgeist with the future. According to Georgiadis, neither L. Moholy-Nagy’s vision of architecture, nor Le Corbusier’s tendency to employ conventional elements, nor the Russian Constructivists’ discourse nurtured by “the primitive naturalistic materialism of the seventeenth-century,” were of interest to Giedion.74 On this subject he was indeed reiterating an historical trend that was fundamental not only in shaping the Bauhaus move away from handicraft, and Gropius’s declaration of the unity with technology (1922), but more importantly, the theoretical underpinning of the debate flaming around the erection of the Crystal Palace. The tendency to highlight some aspects of a given age carried as much weight in Semper’s approach to the tectonic as Henry Cole’s disagreements with John Ruskin, to mention figures actively engaged in the 1851 exhibition. These figures were also influential in formulating tropes central to architecture’s engagement with industrial techniques, mapping the vicissitudes of the new style.75 It seems a vision of “closure” was itself an attribute of the dream-world capitalism pumped into the everydayness of mid-nineteenth-century Europe. To understand the historiographic consequence of that dream, we need to turn to Giedion’s major text where he discusses the history of modern architecture.

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The Limits of an Equation: history-historicity That history’s fog covered the entire nineteenth century, to recall Benjamin again, is evident from the century’s concern with the style debate, and architects’ use and abuse of history.76 The desire to conquer history did indeed rob the latter of its own historicity. If this observation is of a general nature, its specific consequences for architectural history is useful for understanding the Giedion of Space, Time, and Architecture. To this end, one should ask: what is the specific nature of “history” that involves architecture? In other words, should one differentiate that which informs the history of architecture from that which informs history in general? While narrative is integral to any historiography, what differentiates one historical work from another is the subject matter of its narrative. Consider this: a past war endures through traces of memory and perhaps in monuments built to commemorate the event. Unlike a war, but similar to architecture, a Renaissance painting, for example, might survive its time. The painting’s presence, however, is temporal and subject to the vicissitudes of art history. Architecture enjoys a particular relationship with time: not only the time of a building’s realization, that is, the mechanism that relates the client, capital, and programmatic requirements to each other, but also the time of architecture’s future, the project. Obviously not every building survives its time. When it does, architecture occupies a specific place in the time to come. Unlike painting, and still concerned with the issue of time, there exists something of nature in architecture. Buildings are conceived in the desire for everlasting life. The art of painting, even when mimicking nature, is expected to differentiate the painting’s subject matter from that of nature. Architecture’s presence in the temporality of time is indeed fundamental to the understanding of the historicity of architectural history. Where does Giedion stand in the suggested dialogical relation between history and the historicity of architecture? To answer this question we need to examine Giedion’s Space, Time, and Architecture. To enter the book, one should recall Giedion’s 1923 visit to the Bauhaus School and pose another question. What is involved in Giedion’s retreat from the methodologies of art history after visiting the Bauhaus? Even if the idea of negation of the near past were central to the formation of the early modern architecture, the movement’s enthusiasm to formulate the “new architecture” could not avoid addressing tropes that were essential to the nineteenthcentury style debate. What this means is that thinking of a different language of architecture was endemic to a situation that was marked by drastic territorial and technological transformations.77 In addition, similar

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to their colleagues practising in the previous century, and in congruity with Romanticism, the early protagonists of modern architecture took upon themselves the task of theorizing and formulating the architectonic consequences of modernization. The pioneers of modern architecture had no choice but to look forward and theorize their own indulgence with the major ethos of the Enlightenment. Secondly, and paradoxically, these architects had to cement architecture’s affiliation with nature. To subscribe to the ideology of “plan,” meant to smooth the obstacles of the past and the present for the future. In retrospect, and considering the work of some members of the movement, Loos in particular, one can speculate that what went wrong with the pioneers, and the lessons Giedion drew from their experience, was that the leading line at the Bauhaus did not think of architecture’s confrontation with modernity within the disciplinary history of architecture. This is convincing not only because it does not ignore the disciplinary nature differentiating architecture from engineering, but also because it brushes aside the claim for “posthumanism” seen as the missing link in the main developmental processes of modernism.78 Nevertheless, what differentiates the post-war historiography of modern architecture from previous narratives is the degree to which the vision of the historian is separated from the vanguard thrust of architects. Also important for our consideration is the dialogical relationship between history and historicity for any critical assessment of architecture’s history. This is a project that Giedion submitted to, albeit tacitly. In this regard, the titles of parts I and II of his book, “History a Part of Life” and “Our Architectural Inheritance,” speak for themselves. What troubles his vision, however, is the tendency to liquidate the past, smoothing the path for the Zeitgeist to flourish. In doing so, he robs the content of the first two parts of his book of their critical potential, thus writing history for the vanguards of the modern movement. Again one thinks of the complexities informing architectural history from that of history as such. The theoretical premise central to Giedion’s argument concerns the historical separation of reason and feeling, and the dichotomy of periodization and autonomy. In projecting the split between reason and feeling into the nineteenth century, and borrowing some aspects of Wölfflin’s methodology, Giedion avoids acknowledging the historicity of the separation of reason and feeling, the genealogy of which can be traced back to the theoretical departure from the theological world, discussed earlier in this chapter. He also stopped short of grafting the historicity of that rupture into the picture of the past he asks the historian to see in the mirror of history. Though Wölfflin’s linear vision was helpful for understanding the formal aspects of art and architecture of a given period,

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the centrality of closure implied in any discourse of periodization, paradoxically, plays an instrumental role in camouflaging the enduring impact of the suggested departure from the theological world. By the time of writing Space, Time and Architecture, Giedion had moved further away from Wölfflin. To diffuse the historicality of the separation of reason and feeling, Giedion had to do two more things: firstly, to place the past next to the picture of the present, and propagate the benefits of looking at history through a wide-angle lens; and secondly, to show the ways in which the spirit of time expresses itself in every creative act of a given period. Thus, we see the congruity between a 1908 mathematician’s text on space and time, and the subject’s recurrence in cubist and futurist painting in France and Italy.79 Since Kant, space and time have been considered instrumental for human experience. What needs to be added is Giedion’s tendency to think that “things which appear opposed to each other necessarily belong together, and are thus in a particular sense ‘identical’.”80 Nevertheless, one might claim that Kant’s formalization of the separation between reason and feeling had a major bearing on Giedion. Enumerating the cultural and economic elements that relate architecture to its context and period, Giedion solidified the idea that architecture has the potential to express the spirit of its time. More importantly, in putting the historicity of a period behind one, he claimed that architecture continues its own life like “an organism in itself.”81 Underlining the autonomy of architecture,82 another Kantian idea, Giedion wanted to demonstrate his departure from the tradition of art history. And yet, if “closure” results from pitting one period against another, his appropriation of autonomy is meaningful when discussed alongside what he called “constituent facts.” Indeed the theoretical underpinning of his book centres on the idea that some architectural elements can endure beyond their original context. According to Giedion, constituent facts “are more important to us than self-enclosed entities such as styles.” He goes further, suggesting that one might write the history of architecture as an independent organism.83 Cashing in on ideas central to the discourse of Enlightenment, such as organicism, autonomy, and periodization, Giedion could not but to marry aspects of the tradition of art history with an idealism that is imbued with the spirit of time. At this point it is necessary to address that aspect of Giedion’s vision of history that caught Benjamin’s attention. Besides what has already been said on this subject in previous pages, here the discussion should turn to Giedion’s drift away from Benjamin. Central to both figures is the question concerning time and history. Similar to Benjamin and Riegl,

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Giedion underlined the import of “detail” as a clue leading to a comprehensive understanding of a larger constellation. Mention should also be made of his emphasis on the autonomy of form and the belief that ideas developed in a particular historical time might reappear outside their historical contingencies. However, two issues differentiate Giedion’s vision of history from that of Benjamin. Firstly, Giedion missed the opportunity to appreciate the notion of time-now: instead of interpreting the Zeitgeist in a static situation, he expanded the latter’s horizon not only to include particular aspects of the past, but also to turn the historian’s gaze into the future. Thus, while he is correct in saying that the Baroque undulating wall is a constituent fact, and that one can write the history of architecture based on forms and ideas intrinsic to architecture, he nevertheless subscribed to a homogeneous concept of the time-now that was dictated by the myth of technological progress, and a uniform diffusion of ideas immanent to modernization. This is suggested in the sub-heading of this section, “history-historicism,” which in part speaks for Giedion’s drift away from Benjamin. What is involved in the drift is Benjamin’s discourse on aura formulated in his famous essay, “The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction.”84 Central to Benjamin’s idea of aura is the historicity of modernity and its impact on art and architecture, and the role technology plays in modernism. As noted previously in this chapter, not only did Giedion miss the opportunity to highlight the importance of the bodily experience of space, and the concept of time in modernity, he also failed to maintain a critical position vis-à-vis a negative affirmation of technology. Giedion explored the possibility of liquidating the unique historicity involved in the reception of artwork produced before the banishment of aura. He also failed to appreciate the critical potential of a static conception of time. Giedion, instead, moulded the past and present together directing them towards a future dictated by technological progress. This might sound essentialist, but it is worth saying that, as far as the project of modernity is concerned, a standstill conception of time is critical for demonstrating the lost potential of the past that could have resisted the nihilism of modernity. Here is the so-called essentialist baggage: architectural historiography should stick to the historicity of the disciplinary history of architecture if the angel of history is still to turn her gaze back and emulate the rubble of progress. Giedion, instead, looked forward, and thus we see the need to have a rear view mirror to capture the past, albeit in image-form. Seen as such, the undulating wall was not representing the “claim of history.” Rather it was for Giedion a prototype, a historical precedent, to induce a modernist approach to space and time.

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Considering the title of Giedion’s somewhat theoretical paradigm, Our Architectural Inheritance, one might suggest that the text intended to underline the thematic of the disciplinary history of architecture. What makes this speculation questionable is of a strategic nature: selecting particular images from architecture’s past, and discussing their relevance to the now of the present. Giedion’s purpose was twofold. Firstly, the atmosphere of time embodying modern architecture was a moment in the linear continuum of progress, the destiny of which was informed by the topos of the Enlightenment. His position dismisses the exclusive nature of both technological innovation, and events that transformed the socioeconomic structure of major cities of Europe during the late nineteenthcentury. Secondly, Giedion did his best to secure the tradition of subjective idealism, and like Kant, wanted to hold the idea that space should be considered the most significant abstract entity congruent to the spatiality experienced since the fall of the theological world. A closer reading of Giedion’s excursion into Baroque architecture will serve to demonstrate the following argument: that in the absence of a critical interpretation of modernity “the demand for morality” does no good other than to support a mystical idea of historicism. Following Jacob Burckhardt’s remarks on the role played by the Florence of the fiftheenth-century for “the modern European spirit,”85 Giedion’s interpretation of Baroque opens a window into his own vision of history. That the invention of perspective perpetuated a particular conception of space unprecedented in history is obvious. What should be stressed are Baroque’s mood of space, and its architectonic qualities that urged Giedion to join the scholars who by 1930 had found a new interest in the work of Francesco Borromini. Giedion’s brief remarks on Baroque reiterate the main points already discussed in Wölfflin’s Renaissance and Baroque, first published in 1888. However, two issues need further clarification as far as Giedion’s story of the full picture of modern architecture (1890-1930) is concerned. Firstly, of interest is Wölfflin’s characterization of Baroque architecture as exceptional, if not transitory, compared to the Renaissance period that came to an end in southern Italy around 1520.86 The comparison implied in the title of Wölfflin’s book is important to Giedion. In the background of the nineteenth-century style debate, and the prevailing historical revivalism, Wölfflin’s Baroque provided a case for discussing the uniqueness of the spirit of the modern age. Using aspects of that uniqueness, Giedion makes a case for associating architecture with particular “moods of the age” (to use expressions shared by both scholars), major aspects of which are experienced in dualities such as “thinking and feeling” but also art and

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science.87 Still, Wölfflin’s analysis aimed at differentiating Baroque architecture from the Renaissance, presenting its art-form as somewhat autonomous. Benefiting from the exceptional formal qualities of Baroque style, Giedion, instead, wanted to consolidate the expressive dimension of modern architecture. Thus we have the analogy between the visual effects generated by the various aspects of Borromini’s St. Ivo, Pablo Picasso’s “Head Sculpture” (1910), and Vladimir Tatlin’s 1920 Tower. Giedion gave a new twist to the tradition of art history. Instead of limiting the task of the historian to presenting a formalistic or deterministic view of the artwork of the past, Giedion saw “planning” and provision of “the appearance of a new and self-confident tradition,” and called it the most important thing history could offer at a chaotic time that lives on “an aimless, day-to-day basis.”88 Where the art historians would show the internal unity of an epoch, Giedion demonstrated the cleavage underpinning the apparent unity of a period.89 This aspect of Giedion’s approach to modern architecture calls for further elaboration. The starting point should be the distance Giedion tried to maintain from the tradition of art history, and the intention to fill the implied gap with the forward looking aspiration of the vanguard architecture. This observation poses a well-known dilemma, namely, the dichotomy between periodization and the quest for autonomy. Giedion’s intention to breach the line separating the task of the historian from that of the architect raises the question: how much of a given age can architecture express, and to what purpose? Following Wölfflin, Giedion underlined the essentiality of painting for both Baroque and modern times, concluding that painting could express its age better than architecture. Thus Masaccio’s fresco, “the Trinity,” should precede Leon Battista Alberti’s longitudinal barrel vault of S. Andrea Mantua.90 So we see the visual and spatial contribution of Cubism to the historicity of modern architecture. What is involved here is of a crucial nature for the future of modern architecture that Giedion wanted to project. Similar to Pevsner and Hitchcock, Giedion saw modern painting as an inspirational source for architecture, particularly when the question concerned the denial that the tectonic had any import, as architecture confronted the forces of modernization. Even though Wölfflin’s reading of architectural history is formalistic through and through,91 he was correct in saying that architecture’s turn to painting is detrimental to the tectonic. This is clear from Wolfflin’s remarks on themes such as “massiveness” and “movement” but also his observation that in the Baroque church the element of the wall is independent of both the plan and the tectonic articulation of the corner, the line where the façade meets the adjacent wall. When this is established then Giedion’s

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interpretation of Baroque is of interest because it sheds light on his “use” of history, mainly to legitimize ideas and forms developed by modern architects. By the time of his move to America, Giedion was aware of the impact of Le Corbusier’s five points on modern architecture. Having in mind Le Corbusier’s idea of the free-façade, Giedion suggested that, before Borromini’s articulation of the undulating wall in the San Carlo, the idea of free-façade had already been implemented in the Pazzi Chapel. In his words, “the bold manner of displaying the wall as a flat surface” is the most important characteristic of the chapel. This wall, Giedion continues, “with its delicate subdivision, has nothing to support it; it is like a screen. The emancipation of the wall that appears here is important for the future. The wall taken simply as a surface will soon be the subject of important architectural innovation.”92 The next page shows the facade of San Carlo, itself a reminder of the historian’s idea of constituent facts. In discussing the recurrence of the “free wall” beyond its historicity (the Pazzi Chapel) Giedion attempted to canvas architecture’s autonomy. Contingent to his notion of autonomy is the idea of spatial interpenetration achieved in Cubism. At the same time, putting together the interior and exterior spaces experienced in Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye with the work of Borromini,93 Giedion directs our attention, once more, to the importance of contemplating images reflected in the mirror of history. Giedion read the past through the architectonic achievements of modernism, and then conceptualised the disjunction in terms of autonomy at the expense of the historicity of architecture. The idealistic seeds conceived in Giedion’s discussion of the constituent elements should be differentiated from the universalism of classical Orders, for example. In the first place, one should recognize that in his book the idea of Zeitgeist and its implication for modern architecture is plotted and discussed in two coordinates, “the demands for morality,” and the genesis of modern space-time, even though these subjects are discussed in separate chapters. If the long chapter addressing technological development (the main thesis of which was formulated in his 1924 text) is put aside, the theoretical underpinning of Giedion’s book is primarily laid out in the chapters where the above-mentioned two coordinates are discussed. Interestingly enough, but also related to the claim made here, the short chapter on Le Corbusier’s work summarizes Giedion’s concern for the moral dimension of architecture and the centrality of the space-time concept. Le Corbusier is presented in his book as the persona of modern architecture, in the same way that Burckhardt treated both Leon Battista

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Alberti and Leonardo da Vinci in a discussion that concerns the Renaissance of Italy. Though Le Corbusier is said to be showing the “instinctive prescience of genius,”94 Giedion swiftly moves away from Burckhardt’s thrust on artist/architect as genius, and turns the discussion to issues helpful for differentiating the universality implied in his notion of “constituent facts” from that of classical Orders. Giedion presents the undulating wall, and the interpenetration of interior and exterior spaces as ideas floating above history. However, he does not contextualize these issues. Contrary to the classical Order, that operated somewhat like a formal grammar, Giedion’s discussion on morality is centred on issues such as climatic and regional conditions; solutions sought for particular problems; demands put forward by the new space-time conception; and finally, the fact that architecture’s realization involves the work carried out by many sectors of the society. Interestingly, the reader is reminded of Alvar Aalto’s contribution in Finland, and Le Corbusier’s definition of architecture as construction spirituelle. In setting and organizing the spatial component of contemporary life, Giedion argued that, “this new setting has acted in its turn upon the life from which it springs.”95 To cement his concern for morality, the reader is reminded of the year 1927, a date that not only underlines the critical importance given to Le Corbusier’s design for the League of Nations, but also recalls Mies van der Rohe’s plan for the Weissinhof settlement at Stuttgart. Giedion uses these two projects to underline the complex problems for which modern architecture has to find solutions for all industrialized countries. Still, the CIAM’s collaborative attempt to find solutions for the lower income housing in 1929; the treatment of the subject of block in 1930; and the permeation of town planning in 1933 are but a few topics which helped address the collective dimension of modern architecture. It was only through institutions like CIAM that Giedion expected a “healing,” both in a theoretical and practical sense of the word, and thus the possibility of closing the gap between feeling and thinking, and between architectural expression and the constructive logic of modern technique. Much like Hitchcock’s idea of the New Tradition, the discussion presented in the “demands of morality” concerns the period spanning 1899 to 1930, a transitory stage that was expected eventually to move towards the full realization of modern architecture. The characteristic of this period is mapped in the intersection of a matrix, which highlights buildings produced in different regions of Europe, most of which incorporate three main movements essential to the realization of Goethe’s dictum that “the artist must create what the public ought to like, not what it does like.”96 To

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reform the public taste, Giedion argued, artists should cultivate the visual, spatial, and constructive potentialities available in the three developments characterizing the gist of nineteenth-century European artistic achievement. Mention is made of the work of painters and engineers (France), the arts and crafts movement (England), and the Art Nouveau (Belgium). The buildings and architects discussed in the chapters dedicated to these movements are the regulars addressed by most architectural historians. What needs to be pointed out here is that Giedion failed to explain why the “time was ripe,” a phrase oft-repeated in the book, for these three artistic movements and not for architecture per se. Why were architects not able to disband the historical styles before 1899, and yet Cézanne, for example, was able to do away with the traditions of realist painting? The question is raised here to suggest that a foundational approach to architectural history inevitably sets prerequisites essential to the achievement of a goal, especially when the linear vision of history is written at a time, 1938 in Giedion’s case, when many of the formal and aesthetic achievements of modern architecture were already established, and the possibility for any deviation from the language of the International Style exhibition (1932) was hardly noticeable. Before 1927, the year that might be considered the beginning of the end of the “moral demands of architecture,” one can argue that architects in many countries had already aimed at scoring the following: to liberate architecture from the burden of various historical styles; and to rethink architectural problems with an emphasis on utility that was essential to industrial design and considered central to the design of buildings such as apartments and townhouses that had no historical precedent. To this end Giedion sought the most successful architecture of the transitional period in those works that were able to channel the potentialities of space and technique towards a different concept of wall. One implication of this was to see the element of the wall as a flat surface, even when made out of a stone-construction system. Abandoning the classical detailing, simplicity was expected to prevail in the articulation of openings and windows, for example. The freedom of the wall was expressed in its undulating form, or else was treated as “simply a slablike screen” to recall Otto Wagner’s Karlsplatz Station (1895). Other characteristics of the period, the reader is reminded, relate to the innovative organization of the plan: that is, to design each storey independently, or to break a single floor into different levels; and the ease of inserting light wells throughout the building’s volume. More important is the unique attention architects gave to the design of stairs. There are two sides to this latter idea. On the one hand, in buildings like townhouses and

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apartments, the stairs connecting different floors were considered an appropriate place to use iron in handrails though much in the forms inspired by Art Nouveau. On the other hand, the public nature of stairs, in the same building types, was considered to be the appropriate place to use new material for representational purposes, one consequence of which was to restore the tectonics of stone-iron dialogue. If there is any significance in Giedion’s idea of transitional period, it is related to the tectonic inclusion of iron into the culture of masonry-stone construction, highlighted in Victor Horta’s house at 12 Rue de Turin, Brussels (1893), for example. The phenomenon is transitory for Giedion because it represented a step towards the full realization of the expected unity between feeling and thinking, and, but paradoxically, a step towards the nullification of the demand for morality in architecture. The space-time paradigm intended to put architecture on the track of abstraction essential to the desired “unity” as capitalism moved to consolidate its production and consumption system beyond any idealization of its own Zeitgeist. Two of the above-mentioned architectural developments are presented in Giedion’s book as the driving force for American architecture: the idea of plane surface wall, and the simplicity and flexibility maintained in the ground floor plan of residential buildings. Both these aspects of American architecture, according to Giedion, were motivated by the technical skills of the country, available between1890 and1925. Mention is also made of the scarcity of skilled workers, and a labour organization, the prime task of which was to radicalize the process of mechanization and industrialization of production activity in every sector of American society, from production of objects of daily use to that of the balloon frame—a construction system that would become central to the formation of the Chicago School architecture.97 What is of interest here is that the scarcity of skilled labour is seen as the force for robbing the wall of ornamentation and detailing, the two architectonic elements through which techniques and skills central to the pre-modern construction system would attain an expressive form. Thus, we see the possibility, by the 1890s, of forms that are rooted in historical styles as an entity in itself, a legible sign, if not an autonomous entity. The American development raised questions that concerned the historicity of modern architecture permeating Europe; the implied difference highlights the absence of institutions like the Werkbund and the Bauhaus School, both instrumental for the transformation of craftsmanship into industrial labour based skills. More interesting is Giedion’s presentation of the American case for solidifying his own thesis, especially the importance given to the British Arts and Craft movement; the French contribution in painting and technique; and the Art Nouveau’s

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interest in the line. Gone from his view is the formalistic tradition of art history. So much for the regional modalities of the early modern architecture movement! In retrospect one can argue that by the beginning of the twentieth century the achievements of Henry H. Richardson, F. L. Wright, and H. Sullivan disclosed an alternative vision of modern architecture, one consequence of which was to dismantle the genealogies of modern architecture popularised by Pevsner and Hitchcock. Dialectically, the American architectural scene would try, in the years to come, to nurture the formal and stylistic elements of these genealogies as “tools” to assist the country to recover from the “fear” and anxieties rooted in her lack of humanist traditions central to the European cultural development. It also pushed the production of architecture forward whenever technical innovations were exhausted. However, what makes the case of the Chicago School architecture appealing to Giedion is America’s disengagement with the style debate and thus the possibility to conceive forms, which “would unite construction and architecture in an identical expression.”98 Nevertheless, the realization of “pure forms,” to recall Giedion, had little to do with a preconceived theoretical agenda of the kind motivated by the spatial or abstract connotations of cubism, or the work of engineering. This is clear from the difficulties Giedion experienced when he came to interpret Wright’s architecture; the fact is that the work of this American architect had no place in Giedion’s preoccupation with modern painting. Wright was ahead of contemporary painters, Giedion claimed. In his words, “Wright had around him no painters and sculptors who were inspired by the same spirit. He is one of those exceptions, the architect who is in advance of the contemporary painter in his optical vision.”99 The architectonic clarity of the Chicago School architecture, however, had many other sources. Giedion reminds us of the demand raised by constructive and commercial considerations, both central to the realization of large window openings. He also reminds us that, out of technical and tactile necessity, the front row columns had to be clad in brick or stone. Much of the alleged formal purity achieved in William Le Baron Jenney’s Leiter Building (1889), for example, is associated with the tectonics informed by the vertical and horizontal grid of its fabric, to recall Semper’s discussion of mat and carpet, a subject familiar to Chicago architects of the time. And yet Giedion’s comparison of the Leiter Building with Le Corbusier’s Maison de Verre, Geneva 1930, intended to justify the French architect’s aesthetic preoccupation with linear expression, and to consolidate his own belief in the evolutionary nature of form.100 The comparison is problematic on another front. The suggested

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unity between architecture and construction is questionable when attention is given to the art-form of Jenney’s building. Laying a rectangular grid over the structural frame, the design avoids a uniform treatment of horizontal beams at every floor. This observation is consistent with Mies’s design in the Seagram building, where technical improvements allowed the architect to formulate a tectonic form out of a vertical and horizontal grid of steel members, thus revising the “Chicago construction” system according to Semper’s theory of the tectonic. In the Seagram building the curtain-wall represents the frame-structure artistically, meaning that the cladding does not correspond one-to-one with the structural system. That the Seagram building was not built when Giedion wrote his book is a historical fact. However, the building should be mentioned for two reasons: firstly, to underline the aesthetic side of tectonic form, and to say that Giedion’s desire for unity between construction and expression is problematic when the aesthetic of the alleged unity is seen as an abstract development taking place in painting first, and incorporated into architecture in the second instance; and secondly, to point out that Giedion’s evolutionary link between the Leiter Building and the Maison de Verre adheres to a vision of history where the major achievements of modern times are primarily attributed to the two realms of construction (technique?) and painting (visual). These structural and painterly developments set, for Giedion, the benchmark to link the present with selected historical precedents. Thus we have the analogies Giedion makes between Sullivan’s Carson Pirie Scott building (Fig. 4.3) and Gropius’s entry design for the 1922 Chicago Tribune competition. The association is cemented by “reading” into Gropius’s design the tropes central to the Chicago School architecture. Giedion goes further projecting the grid of Gropius’s design back into an image of Sullivan’s building that would disguise the round corner tower, and the street level ornamentation. These architectonic configurations were not in conformity with Giedion’s convictions of the nature of aesthetics modern architecture should have upheld. Much like Borromini’s undulating wall, the Chicago steel frame is for Giedion another constituent fact with the possibility of reappearing in a different time and place, if the spirit of the time so demands. Giedion’s discussion of the examples chosen from American architecture is prefatory to his own convictions that modern abstract painting and the work of engineering prompt a set of formal and visual standards to be incorporated into architecture. Only in this way was Giedion able to omit discussion of the work of architects like Loos and Aalto, and to express his surprise when noting the dark qualities of the interior spaces of Wright’s buildings (Fig. 4.4).101

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Figure 4.3 Louis H. Sullivan, Carson Pirie & Scott Store, Chicago, 1899-1904, exterior view.

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Figure 4.4 Frank L. Wright, Robie House, Chicago, 1908-1910, interior.

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To Giedion, the history of modern architecture involves a process of selection and omission. It demands a beginning and end, but also a transitory stage where moralities dictated by various sectors of an industrial society are expected to transform architecture, though to a limited degree (Hitchcock’s New Tradition?). The implied limitation is attributed to the remnants of the nineteenth-century European traditions. Wright, for example, “had less debris to clear away than Europeans.”102 On the other hand, that architecture is not an autonomous art to equal painting was consequential for Giedion’s historiography. To remove the garment of historical traditions from architecture’s corporeality, Giedion had, in the first instance, to think of architecture as an abstract entity to be redefined both formally and aesthetically, based on the achievements secured in engineering, and cubism in the second instance. This is clear from his decision to place an image of the corner of the workshop of the Bauhaus at Dessau (1926) opposite Picasso’s painting, L’Arlesienne (1911). The dates of the two works speak for themselves. The illustrations also represent the Bauhaus as an organic totality where the singularity of each metier is recognized in relation to another. These pages of the book disclose the supreme “reality” where painting, architecture, and industrial building techniques are expected to work together harmoniously. Furthermore, the theoretical underpinning of Giedion’s vision is informed by theories of organicism permeating the nineteenth century with a radical twist. According to Giedion, “new methods are new tools for the creation of new types of reality.” He continues, “the greater the degree of identity in respect to what is fundamental to each of the creative spheres, and the closer the extent of their approximation to one another in terms of achievements, the sooner will the requisites for a new phase of culture be forthcoming.”103 What is of most interest in organicism, however, is the drive for singularity and individuation without rejecting the totality of history. Caroline van Eck describes the significance of organicism for nineteenth-century architecture as presenting “a strategy of invention, by which stylistic decisions are made and justified, or as a strategy of interpretation, through which the meaning of architecture, and especially the architecture of the past, can be formulated.”104 The parallels Giedion draws between methods of construction and those of the work of art do not compromise the singularity of architecture with painting and/or with engineering. Rather they were intended to sustain “the organic development of our culture.”105 What this suggests is that history is a chain of successive period styles. This historicist approach to architectural history, besides imposing a closure on the situation when time (history?) is perceived as an organic entity, also imposes a closure on the possibility of

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diverse responses to the situation of modernity. To put it differently, for Giedion, a harmonic parallelism between modern architecture and modern society is essential for the Zeitgeist of modernity to prevail. Thus we understand the omission of architects like Aalto and Loos, mentioned earlier, mainly because their architecture did not fit into the formal and aesthetic closure imposed by the international style architecture. In Space, Time, and Architecture, Giedion not only remained faithful to the historicist vision of art history, he also tried to present elements of previous period styles as abstract entities, the only use of which is to support the historian’s reduction of modern architecture to a singular and totalized language. Giedion’s narrative is exemplar of a historiography that sees the past from the vantage point of a full-fledged scenario in which an idealised unity suppresses contradictions central to the utterances that each involved player of modernism delivered.

CHAPTER FIVE ADIEU ZEITGEIST!

What should we make of the discussion presented in the previous chapters? What should be the classificatory mode of a critical reading of the early historiography of modern architecture? For one thing, buildings and unbuilt projects are still central to the historical work even though the architect’s rapport with the historian has transformed since the post-war era. The nature of this change and its various dimensions is the subject of this chapter. One can claim that, because of its ties with capital, land, and technique, architecture in the second half of the previous century had to adjust its mode of realization to the ideological temperament of capitalism. What this says is that throughout history architecture has not been able (perhaps will never be able) to dissociate itself from its own disciplinarity, let alone the institutions that endorse and inform architecture’s historicism. Secondly, architecture’s historicity has always been essential to the work of historians. In making the past look familiar, the historian firstly has to take into account the actuality of the present. What should be added to this second point is that, in the aftermath of the Second World War, the paths of historicism traveled by architects and historians have ran parallel. Central to this parallelism was the discourse advanced by structuralism and post-structuralism, which resulted in the emergence of a sense of autonomy of narrative (Fredric Jameson calls it Theory) and which, paradoxically, informed and validated the historicity of both architecture and the historian’s interpretation of the work. This development was not available to the three historians discussed in the previous chapters. Never before, and not until the Giedion of 1941, had ideology operated at such a sophisticated level urging both architects and historians to devote themselves to the realization of the project of modernity. Both figures took the Zeitgeist for the immanent experience of the present, and tried to popularise its various facets across every artistic work. Still, never before had ideology saturated the life-world to such an extent that the public’s celebration of mass-culture, unfolding in the cosmopolitan cities of postwar Europe and America, was taken for a critique of modernism. Yes,

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never before, because the classical homology portrayed by labour, technique, and landscape was a unique historical phenomenon preventing architecture’s drive to establish its own linguistic autonomy, to recall one important facet of postmodernism. And yet, since the advent of the project of modernity nothing could remain the same, and the classical homology of making and thinking, techne, had to lose its currency as soon as architects felt they were historicizing their own work. With these historical observations having been established, then, it would be difficult to take seriously contemporary announcements such as “the death of author” or “the end of history,” to mention two that have been central to the formation of the theoretical work produced during the last decades of the twentieth-century. What these annunciations did accomplish was to map a situation through which the path to the future seemed fuzzy. This partial but fair account of postmodern conditions says enough for a need for a critical stance to be taken against the mainstream architecture produced during the last four decades, and the historians’ attempts to re-invent themselves anew. To historicize the argument presented here, it is necessary to discuss the historicism of the pre-war historiography of modern architecture as paralleling the present situation. In assuming that these two historical situations never crossed paths suggests a theoretical project that avoids periodising architecture in terms of “late modern,” “post-modern,” and “neo-modern.”1 It also suggests that there has been no point in time, the time of modernity, when a historian did not feel the need to set the beginning point of a particular architectural style, mapping its replacement by another. What most contemporary “isms” in architecture accomplish is to put a linear succession in order: to periodise, to distinguish a before and an after, to limit the risk of repetition, transformation or permutation, in the name of solidifying the ideology of progress. What the implied “enclosure” does is to emphasize the singularity, or the telescopic regime of modernity; to show that the schism between appearance and reality is inevitable; and to point out that technological nihilism is central to the permeation of stylistic nuances that have been constantly announced and theorized since the post-war era. If periodization is one subject to be addressed in this chapter, another is the importance given to abstract painting and its mediating role between the spirit of modernism and architecture. A third subject should concern the historian’s will to set a date, mark a point in time, and codify aesthetic or technical norms that modern architecture was expected to regard. These three themes will be discussed in this chapter to demonstrate the parallelism running between the architects’ practice and the historians’

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theorization of modern architecture throughout pre-war historiography. A parallel discussion of historicism is plotted to address the theme of autonomy permeating both architects’ and historians’ work since the 1960s. The latter would allow us to examine the reception of autonomy in critical historiography popularised by Kenneth Frampton and Manfredo Tafuri. To this end, Tafuri will be presented as the protagonist of “critical history,” and his difference from Frampton will be discussed at the end of this chapter. The discourse of critical history pursued here hinges on the idea of incompleteness of the project of modernity, initially noted during the 1930s, later to be formulated by Jurgen Habermas.2 This theoretical framework dispenses with postmodern eclecticism, allowing for a different interpretation of modernism in architecture.

Historicism I To discuss periodization, it is useful to recall the idea of closure observed in Pevsner’s narrative. What concerns the closure is not the publication date of the Pioneers of Modern Design (1936). Rather it involves Pevsner’s exploration of the period between William Morris and Walter Gropius, and his attributing the exhaustion of architecture’s modernism to the 1914 Werkbund debate. This underlined the significance of the dialectics of theory and practice for the debate put forward by Henry van de Velde and Hermann Muthesius in the context of Gropius’s design for the Fagus Factor (1914). Another result of this was that Pevsner established himself as the historian of the movement. In addition, Pevsner consolidated the dialectics of theory and practice as the ideological gist of modern architecture, a subject to be pursued by other historians. This analysis highlights the discrepancy between the date marking the closure suggested in Pevsner’s narrative, 1914, and the institutionalization of the idiom of the International Style Architecture, the 1932 MoMA exhibition.3 In establishing these dates we are interested to explore the theoretical implication for the critique of periodization presented in the following pages. What is missing in contemporary criticism of modern architecture can be summarised in the following: the closure noted in Pevsner’s text enabled the three functionaries of the project of modern architecture, that is, the concept of pioneers (avant-garde), the role of historian, and the idea of Zeitgeist to graft architecture’s future into the interiority (ideology?) of capitalism, which at the time was taken for “modernity.” What this means is that the ideological separation of appearance and reality was not available to the early modernists; and that the “new” was primarily

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recognized in its opposition to the immediate past, the old regime and its aristocratic cultural baggage. In modern times, Slavoj Žižek writes, “the truly New is not simply a new content but the very shift of perspective by means of which the Old appears in a new light.”4 Thus the collapse of the modernists’ vision of the future into the following three axioms central to the modernization of architecture: to differentiate architecture from the nineteenth-century historicism; to channel the nihilism of technology into the culture of building;5 and finally, to set a paradigm where art, architecture, and the city would constitute a homologous totality informed by the spirit of the time and its reproductive mechanism at least for the near future. The coming together of a diverse group of architects at the dawn of modernity was brought about because of the belief in architecture’s capacity to tally with the spirit of the time: meaning that, next to art and science, architecture could lead society towards a new horizon guided by technology itself, a major if not the sole manifestation of the Zeitgeist. If this reading is accepted, then, one can argue that the early historians of modern architecture did their best to exclude any force that might have slowed down the day-to-day progression of the processes of the modernization of architecture. The interpretive paradigm plotted so far is not dismissive of diverse tendencies operated within modern architecture. Instead, it wants to say that these tendencies were not historically in a position to break away from the ideological crust of modernism, in spite of challenges launched here and there against the monologue of the International Style Architecture. This is one reason that Russian Constructivism and Italian Futurism, for example, did not play a major role in the classificatory mode used by Pevsner, Henry-Russell Hitchcock, and Sigfried Giedion. Equally neglected, though for different reasons, were architects such as Adolf Loos, Alvar Aalto, and Frank L. Wright. Not until the 1960s, when the ideology of modernization was questioned, were the critics and historians able to analyse the work of these architects, and advance a critical position vis-àvis the project of modernity. Thus, and provisionally, we are able to recognize two main trends in the post-war historiography of architecture: one group with the idea of rewriting the history of modern architecture relied on the vision and ideologies of an architect or a particular tendency; the other opted for developing a critical stand against the very processes of the modernization of architecture. Bruno Zevi and Reyner Banham belong to the first group. Tafuri and Frampton to the second. The line separating the two groups is highlighted by Tafuri’s formulation of the concept of “operative criticism.”

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As the meeting point of history and planning, operative criticism “plans past history by projecting it towards the future.”6 Tafuri’s formulation targeted historians who coordinated their narratives with modern architects’ agenda. When this is established, then, one can expand the circle of the first group to include the three historians discussed in this volume. In an attempt to outdo Pevsner, Banham, according to Anthony Vidler, “offered the first scholarly assessment of modern architecture in a kind of continuation of Pevsner’s Pioneers.”7 Frampton and Tafuri instead have made a distinction between their criticism of capitalism and the postmodernists’ assaults on modern architecture. Tafuri’s position is significant because he was the first architectural historian to map the historicity of modern architecture within the problematic of the project of modernity, capitalism if you wish. Central to the discourse of critical history is the claim that architecture is incapable of conquering the “new” and that, much to the dismay of the historical avantgarde, architecture in modernity maintains a dualistic rapport with the nihilism of technology (technification of architecture)8 even when riding the track of progress. What this means is that there is a residue of auratic elements in architecture that, regardless of the good intentions of an architect, resists the full actualisation of the process of technification of architecture. Jacques Derrida reminds his readers that, “Down even to its archaic foundation the most fundamental concept of architecture has been constructed.” He continues, “This naturalized architecture is bequeathed to us… and we must recognize in it an artefact, a construction, a monument.”9 What one should make out of Derrida’s statement can be formulated in the following. Firstly, architecture’s production demands a conscious attempt on the part of the architect to give form to themes such as structure and space, and the tectonic of earth-work and frame-work, and this in consideration of the fact that “architecture has a history,” to recall Derrida, and in association with the latest available technologies and the laws governing the organization of labour and construction techniques. Secondly, unlike painting and other visual arts, architecture cannot entertain the full implication of what Walter Benjamin plotted in “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” essay. For Benjamin architecture provides a model of reception comparable to film where “the distracted mass absorbs the work of art.” This aspect of film, he continues, “is most obvious with regard to buildings. Architecture has always represented the prototype of a work of art, the reception of which is consummated by a collective in a state of distraction.” If the distraction Benjamin alludes to does relate to the everyday experience of the Metropolis, then, should not architecture resist this experience?

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Paradoxically, architecture has no choice but to emulate, if not internalise, some aspects of that very experience, which is tuned with the ideological temperament of capitalism.10 Tafuri, however, pushed the envelope of the above theorisation to its limits, suggesting that what makes the notion of crisis internal to architecture is History. To him, modern architecture’s disappointment with history was a phenomenon internal to architecture’s own historicity (discipline) starting with the Renaissance. Following Giulio Argan’s coupling of the architecture of L. Battista Alberti and Brunelleschi with the Renaissance,11 Tafuri saw nothing but disenchantment in any future attempt to renew form either through abstraction or the use of new techniques. He was convinced that these linguistic nuances were already experienced by the two above-mentioned Renaissance architects, with the theoretical consequences were registered in the historicity of architecture; and that architects’ tardy acknowledgement of this historicity speaks for its presence as the modernity’s unconscious. What then can architecture possibly accomplish if the art of building can neither be reproduced mechanically nor embrace the New fully? Both the question itself, and a plausible answer for it demand recalling Loos and the late Mies.12 Fundamental to these architects’ work is the concept of “repetition” understood as the fait accompli as far as architecture’s destiny in capitalism is concerned. Central to the repetition permeating their work is the repressed desire for the lost classical unity of making and meaning, without romanticising that loss. Reading the work of surrealists in the light of Sigmund Freud’s concept of the uncanny, Hal Foster has suggested that, “repetition occurs due to repression, in lieu of recollection.” This is important because, as will be discussed shortly, by the 1930s, avant-garde movements, Dada and Surrealism for example, were disenchanted with the slow manifestation of the domination of instrumental logic on the operative horizons available within the project of modernity.13 This is clear from Loos’s laconic observation that we do not need to invent a new chair unless our seating habit is changed! Repetition is also evident in the Mies of his American period where repetition of a particular tectonic figuration is usually mistaken for what is called neo-classicism (Fig. 5.1).14 If “repetition” was the strategy to tease out the power exercised by both instrumental logic and the ghost of the New, how then was the concept of repetition received in the work of critical historiography? To balance the nihilism implied in the practices of Mies and Loos, Tafuri shifted his attention to Le Corbusier.15 Frampton, on the other hand, zoomed in for the traces of the Neue Bauen in contemporary architecture in spite of his acknowledgement of the architectonic consequences of Mies’s

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Figure 5.1 Mies van der Rohe, 860 Lake Shore Drive Apartments, Chicago 194851, detail.

tectonic of “almost nothing.” Fundamental to the labour of these two historians is the desire to keep abreast of the project of modernity, rolling back avant-garde strategies and opening a critical platform. One consequence of this was to demonstrate the futility of any attempt to break away from the linguistics of repetition. Another paradox can be seen in the need to suspend historicism if one had to re-approach the homology that coordinates the work of the architect and that of the historian. In other words, critical historiography saw an appropriate strategy in the ideology of architecture just to highlight the disjunction between History and the promised utopias of modernism. Obviously, any theorization of architectural history was not immune to the idea of closure, one way or another. We should not only historicize the paradigm presented in this chapter, but also differentiate the idea of closure central to critical historiography and Pevsner’s narrative, for example. To this end attention should be given to the project of modernity, a historical phenomenon underlining, among other things, the centrality of the concept of closure for architectural history. What the prefix “project” means here is nothing but the inevitability of the modernization of architecture, the three main facets of which were noticed earlier. As such, the project provokes the idea that in modernity architecture cannot be

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architecture without submitting itself to the process of modernization. While this is implicit in almost all pre-war historiography, the importance these narratives assigned to technology and the ideological blank spot inherent in any formulation of a new style remained problematic. If this reading is accepted, then, two consequences seem inevitable: firstly, the tendency among historians to dismiss any inclination within modern architecture that would not submit to the linguistic norms of the International Style architecture; and secondly, that some time in the near future, 1951 to be specific, the return of classical compositional idioms, first in Rudolf Wittkower’s Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism (1949), and then, their theorization in Robert Venturi’s Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1961), shed light on the historicity of the suggested closure. While it seems Giedion comprehended the alleged closure in abstract terms as noted in his 1941 book, Pevsner is the historian who addressed the return of historicism in the architecture of the 1950s. Fundamental to the understanding of the nature of “closure” as subscribed to by Pevsner and Giedion is the question: should one conceive of the spirit of the time as a surface event without depth? The depth, as far as the history of modern architecture is concerned, involves material wealth and technique, and any intellectual work that attempts to theorize the processes of modernization of architecture. Therefore, what makes special the work of historians discussed in this volume involves the level of abstraction informing their formulation of the ways in which technology influenced the formation of aesthetics, spatial, and formal. That Pevsner noted the return of historicism first suggests a “weak” scheme of abstraction nesting in his understanding of the Zeitgeist. Giedion, instead, fetishized the effect of zeitgeist, elevating it to a self-generative entity.16 If these are plausible charges, then, where does Hitchcock stand in the matrix of abstraction and Zeitgeist? To answer this question, attention should be given to the exhibition of the International Style architecture, 1932. The date exposes the historicity of an event, the aftermath of which was consequential for architectural historiography. In other words, the date demonstrates aspects of the past of modern architecture, already envisioned in the early projects of Le Corbusier, the seeds of which were expected to grow in conjunction with the progression of the work of late-nineteenth-century engineers, a subject central to Giedion’s perception of modern architecture. One might argue that Hitchcock’s Modern Architecture (1929) was written in an ambience external to the historicity of the factors instrumental for the realization of the International Style architecture. While Hitchcock’s text also anticipates

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the pioneers of modern architecture, nevertheless, one cannot deny the essentiality of a backward looking eye lurking in his vision of history, and lamenting the passing of the New Tradition. Following the discussion presented in chapter three, it is correct to say that something of a geographic nature mediated Hitchcock’s experience of the Zeitgeist, a concept that originated in Europe. Central to this observation is Hitchcock’s intention to establish America’s contribution to the formation of modern architecture. The intellectual tradition of America did indeed foreshadow a perception of the country whose totality was seen as separate and different from that of Europe. It is plausible to argue that for Hitchcock, modernism, as theorized in Europe, was not a primary issue. This is evident from his emphasis on the mature work of H. H. Richardson, and the transitory nature of the New Tradition. One might go further and suggest that the formation of the New Tradition worked as the subconscious of the modern architecture Hitchcock wanted to narrate. Not only the genealogical dimension of the New Tradition (the America of the early last century), but the country’s specific experience of space and time, were central to an understanding of the role technology plays in modernization, less abstract than what is presented in the work of Pevsner and Giedion.17 The difference underlines the significance of technology in these two historians’ approaches to the Zeitgeist, and in the work of most European architects who were actively engaged in the formation of modern architectural discourse. The literature exploring the essentiality of technology for modern architecture is vast and needs no emphasis here.18 What should be addressed is the critique of technology permeating the work produced around 1932, the literature of which went mostly unnoticed by the early historians of modern architecture. What makes the dismissal important is the problematic nature of technology for the development of critical historiography. For one thing, the publication of André Breton’s essay, “Crisis of the Object” (1932), followed by Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” four years later, among other texts,19 expound a different approach to the question concerning technology, to recall “The Origin of the Work of Art” essay of Martin Heidegger written during the same decade (1936). These texts, according to Foster’s comprehensive treatment of the subject,20 opened a discourse for cultivating both the effects and affects of technology for critical ends. Obviously this was not the goal pursued by Pevsner, Hitchcock, and Giedion. Like most modernists, these historians underlined and praised technical developments.

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By the turn of the last century, the machine was considered an appropriate model for architecture to tie modernism to the instrumental logic of technology. What this means is that the process of the modernization of architecture involved a design concept that had to accommodate the industrial organization of labour and material; that the art of building had to emulate machine aesthetics; and that “function” was considered internal to the performance of machine and its products. It is not for no good reason that the historical path of the Neue Sachlichkeit is the common cord running through the text of the historians discussed in this manuscript. Thus, besides Loos, Wright, and Aalto, architects of the Art Nouveau and Expressionism had to be overlooked each for a different reason. As noted earlier, one should link the level of abstraction involved in each historian’s approach to the Zeitgeist with that of the historian’s valorisation of the architects whose work was considered not Sachlich enough. Only in this line of consideration can we see the historicity of the New Tradition in Hitchcock’s narrative. Still, the temporality separating Giedion’s text from those of Pevsner and Hitchcock speaks for Giedion’s conviction that architectural themes such as the “undulating wall” were of a transcendental nature. Specific to this is the attempt to elevate the ethos of modern architecture to an absolute level, and then secure in “history” a place for the dialectics of technology and the aesthetic of abstract painting. Obviously, the Giedion of 1941 did not see his task as pursuing a discursive economy where the Neue Sachlichkeit was the formative theme. This was a project already undertaken by Pevsner whose book is not inclusive either. And yet, he made room for architects and aesthetic tendencies omitted in Giedion’s text. In doing so Pevsner sustained the linear progression of the idea, Neue Sachlichkeit, towards its actualisation in the work of the pioneers of modern architecture. The fact that the title of Pevsner’s book carries the word Pioneers promises the fact that there is a space yet to conquer. That space was already conquered by the 1940s, and Giedion saw his main duty as historicizing modern architecture in the light of the Zeitgeist. Particular to Hitchcock’s Modern Architecture, instead, are themes and regional work (America, a major concern of his) essential for carrying architectural traditions towards its pioneering stage. In addition to technical matters, central to the mental life of Pevsner, Hitchcock, and Giedion were the visual and conceptual aspects of modern abstract painting. Instead of reiterating the relationship between painting and modern architecture,21 the discussion should centre on the economy of a discourse for which architecture’s modernism meant more than a technical turn. To this end it is useful to map the theoretical underpinning

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of modernism in the matrix of autonomy and the aesthetic of abstraction formulated by Kant.22 One might argue that the conceptual pair of autonomy/abstraction fuelled the engine of modernity, and that historians mistook for a mechanism to periodize architectural history its various manifestations unraveling since the eighteenth century. If history is an abstract move for the actualization of autonomy, that is, the Hegelian absolute, then, modern painting was in a better position to capture the visual implications of the dialectics of autonomy and abstraction. The importance given to painting in most accounts of the early historiography of modern architecture speaks for the centrality of the notion of economy for modernization. This is evident from the taxonomy of modern histories of architecture, most of which are primarily informed by technical achievements and the work of engineering. Paradoxically, one can claim that painting, an art form with weaker ties to capital and industrial techniques, had a better chance to internalise the pictorial dimension (image) of the concept of autonomy and the aesthetic of abstraction.23 And yet, the distance cubism maintained from techniques of pictorial imitation necessarily opened a conceptual space where the idea of construction emerged as the unifying element of modern art. Demonstrating the German contribution to the formation of modern architecture, Detlef Mertins recalls a series of theoretical developments unfolding in 1914. Of these, importance is given to Adolf Behne’s ideas on cubism, and their implications for Giedion’s emphasis on construction and the need to juxtapose technique with expression. Mertins makes a case for mapping a different understanding of “transparency,” which, he maintained, was mistaken by Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky’s criticism of Giedion.24 If there is any merit in putting Le Corbusier at the centre of any discussion that concerns the relationship between architecture and abstract painting, it relates to the French architect’s conscious attempt to juxtapose technique, that is, the Dom-ino frame, with the aesthetics of Purist painting. Not only did Purism differ from Cubism aesthetically,25 the very absence of excess (ornamentation) in the early villas of Le Corbusier says more about the nature of objectivity invested in his work than about the matter-of-factness advocated by some circles of the Bauhaus. The difference speaks for the historical take underpinning the narrative of Giedion from that of Pevsner. In what ways then did modern painting infuse into the pre-war historiography of modern architecture? To answer this it is useful to address the following two points. Firstly, modern painting enjoyed a sense of visuality, the economy of which was informed by the idea of abstraction

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understood as a tendency to simplify form, and to expedite the aesthetic search for the banishment of ornament. Secondly, the idea of abstraction was endemic to the detachment of the object from its context and referent, two factors central to the realist painting. According to Fredric Jameson, “the autonomy of aesthetic is not secured by separating the aesthetic from real life of which Kant showed it was never a part in the first place. Rather, it is the radical disjunction and separation of literature and art from culture.”26 The early historiography of modern architecture benefited from the spatial and aesthetic implications of abstract painting, though the concept of autonomy essential to art history remained unnoticed. In fact it was not theorised at all. Only in recent times have contemporary critics and historians made a conscious attempt to address autonomy. Jameson has taken up the subject to make two points with critical implications for any re-writing of the period that concerns this manuscript: firstly, the idea that “modernism” is an American phenomenon; and secondly, to present a belated endorsement of Jurgen Habermas’s proposition concerning the incompleteness of the project of modernity. According to Jameson, “the vibrant modernism of the 1920s was “abruptly cut short around the same time in the early 1930s.”27 Jameson might not agree with this, but his proposition says what is claimed here: that during the early decades of the last century the distinction between Modernity and capitalism was unavailable. To explore this transformation and the changes the notion of autonomy instigated in the historiography of architecture, the discussion should now turn to the post-war situation when the collaborative dialogue between architects and historians broke down.

Historicism II It has been more than forty years since Clement Greenberg formulated a critique of art that was centred on the two concepts of autonomy and abstraction. His discourse was overshadowed by the 1950s’ interest in civic architecture and monumentality. Nevertheless, it did not take long for the conceptual pair of autonomy/abstraction to infiltrate into the mainstream of architectural discourse. Without the infusion of the concept of autonomy into architectural theory and history/criticism, it would have made no sense to claim for the end of history, to formulate a critical approach to history, let alone Hal Foster’s recent appropriation of autonomy as a strategic position to resist the aesthetic implications of the commodification permeating contemporary design and the life-world.28 Any discussion concerning these issues should principally address the significance of the concept of autonomy for modernity. When this is

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established, then one can explore the import of autonomy and map a different approach to architectural history.29 The slash sitting between history/criticism suggests that never before the advent of the theories of structuralism and post-structuralism was history considered critical, or was criticism formulated historically.30 Writing in late 1930s, Greenberg suggested that, in order to isolate itself from the imperatives of the market economy and the revolutionary fever brewing in the Soviet Union, the avant-garde had to navigate in a realm devoid of contradiction. In search for art’s purity, Greenberg speculated that the avant-garde “arrived at abstract or non-objective art.” 31 The aesthetic implication of the concept of abstract art should be underlined here. As Greenberg reminds his reader, it alludes to the tendency for autonomy and a turn for the “disciplines and crafts, absolutely autonomous, entitled to respect for their own sakes, and not merely as vessels of communication.”32 In making the point that in a given situation diverse artistic tendencies operate simultaneously, Greenberg benefited from aesthetics as implied in the Kantian concept of autonomy. One important consequence of this was to claim that each art has its own specific medium, the opacity of which should be emphasized. He wrote, “the history of avant-garde painting is that of a progressive surrender to the resistance of its medium; which resistance consists chiefly in the flat picture plane’s denial of efforts to ‘hole through’ it for realistic perspectival space.”33 This is a provocative statement even though Greenberg’s understanding of “functionalism” as the medium of architecture is shortsighted. Now, after T. J. Clark’s reading of Greenberg,34 one should ask if is it possible to emulate the “opacity” of art independent of its historical context. Clark’s criticism is important considering the fact that the very recognition of “flatness,” a major internal theme for painting, was in part due to the tension arising between art and capitalism in the years between 1860 and 1918. Clark’s reading wants to solidify the dialectics of autonomy and negation as advanced by dada and surrealism, whose work for Greenberg presented nothing but mere “noise.”35 In the essay titled “Modernist Painting”, however, Greenberg stated that the essence of modernism demands using “the characteristic methods of a discipline to criticise the discipline itself, not in order to subvert it, but in order to strengthen it more firmly in its area of competence.”36 What should be underlined here is the historicity of the argument formulated by these two critics. Greenberg was writing at a time when there was still hope that art would take care of what it had achieved throughout history, and become integrated into everyday life. Writing after the demise of the project of

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modernity, Clark instead aimed for art to internalise the devaluation of all values central to the nihilism of technology, albeit using disciplinary media. Obviously, Greenberg's theory of art was primarily concerned with the state of modern painting. The only way to sustain architecture's “opacity,” on the other hand, is to highlight its rapport with techniques, the primary intention of which is to break into that opacity. The implied paradox is central to the dialectics involved in architecture's relationship with its own conditions of production. It also says something about critical praxis: the way architecture should or might stand against the prevailing formal and aesthetic conventions. After Greenberg, and in the context of the 1970s’ linguistic theories, it is possible to suggest that contemporary neo-avantgarde theories disclose a renewed sense that architecture could move towards autonomy. Concerning the historicity of autonomy, the discussion should one more time recall Kant’s formalization of the project of Enlightenment, and his reflection on aesthetic theory.37 That around the end of the eighteenth century the subject for the first time was able to gain autonomy from the metaphysical world was consequential for any reiteration of values pertinent to morality, ethics, and aesthetics. According to Andrew Bowie, “aesthetic theory from Kant onwards faces the problem of finding a whole into which the particular can fit in a meaningful way, once theoretical certainties have been abandoned.”38 And Jameson writes, “Kant’s aesthetics freed art from feudal decoration and positioned a new bourgeois art to carry Utopian and, later, modernist values.” To him it is “a historical mistake to reappropriate the Kantian system for an anti-political and purely aestheticizing late modernist ideology.” Jameson continues, “The autonomy of aesthetic is not secured by separating the aesthetic from real life of which Kant showed it was never a part in the first place. Rather, it is achieved by a radical dissociation within the aesthetic itself: by the radical disjunction and separation of literature and art from culture.”39 How did this historical unfolding work for architecture? The architectonic implications of Kant’s discourse on autonomy can be summarized in the following two points. Firstly, during the eighteenth century, architecture enjoyed a momentary independence from the classical wisdom, which soon had to give in to the imperatives imposed by the production and consumption cycles of capitalism. The idea that capitalism imposes a different set of values will be taken by contemporary thinkers to demonstrate that in modernity architecture has limited options. Here is what Mark Jarzombek has to say on this subject: for Hegel, “modernity-as-history of Spirit becomes ever more metaphysically

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apparent, leaving architecture to become ever more entangled in the web of philosophy's cunning. For Heidegger, modernity-as-history is nothing more than background noise with architecture just another element in the inevitable downward slide.”40 The suggested departure was not immune to the contradictions modern architecture had to face in the course of its future development.41 Secondly, architecture’s rupture from its own history and its ensuing entanglement with modernity were instrumental in creating the profusion of architectural operations and the formulation of utopian theories, the anguish of which is better understood when seen in the light of traditions specific to architecture, that is, the artisanal dimension of building, and tropes that are “internal” to architecture—the disciplinary history of architecture. One architectonic implication of the development summarised here was the need to shift from the façade to that of the plan. Another was Le Corbusier’s emphasis on volume as opposed to mass. And yet, the organizing grid of the plan could not but play a double function. According to Hubert Damisch, “the grid, both regulatory and generative, testifies posteriori to the universal pretentiousness of autonomous architecture.”42 Finally, if codified in the historicity of the 1789 revolution,43 the suggested rupture allowed for introducing criticism into historiography, a project which tells “something new about architecture’s ‘tragic destiny’—its ill-fated, at times heroic, attempt to acquire autonomy in the complex (often irrational) web of social reality.”44 Before examining these issues further, the discussion should turn to the aesthetic aspect of the historicity of autonomy in architecture. The aesthetic inclination for the picturesque and the sublime, for example, should have had something to do with the eighteenth century’s rupture with the classical wisdom, and therefore we have the possibility to contemplate nature as an entity of values internal to its own cycles of birth and decay. Kant, for one, sought “a basis for artistic understanding within a mental realm that imparts unified artistic understanding to the perception of appearances and change in nature.”45 Furthermore, the sublime, as formulated by Edmund Burke aimed,46 in the first place, to theorize the aesthetic expression of the anxieties generated by the same historical rupture which, in the second instance, had to be domesticated in the design of gardens,47 and/or associated with the aesthetic qualities of the work of “revolutionary architects,” a term coined by Emil Kaufmann.48 Even though Étienne-Louis Boulleè neither used classical vocabulary in the Newton's Cenotaph, nor imbued the building with a decorous delight, the design’s bold geometry and its sublime beauty is not enough for framing this project in terms proper to a contemporary understanding of autonomy.

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This means that the rupture contemporary critics have attributed to the eighteenth-century French architecture is nothing but a theoretical conjecture between Foucauldian historicism and contemporary interpretation of autonomy. Discussing Kaufmann’s understanding of autonomy, and the author’s debt to Kant, Mertins notes that Ledoux’s inability to “discharge the heteronomous once and for all, was symptomatic of the formless infinite encountered at the dynamic limits of progressive mathematization— a necessarily incomplete and contingent hermeneutic circling around the mystery of reason striving, yet unable, to achieve transparency unto itself.” He goes further, suggesting that the same aporia haunt Giedion’s vision of modern architecture in conjunction with the historian’s sympathetic approach to the avant-garde’s struggle to “resolve the opposition between freedom and system.”49 At this point, it is useful to recall the concept of singularity that in opposition to the uniform juxtaposition of an orderly building with landscape, as Burke suggested,50 demanded magnitude, greatness of dimension, and geometric clarity of the kind exemplified in the work of Boulleé. In addition, the vision postulated by the revolutionary architects defined “character” of a building in reference to function, and in association with the sublime beauty of absolute geometry. Mention should also be made of the conceptual void felt after the suspension of the classical Orders. The suggested void posited radical postulates for any theorization of nature and artifacts. It also necessitated, as far as the wisdom of the Enlightenment is concerned, seeing the object as an entity in-itself.51 Still, the void popularised a different perception of “order”, one capable of controlling the relationship between parts and the whole of an object. One can agree here with Ernst Cassirer that in the mental life of the enlightenment “the part not only exists within the whole but asserts itself against it, constituting a specific element of individuality and necessity.”52 These developments influenced architectural discourse in two major ways. They opened a horizon where the future generation of architects could interpret Greenberg’s concern for formal autonomy and disciplinary technique in the purview of linguistic theories of the 1970s. Secondly, they made possible the insinuation of a concept of closure that would be appropriated by critical history, if only to disclose the problematic of the modern project rather than using it as a periodization tool. For no good reason then, Piranesi’s prison engravings and Boullee’s geometric monumentality became important research subjects for both historians and architects who emulated the idea of autonomy in the 1970s.53 Mention should also be made of the1975 international seminar held in Venice, during which many contemporary architects, including

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Peter Eisenman and John Hejduk, presented projects in response to Aldo Rossi’s book The Architecture of the City, published five years earlier. The aim was to explore the place of architecture in the commercialized cities of the post-war era, to investigate “the nature of architecture and its relationship to other forms of technical and scientific knowledge, and … put forward the notion that architecture could represent itself as an autonomous and independent discipline.”54 Most architects attending the gathering discussed autonomy as a strategic concept for avoiding that aspect of the experience of modern architecture that, in one way or another, was motivated by socio-political or functionalist agenda. Thus, to save itself from the exigencies of capitalism, architecture in the 1970s had to turn to its disciplinarity. The Tendenza group in Italy, for example, discussed architecture in terms of typological and morphological norms. Here is how Massimo Scolari spoke of the group in 1973: The new architecture’s ‘renunciation’ is actually a full historical awareness…. For the Tendenza, architecture is a cognitive process that in and of itself, in the acknowledgement of its own autonomy, is today necessitating a refounding of the discipline; that refuses interdisciplinary solutions to its own crisis; that does not pursue and immerse itself in political, economic, social, and technological events… but rather desires to understand them so as to be able to intervene in them with lucidity.55

In contrast to the tendency to amalgamate scientific discoveries with post-war new-empiricism, Rossi’s book wanted to present the thematic of a critical practice, focusing on those aspects of architecture that seemed immune, if not peripheral to the demands of mass-culture and the suburbanization of landscape, to mention two vectors central to the situation in the States where a different account of autonomy was put forward by the New York Five architects. Among the Five, Eisenman’s work is central to a comprehensive understanding of the 1970s’ quest for autonomy. The concept of autonomy Eisenman subscribed to was in part a derivative of the writing of Rossi and Robert Venturi. Differentiating his understanding of the concept of autonomy from these two architects, but also from that of Tafuri, Eisenman claimed that in postmodernity, architecture’s interiority designates “the idea of a continuing language of architecture, which in a sense exists outside of and thus autonomously of any style, whether that style be classicism or modernism.” According to him, “critical work exists in some form of an internal time, or what will be called here an autonomous time, which is embedded within the history of architectural discourse.”56 Eisenman underlined the singularity of architecture’s disciplinarity compared to that of painting and other arts.

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This is not the place to present a detailed discussion of the architectonic implications of autonomy for architects who contributed to the architectural discourse of the 1970s. Suffice it to say that the three major architectural discourses emerging during the 1970s, formalism, typology, and tectonics, the latter as discussed in Frampton’s Critical Regionalism, represent moments that, according to Greenberg, intended to demonstrate “a progressive surrender to the resistance”57 of architecture’s medium. What should be further highlighted is the following: that it was common practice among radical architects of the late 1970s to theorize their design, and to set a premise for understanding and criticism that is in agreement with the architect’s own selective attendance to the ideas developed in cultural theories. It is very difficult, for instance, to fully understand and criticise Eisenman’s architecture without first reading his theorisation of architecture. Secondly, having found them in a checkmate situation, the historians either tended to re-think the critical consequences of their disciplinary “closure,” or else, to subscribe to Theory that, ironically, declared the end of history.

Coda The following pages will focus on the implications of the historicity of autonomy and disciplinarity for the historiography advanced by Tafuri and Frampton respectively. This is not to underestimate other historians and critics whose work might equally be considered “critical”, at least as far as the state of contemporary architecture is concerned. Rather, the intention is to limit the discussion to two historians who have been associated with the literature central to the formation of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. To explore the historicity of the concept of autonomy for critical history, the following discussion will mainly focus on Tafuri’s “Historical Project,” and Frampton’s “Place, Production and Architecture,” two texts essential to the oeuvre of each historian. What makes these two figures important, however, is the difference between their approaches to architectural praxis. Tafuri attempted to explain the problematic of the project of modernity, exploring the work of architects who endeavoured to retain architecture’s autonomy in spite of an anticipated failure. Frampton, instead, highlights marginal victories that were/are able to preserve aspects of “place making,” as the instrumental reason tightens its grip on architecture. In different ways, the two historians remain critical of the marriage between autonomy and the Zeitgeist evident in the avant-garde’s esteem for the New. Their differences, however, relate to the fact that Tafuri’s narrative is centred on

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the historicity of the separation of the historian’s task from that of the architect. To him, the architect should design and build regardless of the historian’s attempt to unpack the immanent gap between form and meaning as far as the nihilism of modernity is concerned. Interestingly, the developmental process of Tafuri’s methodology is hinged on his own early research as an architect. For Tafuri, the analysis of a work was never an end in itself. He saw the work “as containing a historiographical problem,” modern or otherwise.58 Frampton’s methodology, on the other hand, enjoys a strategic doubling: in analysing a building, he seeks the traces by which the architect has come to an architectonic solution vis-à-vis the given constraints, including those induced by the project of modernity.59 The fabricated analogue, itself a familiar experience for any architect, is immediately influenced by Frampton’s commitment to the thematic of a semi-autonomous theory of architecture. What concern Frampton the most are constrains internal to the discipline, and yet their contemporary resolutions are not seen as independent of the present state of the crisis of architecture. In addition, the challenge posed by critical history is the deconstruction of the given situation while submitting the analysis to both the disciplinary claims of the past and the nihilism of technology. Questioning the institutionalisation of the division of labour, critical history sees the architect as the sole critic of the work. The implied paradox is of importance today when intellectual labour either seeks refuge in all kinds of refined theories of “closure,” or takes a free ride in the amnesia offered by the spectacle of late capitalism. This development probes a state of autonomy wherein architecture is seen as independent of the historicity of classicism and modernism.60 Obviously the notion of contemporaneity has posited a new set of questions, attending to which does not necessarily mean the “end of critical.”61 Echoing the “end of history” declaration, most critics claiming the end of critical do indeed endorse the notion of closure, even though implied in “contemporaneity” is a sense of euphoria concerning a subject presumably floating in a constellation detached from History.62

I Tafuri wrote the “Historical Project” in the 1970s amid the proliferation of semiotics, and postmodern simulation of historical forms. The essay was also written in reference to the intellectual atmosphere of the decade.63 In this regard, mention should be made of Michel Foucault’s discourse on genealogy, and its presentation of an approach to history that dispenses

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with the myth of the origin, thus departing from the linear progression of history.64 Roland Barthes’s discourse should be mentioned too. Tafuri took note of Barthes’s criticism of those who reduced the genesis of a text to the ideology of a particular class rather than advance an ideological criticism of a text. In the “Pleasure of the Text”, Barthes searched for what is called the “system of ambiguity” of a text in reference to Tafuri’s formulation of the “operative criticism.” Of further interest are Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud, two thinkers whose work on “genealogy” and “delirious interpretation” were of interest to Tafuri. From Nietzsche, but through the pen of Massimo Cacciari, Tafuri was able to distance himself from a historiography that dwells on truth. Tafuri approached historical knowledge as a strategy to cut through presumed coherent totality. From Freud, Tafuri borrowed the idea of constant interpretation of an “event”, not in order to heal the scars left by it, but fundamentally to demonstrate the failure of the writing of such an analytical text. Most important for Tafuri was the work of Italian historian, Carlo Ginzburg, who in The Cheese and the Worms (1976) demonstrated the multiplicity of linguistic sources of knowledge; the way in which the reiteration of that knowledge is simultaneously conveyed by the subject’s experience within a given class; and the fluidity of knowledge beyond class barriers. These developments armed Tafuri with a different understanding of history, one that is “objective” historically, wherein language plays a central role. Anthony Vidler goes further suggesting that this language which “is in turn ‘history’ as constructed by society, might well be seen as the intellectual premise of Tafuri’s formal analysis of architecture for the rest of his career.”65 For Tafuri, the fragmentation of architecture into many languages was associated in part with eighteenth-century architecture when, for the first time, at least in the western world, the homologies, or to put it in Foucauldian terms, the similitude between cultural artifacts and the divine forces, were broken apart. The autonomy that architecture enjoyed during the same period, and which is usually associated with “the revolutionary architects,” did not last long. Architecture eventually had to give lip service to the multifarious exchanges and multiplicity of languages prevailing in the Metropolis. Since then, according to Tafuri, the efforts made by the historians of modern architecture to re-glue the broken totality that existed in the pre-modern world had been in vain. Tafuri was also sceptical of any alternative totalities proposed in reference to the Zeitgeist of modernity, and the utopic visions inspired by the technological world. Still, for the critical history, architecture’s departure from the classical wisdom marked an exceptional event, something similar to

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Freud’s idea of the primal scene. Whereas most historians mark the beginning of modern times by the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, or the advent of the Industrial Revolution of the mid-nineteenth-century, Tafuri saw the historical break as having already taken place during the Renaissance.66 And yet, the work of the eighteenth-century architects triggered a scare in the body of architectural knowledge whose interpretation and reinterpretation is considered to be the main task of the historian. Moreover, to produce knowledge out of the disciplinary tradition of architecture, one should fold back the suggested historical knowledge into history. In Tafuri’s words: “By taking apart a work of Alberti, for instance, I can illuminate the foundations of bourgeois intellectual ethics in formation, the crisis of humanist historicism, the structure of fifteenth century’s world of symbolism, the structure of a particular patronage system, the consolidation of a new division of labour in the building trades.”67 Two important issues should be raised here. Firstly, the fragmentary and multiple languages Tafuri enumerated were not attainable to the architects practising during the same period, that is, the Renaissance. The time separating the now-present from the past is thick, even though buildings and written texts might survive their time of inception. However, the subject (historian) attends these remnants of history with the anguish and contradictions essential to the formation of the mental life of the historian. Secondly, folding back the nihilism of modernity into architectural history, Tafuri was able to produce a different knowledge of Leon Battista Alberti’s work. For example, we are reminded of the ways which this Renaissance architect was prepared to adopt the following antinomy; that the technology “which alleviates human suffering, is at the same time an implacable instrument of violence.”68 In addition, Tafuri’s discourse evolved from criticism of those historians who camouflaged contradictions caused by competing interests internal to the production of architecture, and thus, imagining false pictures of a new totality that might never had existed in the first place.69 The second feature of architecture’s departure from the classical wisdom relates to the way in which Tafuri starts and ends his text, that is, with the jigsaw puzzle. The idea is borrowed from Ginzburg, and is also implied in Walter Benjamin’s discourse on history. Speaking of the relationship between the structure of power and the reading of historical facts, Ginzburg criticized Foucault and the historians who relied too much on relativism. Archival research is not intended as a search for the “truth.” Rather, it searches for the nuances of truth. Grinzburg recalls Benjamin’s suggestion that “one has to learn to read the evidence against the grain,

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against the intentions of those who had produced it.”70 Obviously, Benjamin is important for Tafuri in many ways including the thinker’s idea of montage. The fragmented and productive capacity of the building industry, and the latter’s separation from the industries producing objects of applied arts—as occurred during the period of reconstruction in Italy— created a situation where the ideological program of design became utopian.71 Hence, we see architecture's futile and cyclic renewal through self-destruction and the periodic ruptures taking place in capitalism; and, in turn, Tafuri's own periodic shift towards intermingling the available theories, and checking his own vision of history. In so doing, Tafuri wanted to save the importance of history for architecture, and to demonstrate the inevitable affliction of the intellectual work by the anguish released through architecture's departure from the classical wisdom. Benjamin is mentioned twice in Tafuri’s “Historical Project,” the first time in reference to Benjamin’s short essay “The Author as Producer,” and the second time in reference to Benjamin’s discourse on the loss of aura, and Theodor Adorno’s criticism of Benjamin. The following statement from Benjamin’s first article sets a point of departure for Ginzburg who sees the horizon of knowledge simultaneously within and beyond class boundaries. Speaking of social conditions and their relation to the conditions of production, Benjamin wrote, “instead of asking what is the attitude of a work to the relationship of production of its time,…, I should like to propose another. ‘What is its position in them?’”72 Tafuri implemented this idea in the context of the debate running within the Italian left, arguing for a semi-autonomous understanding of architecture. Pier Vittorio Aureli has recently discussed the architectonic implications of an autonomy that wanted to reverse the interests of working class people as defined and implemented by capitalism. For Rossi, for example, “the possibility of autonomy occurred as a possibility of theory; of the reconstruction of the political, social, and cultural significances of urban phenomena divorced from any technocratic determinism.”73 While in the late 1960s the ideological dimension of capitalism found a temporary home in the renewed interest in humanism, Rossi sought a poiesis of architecture through typological reinvention—a zero degree form, if you wish.74 Tafuri found in Rossi an exemplar for his idea of experimental work, advancing architectural knowledge without aligning it to the incentives of capitalism. According to Tafuri, within the capitalist system, architectural production is engaged in two kinds of labour, intellectual and abstract. While the first deals with “the autonomy of linguistic choices and their

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historical function as a specific chapter in the history of intellectual labour and its mode of reception,” the other “must be fitted to the general history of the structures and relations of production.”75 One might take Tafuri’s position for a modified version of the orthodox Marxist articulation of the way the “base” and the “superstructure” relate to each other. On closer inspection, however, one sees more: Tafuri was asking for an intellectual work that does not develop from outside but evolves from within through the “effects of continued capitalist production or participating in its reification.”76 Tafuri was not concerned with architecture’s literal relations with the forces of production, seen from a deterministic point of view, or else, projecting architecture as the expression of a given economic structure. Like Benjamin, Tafuri was concerned with the position of architecture within the relationship between production and the specificity of the work in entertaining available techniques. But what is the function of the word position here? And moreover, what is the subject matter of architecture’s position within a given production system? Tafuri reminds his readers that, in analysing a work of architecture, the task of the historian is to show how the work fails to remedy its distance from the forces of production. The historian should also address the unattainability of coherent unity of the kind implied in Foucault’s discourse on resemblance through which architecture relates to the divine forces prevailing in the humanist culture of the Renaissance. “To look for fullness, an absolute coherence in the interaction of the techniques of domination,” Tafuri wrote, “is to accept the mask with which the past presents itself.”77 Instead of showing how architecture expresses or is part of the Zeitgeist of modernity, as Giedion did for example, one has to first cut through the stone of certainties established by historicism. Moreover, in order to achieve the suggested cut a historian should take into consideration the historicity of his/her own writing, that is, the historic space of the now of the present. Are we not now, then, revisiting the idea of “delirious interpretation,” a state of unresolved dialectics, kernel of “critical history”? The idea of linguistic autonomy implied in Tafuri’s reading is not a green light to formalism. Even Tafuri’s fascination with the work of the New York Five architects was not for the formal merits of the work. Rather, he was enchanted with the work’s capacity to disclose strategies (intellectual labour?) available during late capitalism.78 Carlo Olmo reminds us that the autonomy resides in the uniqueness of the work as a document,79 the architectonic language of which demonstrates the gap between intellectual labour and the forces of production. Benjamin had reached the same conclusion although he approached the subject from a

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different angle. For Benjamin, it is the impact of modern technology and the mechanization of the production process that trigger the aura, making possible a different expression and communication of the work of art. Furthermore, Benjamin was less interested in the relative autonomy of architecture from the classical language. The experience of film and its appropriation by the masses, fragmentation achieved through montage, and finally, the exhibition value of the work of art, entitled Benjamin to reflect on architecture in terms of building’s appropriation through habit and tactile qualities, even though he believed that old habits would inevitability be adopted for the exhibition value of the work of art. Tafuri, instead, was more concerned with the multiplicity of languages articulated by various power structures that directly or indirectly interact with the process of architectural production. Still, Benjamin sees architecture from the point of view of the art historians’ tradition sealed by Heinrich Wölfflin and Alois Riegl. Tafuri, instead, attended Foucault’s discourse to distance himself from the structuralist understanding of history. According to Tafuri, “if structuralism in any of its guises has some contribution to make towards an accurate program of architectural historiography, it is precisely in its capacity to propose meaningful historical relationships, at least as critical instruments of an initial approximational value.”80 Thus, we see Tafuri’s differentiation between autonomy of architecture, a phenomenon exercised by the architects of the 1970s, and the concept of semi-autonomy central to critical theory’s understanding of architecture’s destiny in modernity. Unique to Tafuri is an attempt to use the latest available theories developed in other fields, and to reiterate the historicity of the crisis of architecture and its operative mechanism in capitalism. He wrote, “the current historical habitus does not differ considerably from others that have determined twentieth-century aesthetic choices; in fact, it reproduces the familiar compulsion to overcome the dominant order.”81 Tafuri reassessed the nature of the implied closure constantly through available cultural discourses and strategies used by architects. In doing so, Tafuri departed from Benjamin’s formulation of the historicity of the crisis of modernity associated with the loss of aura. Similar to psychological traumas casting a gloom upon a person’s mental life, Tafuri saw a number of turning points in History each with enduring impact on architecture. Jameson is right to claim that “intellectual innovation—not merely the invention of new solutions but, even more, the replacement of old problems with new ones” is a Marxian conviction Tafuri defended to his death.82 Only in this way can one avoid periodisation and its related closure, that is to say, the intellectual source of constant production and

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reproduction of theories that aim to fetishize contradictions internal to capitalism’s move from one state of crisis to another.

II Looking from a different angle, one can suggest that the common cord running through the work of Tafuri and Frampton involves a vision of history that suspends categories of art history, including the idea of origin, the drive to constitute stylistic unities, and the attribution of success or failure of the work solely to the architect. These two historians, however, share the view that the analytical scope of a project should not confine itself to a formalistic interpretation of the work.83 The quest for formal autonomy should highlight the ways in which the work is fundamentally inflected by modernity. Thus we see the specific strategic choices of each to influence the historiographic narrative. Of these, will now be discussed Frampton’s approach to the historicity of modernism. This allows for a different interpretation of semi-autonomy in architecture, one where historical abstractions are balanced with a concrete analysis of an architect’s work. To fully understand the connotation of critical in Frampton’s historiography, it is useful to turn to his essay, “Place, Production, and Architecture,” which attends to Frampton’s objectives in the third section of his Modern Architecture (1980). The essay demonstrates the historicity of the concept of autonomy in his writing.84 It not only embodies themes formative to Frampton’s oeuvre, it also presents the framework for what, in two years time, would be titled “Prospects for a Critical Regionalism.” Frampton’s position concerns the complexities involved in conjugating architecture with the existential situation of humanity, and thus we see the significance of architecture’s engagement with the construction of the conditions of life – to allude to Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition (1958), a book that has influenced Frampton’s discourse more than any other.85 And yet, it ought to be asked, what is involved in discussing architecture in relation to the human conditions of modern times? In the first place, we are reminded of the disintegration of the craftbased traditions of architecture as the art of building encounters with modern technology. The drive for modernization also dematerialised the homologies once sustainable between the body, language and landscape. Gone also is what Arendt called the excess of labour when the latter was not yet fully absorbed into the production and consumption cycles of capitalism.86 Central to Frampton’s history of modern architecture, however, are dichotomies such as tradition and innovation, metier and

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technology, but also site and material. Frampton reads these dichotomies through Benjamin’s discussion of the loss of aura and Heidegger’s text on dwelling. In Critical History, Benjamin occurs twice and Heidegger once. Quotations from Benjamin’s famous essays “Thesis on the Philosophy of History” (1940), and “Paris Capital of the 19th Century” (1930) inform the introductory text to the book and the last chapter of the first part. Heidegger, instead, is chosen for the final chapter of the 1980 edition of the book. The juxtaposition of these two thinkers for the opening and closing of the book can be the subject of an important inquiry, aspects of which are discussed below. Frampton’s readings entail the loss of unity between architecture and place, and the historical impossibility of retaining such a unity even through the mechanical reproduction of the object. If, for Benjamin, the mechanical reproduction of the work destroyed the unity once existing between architecture and place, for Heidegger, the recollection of the thematic of that bygone unity provides a strategy for problematising the myth of progress. While for Heidegger the metaphysical content of technology should be utilised to critique the instrumental logic of modern technology, Benjamin was instead interested in the ways that technology induces images (lingering in a person’s subconscious) alluding to some aspects of a mythical prehistory. Still, whereas Benjamin highlights the potential of technology to cleanse architecture from any metaphysics, the Heidegger of Building Dwelling and Thinking recalls the archaic task of architecture to set up “spectacles” that would exhibit the many phenomenological aspects of the body’s engagement with place. To clarify the association between Heidegger and Benjamin, and to show how it works through Frampton’s text, we should recall the “bridge” analogue discussed in Heidegger’s 1954 essay. Heidegger presents the bridge as a work with the potentiality to amalgamate technique and material with purpose. Furthermore, Heidegger’s bridge has the capacity to evoke the sense of “nearness” as it keeps the banks of the river apart.87 Thus, Frampton’s quest for the “inflection of a chosen tectonic that penetrates the innermost recesses of the structure, not as a totalizing force but as declension of an articulate sensibility.”88 Notable in this statement are the seeds of “Critical Regionalism,” a theory willing to engage the process of commodification of the life-world, resisting any pressure, historical or otherwise, that would rekindle sentimental or nostalgic rejection of modern technology. This, one can argue, was to reinterpret the connection Pevsner had made between the Arts and Crafts achievements and those of the Pioneers, and to reformulate Hitchcock’s New Tradition.

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In both rapprochements a Marxist interpretation of history is what differentiates Frampton’s historiography from the other two. Nevertheless, it is the distinction between Benjamin and Heidegger’s interpretations of the loss of aura and Frampton’s inclination for Heidegger’s reflections on Raum and the loss of “nearness” which leads him to maintain the following: that different regions should retain their identity independent of the contradictions underpinning the dialogical dependence between modernity and capitalism. This expresses the paradox involved in Frampton’s position: that in order to exert its autonomy, architecture has to stand against its context, the hegemonic aspects of the culture of modernism, in general, and to distance the art of building from the simulacra permeating postmodern historicism of the 1980s. It seems that, at the time of the first edition of the Critical History, Alvar Aalto was one of the few architects89 whose work could fulfill Frampton’s hope for reconciling the Miesian “obsession” with technology, and a work that is “patently visible and often takes a form of masonry enclosure that establishes within its limited monastic domain a reasonably open but nonetheless concrete set of relationships linking man to man and man to nature.”90 This statement unpacks the paradox involved between Benjamin’s and Heidegger’s positions on technology, and the subject’s implications for Frampton’s historiography of modern architecture. The second dimension of the earlier suggested paradox could be stated in the following: that in modernity, every human product is at the stage of “standing reserve” (to recall another Heideggerian term) that has to be incorporated into the production and consumption cycle of capitalism. While the nihilistic dimension of modernity is assessed in the work of negative thinkers such as Nietzsche, Freud and Marx, the subject became more tangible after World War II, and through Peter Burger’s argument concerning the failure of the project of the historical avant-garde.91 It is against this background that Frampton deserves credit for his attempt to revitalize those aspects of modernism that were formative for the architecture of the 1920s; the historicity of which is formulated in Jurgen Habermas’s discussion of the incompleteness of modernity.92 As a theory that periodises the main developmental path of capitalism, the import of Habermas’s observation did not go unnoticed by Frampton. What is implied in “critical” delivered through Frampton’s narrative, though not addressed explicitly, is the following: the very idea of “modernity as an incomplete project” suggests a turning point, one theoretical implication of which is to make a distinction between the project of modernity and the phenomenon of “the cultural logic of capitalism” formulated by Jameson. Still discussing the rise of

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neotraditionalism in Third World societies, Jameson argues that in these societies “nothing but the modern henceforth exists.” He continues, “with the qualification that under such circumstances, where only the modern exists, “modern” now be baptised postmodernity … Here too then, but on a social and historical level, the temporality that modernisation promised has been eclipsed to the benefit of a new condition in which that older temporality no longer exists, leaving an appearance of random changes that are mere stasis, a disorder after the end of history.”93 On the other hand, and in the context of postmodern discourse, Frampton’s position desires to reconcile the Neue Bauen with some aspects of the tradition of the Arts and Crafts Movement. This is clear from his reading of the early history of modern architecture, in general, and the specificity of his views about the work of architects such as Aalto and Alvaro Siza (Fig. 5.2). Nevertheless, Frampton’s ideas, as discussed in his “Prospects for a Critical Regionalism,” did not draw the attention they deserved for a number of reasons, including the attractiveness of the formalism theorised by Colin Rowe and put into practise by some members of the New York Five architects.94 It is not stating it too strongly to say that Frampton presented Critical Regionalism within a reading of Heidegger that was already radicalised through post-structuralist discourse, if not by Gianni Vattimo.95 Furthermore, in overstating Paul Ricoeur’s paradoxical juxtaposition of culture with civilisation, the import of addressing the historicity implied in Habermas’s position was dismissed. That such architects as Aalto and Siza, and to some extent those of the Catalan and Ticino regions, were able to reinvent their local culture of building was clearly associated with the “distance” these regions happened to maintain from the velocity of modernisation taking place in central Europe and America. Perhaps the time was not ripe for architects to formulate the historicity of modernisation in different regions whilst underlining the singularity of modernity. Even though the issues raised here are not addressed as such, Frampton scored two significant points. Firstly, Critical Regionalism underlines some aspects of the dream of the national bourgeois, especially its concern for a democratic and just society, which was not realised for many reasons, including the historical and autonomous development of capitalism, the destination of which remained inaccessible to the bourgeois class of the 1920s. Secondly, in the spirit of Loos, Frampton subscribed to a paradoxical position of modernity. He inaugurated a dialogical understanding of architecture in which the tactile and tectonic dimensions of the work ought to “exhibit” the impact of modernisation on the culture of the building of a given region.96 This is apparent from a recent text where he underlines two important tropes: the

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Figure 5.2 Alvaro Siza, Swimming Pool, Leca, da Palmeira, 1961-66, detail.

ever-anachronistic character of the process of building, and the present situation that is marked by disappearance of the line separating the rural from the cosmopolitan. On this horizon, architecture is not perceived as a single object or for that matter a sister to the fine arts, but the art of the construction of the life-world with the capacity to resume a critical rapport with the technological beyond the nostalgia implied in the German word heimat and the spectacle permeating the culture of megalopolis.97 His position, therefore, was not to lament the ethnographic origin of architecture; rather it sought to underscore the poetics involved in architecture’s confrontation with the nihilism of modernity. Dwelling on the dialectics of locality and universality, Frampton was indeed indirectly reiterating the lessons one might learn from the experiences of Hannes Meyer, Hans Schmidt, Mart Stam and others. Migrating to the Soviet Union in the 1930s, these self-exiled architects attempted to synthesise the symbolic (vernacular) dimension of architecture with the forces of industrialization.98 Even though Frampton does not explicitly address the aforementioned “reconciliation,” he has been successful in drawing architects’ attention to the criticality of the culture of building for contemporary architecture. Regardless of what his

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critics say, the fact remains that Frampton’s esteem for the culture of building and the need to transform nature into landscape (architecture), are important subjects for critical practice even today. As he succinctly puts it, “this evocation of the earthwork returns us to the issue of global urbanization and to the fact that the reintegration of land-form into builtfabric is crucial today if we are to be able to mediate in any way the consequences of metropolitan developments.”99 At this point it is of critical importance to deconstruct the previously suggested theoretical “common cord” running through the historiographies of Tafuri and Frampton. For one thing, in cutting through dichotomies of modernity, both historians are forced to address the dialectical pair of closure and autonomy. This engagement can then disclose the essence of modernity, the horizon of which is occasionally opened (accessible) and shattered (denied), depending on the internal contradictions of a system whose stage of “incompleteness” necessitates writing histories that are untouched by the immanence of its own closure. One is reminded of the “closure” in Tafuri’s insertion of an un-patchable void in his own perception of history. One wonders whether the same tragic view is not implied in Frampton’s discussion of the historicity of the index of disintegration and fragmentation of a situation when the condition of capitalism leaves no choice but the historian’s return to the ontological and telluric aspects of architecture. Touched by the Blochian idea of hope, Frampton sought that the recollection of place-form, and the bodily experience of space and material might entice architecture to resist that, which is characterized in the following words: The brutalization of the environment and that strange alienation that eerily insinuates itself into much modern building - that hallucinatory éclat in which vast and complex public structures uncannily reduce themselves to the status of commodities - finds its compensatory but pathetic parallel in the current proliferation of information about the lost architecture of even the relatively recent past, or the unbuilt and often unbuildable architecture of the future.100

This bleak picture of the operative dimension of capitalism might be explained by the unique role neo-avant-garde architects played during the decade spanning 1970 to 1980, one major consequence of which was to put architectural historians in a marginal position, albeit temporarily. Evidently there was something in the air of the 1970s and 1980s, which forced architects to see “autonomy” as a conceptual tool capable of reenergizing the situation of architecture, and thus exceeding the disciplinary limits haunting architectural historians and critics alike. This is evident from a conference titled “Autonomy and Ideology” where the subject of

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autonomy was discussed from different points of view. According to Vidler, “beneath the often self-contradictory trajectory of the idea of ‘autonomy’ in architecture, we can trace all the tensions evoked by the history of the concept of ‘Enlightenment’ in the twentieth century.” Vidler’s categorical association between the most important historical and intellectual developments, including the Third Republic and its vision of revolution; the “idealist avant-garde and its Popular Front allies in the 1930s,” but also the criticism of Reason launched by some members of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory; and many architectural strategies entertained in the 1970s, and finally “the quasi-nostalgic revival of the idea of autonomy itself in the 1990s; all this attests to the power of Kant’s idea that, both formal and political, implies at once freedom and order, collective reason and expressed individuality.”101 No wonder that Vidler’s interpretation of the near past historiography of architecture should theoretically hinge on the concept of autonomy.102 In “Place, Production and Architecture,” Frampton ties architecture simultaneously to modern technology and the existential dimension of the body experienced through the everyday life of capitalism. Here Frampton follows Ricoeur’s distinction between existential and historical time.103 This is a crucial subject for any theorisation of architecture as semiautonomous, the thematic of which is, paradoxically, defined and redefined by the unpredictable path capitalism takes to smooth its own internal contradictions. While the homology between the body, place, and technique is central to Frampton’s critical interpretation of regionalism, his recent emphasis on the tectonic highlights that which was essential to Greenberg’s conception of autonomy: how to address the idea of autonomy, and at the same time, underline the necessity of formulating a semi-autonomous understanding of architecture. Somewhat similar to Benjamin’s idea of the angel of history, Frampton underlines the usefulness of “reason” if inflected by the catastrophe registered through the backward looking eye of the angel. One might recall the fact that the idea of how to subdue “reason” was central to Kant, but also to critical theory. According to Hubert Damisch, in thinking of Ledoux via Kant, one might conclude that architecture is an object of history and thought, “a thought that is itself bound by conditions.” He continues, architecture “is constituted on this principle insofar as it is an object of desire, where the will—as Kant says—finds its determination.” But insofar as architecture “is a thing to construct – is subjected to constraints that attest, even in the constructive order, to the forces of the symbolic.”104 The strategy chosen for avoiding the closure immanent in any discussion concerned with periodization and Zeitgeist was also the

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problematic, which Tafuri considered fundamental to the historiography of modern architecture. What is involved in his vision of history is a concept of closure that is historical, and its awareness is locked into the concept of autonomy. When this is established, then, we can see why Tafuri saw his task as analysing contemporary architecture, and demonstrating the position of the work within the production and consumption cycles of capitalism. It is the priority given to the unavoidable catastrophic dimension of modernity that prevents Tafuri from assigning any radical task to architecture, that is, resisting the system in one form or another. One theoretical consequence of his position is the idea of “operative criticism,” discussed earlier in this chapter. Another can be traced in his inclination to shifting the focus of criticism to an architecture that wants to grasp the language(s) of autonomy. As such, the idea of autonomy turns out to be designating nothing but the internal logic of architecture in modernity, meaning that, to be modern and to conquer the latest possible forms, architecture has to depart from the specifics of any given period, except history. If this is one dimension of what critical implies for the historiography of architecture, another is Frampton’s consideration of modernity as an ongoing process where the instrumental reason aims to submit every cultural artefact to the vicissitudes of science and technology. If what is attributed to “instrumental reason” is the fait accompli in modernity, then Frampton sees his task as undoing any closure external to themes central to the culture of building in general, and the tectonic in particular. One might argue that, whereas Tafuri’s historiography is hinged on the aforementioned closure imposed by capitalism, Frampton’s, instead, dwells on the “opening” the system occasionally affords. His is a major feat in assessing the aporia architecture confronts with capitalism, one that neither seeks solution, nor works as a theory. The implied opening, however, provides the architect with a way out, rethinking the state of architecture’s crisis in a more complex situation.105 Therefore, autonomy, on the one hand, cannot be dissociated from the closure inherent in the inception of modernity. And yet, having put its symbolic language behind, architecture has no choice but to garnish itself with a sense of purpose and rationale, even if dictated by Reason. On the other hand, autonomy in architecture, similar to that of fashion, needs to balance the act of sheltering and purposefulness with expression. According to Christopher Wood, “The inescapable tasks of clothing and sheltering prevent either fashion or architecture from attaining autonomy.” He writes, “Fashion and architecture are thus always striving for autonomy, but only achieving it ephemerally and spectacularly in the experimental modes of their respective industries.”106 Again we are

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reminded of the uncompromising vision of modernity as a closure within which the architect is granted the freedom to exercise architecture’s autonomy mainly to prove the contrary. What lessons should we draw from the reading of critical history as presented in these pages? In the first place, one should refrain from making the assumption that there has been a class of architectural languages that can be strictly associated with the modernist perception of the Zeitgeist. What brought together a diverse group of architects who worked on and recorded their aspirations and utopias of modern times had to do with the analogies these modernists drew between architecture and the spirit of the time. An obvious implication of this was to assume that architecture is able to resolve the conflict between the desire to produce meaningful conditions of life and the nihilism delivered through technification of cultural products. Furthermore, while postmodern discourse launched a plausible critique of the modernist drive for totalization, postmodern architecture could not escape the trap of historicism even when history was thought of in the context of theories such as structuralism, the discursive formation of which was, paradoxically, centred on the concept of autonomy.107 Mark Jarzombek rightfully blames the 1980s historicism for making “an uncritical alliance with mass-culture that wants to neutralize history so that it does not threaten the day-to-day working of the world of marketing.” He writes, “Historicism can be employed in a meaningful way when it both informs society about present deficiencies, and semiotically points to something about past civilization that is worth preserving.”108 And yet, the major trends of architectural practice developed during the last two decades should necessarily be gauged against the prevailing “theory” that wanted to replace the thematic of the disciplinary history of architecture with interdisciplinary discourses of all kinds. This leads to a crucial question: Is it not timely to investigate the place of history in architectural practise today when it seems the theorization of architecture during the last two decades has exhausted itself? This is not the place to elaborate upon this subject. What should be said is that historical work should still investigate trajectories of flight from historicism, the scope of which is tightened by a system for which history is dead, or at least obsolete. The theoretical claim for the detachment or independence from history, paradoxically, says how deeply Theory is “the product of forces” over which its advocates have no control whatsoever. I am reminded of Hayden White’s brilliant reading of War and Peace. For him “History ceases to be an account of the past and emerges as a force in itself, revealed to be the hidden manipulator of the destinies of both

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individual men and nations.”109 Is not it then timely to explore the reservoir of architectural knowledge produced since the 1930s? This subject was not available to the pioneers of modernism; is treated cheaply by postmodern historicism, and totally neglected by those who take refuge in the spectacle created by digital technique. Neither is it an overstatement to say that the present generation of historians is facing a bigger task than the tasks tackled by Giedion and other historians of the 1940s. This is not to say that the present situation is more complex than that of the 1940s. However, the sheer fact that the contemporary life-world is saturated by commodity-form and that capital operates on a global scale is a recent phenomenon. In addition, the tempo of current socio-cultural transformation makes it difficult for many architects and historians to reflect on history, let alone to formulate a theorization of history that would “specify the object of this history, and what determinations belong to it alone.”110 The past has become a fleeting moment in the relentless recurrence of the new. According to Eric Hobsbawm, one of the important features of this century, “in some ways the most disturbing, is the disintegration of the old patterns of human social relationships, and with it, incidentally, the snapping links between generations, that is to say, between past and present.”111 That this development undermines architecture’s durability is obvious. It is not the physical durability of building that is of concern here, but architecture’s capacity to carry values that are informed by the past, not in ossified forms but in the very “culture of building” that evolves from the ongoing clash between architecture and technification of design processes.112 In this line of consideration, it is not too far-fetched to see the task of the historian as folding back the very nihilism of modernity into the postmodern conditions, and cutting through the certainties nurturing the idea of the end of history. And yet, the necessity to search for a different intellectual labour not available even to contemporary advocates of critical history poses its own problems. Where should one seek the seeds of such labour when one of the major dictums of the Enlightenment, “In all things, return to principle,” is problematized by Damisch’s question: what if the “fact that revolutions fail” is made “a question of principle”113? If a revolution of the historical magnitude of 1789 is not feasible in the near future, then, the mental life of the architectural historian should be concerned with how to rescue the thematic of the culture of building even in the work of architects who maintain the closest ties with the ideological formations of late capitalism. This points to an intellectual task for which critical assessment of architecture is seen as integral to the understanding of contradictions

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central to the periodic crisis of capitalism, which more often than not masquerades as progress. It also suggests differentiating the abstraction (knowledge?) involved in the work of the best critical thinkers from that of an architectural historian the narrative of which should concern architecture understood as a semi-autonomous work.

NOTES 

 Introduction 1

Alan Colquhoun, “Three Kinds of Historicism,” Architectural Design 53 9/10 (1983). Here I am using the text reprinted in Colquhoun, Modernity and the Classical Tradition (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1989). 2 On the school of critical theory, see Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: a History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950 (London: Heinemann educational, 1973). 3 In February of 1948, the Museum of Modern Art organized a symposium to discuss what was called “What is Happening to Modern Architecture?” The content of this symposium is discussed in chapter three in this volume. For a brief overview of the lectures presented in the gathering, see The Museum of Modern Art Bulletin (Spring 1948): 4-21. 4 Alan Colquhoun, Modernity and the Classical Tradition, 3. 5 This is the German architect Heinrich Hübsch whose 1928 short pamphlet titled ‘In what style should we build?’ outlines a different understanding of architectural history. According to Barry Bergdoll, Hübsch’s ideas rejected “the archaeological doctrine of eighteenth-century neoclassicism, establishing a relativist historical position.” See Bergdoll, “Archaeology vs. History: Heinrich Hübsch’s Critique of Neoclassicism and the Beginnings of Historicism in German Architectural Theory,” Oxford Art Journal 2 (1983): 3-12. For the full text of Hübsch, see In What Style Should We Build? trans. Harry Francis Mallgrave (Santa Monica: The Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1992), 63-102. 6 On this subject see Gianni Vattimo, The End of Modernity (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1988). 7 Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1972), originally published in France in 1969. Influenced by the work of G. Canguilhem and Althusser, Foucault articulated a discursive departure from the nineteenth century’s understanding of history. Foucault stressed the particular structure of a text and the way such a text is organized around concepts and themes if only to emphasize its singularity. 8 Demetri Porphyrios, “Notes on a Method,” Architectural Design 51 6/7 (1981): 96-104. His methodology is further elaborated in “On Critical History” in ed. Joan Ockman, Architecture Criticism Ideology (Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press, 1985), 16-21. 9 Demetri Porphyrios, Architectural Design, 99. 10 The idea is discussed in Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference (1978), and Louis Althusser, For Marx (1969).

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11

Demetri Porphyrios, Architectural Design, 101. It is interesting to note that at the conjunction of these intellectual debates, major architectural practices of the 1970s returned to history either through simulation of historical forms, or through typological investigations. 13 Panayotis Tournikiotis, The Historiography of Modern Architecture (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1999). 14 See Harry F. Mallgrave’s introduction in Empathy, Form, and Space (Santa Monica: The Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1994). In addition to Heinrich Wölfflin and Alois Riegl, we are reminded of Adolf Behne’s influence on Walter Benjamin. Arnd Bohm also underlines Benjamin’s debt to Behne’s “Das reproduktive Zeitalter” in the Kustwerk-Essay. See Arnd Bohm, “Artful Reproduction: Benjamin’s Appropriation of Adolf Behne’s ‘Das reproduktive Zeitalter’” in the Kustwerk-Essay, 146-155. On Wölfflin and Riegl see footnotes below. 15 Walter Benjamin, One-Way Street (London: New Left Books, 1979), 250. 16 Walter Benjamin, “Paris The Capital of the Nineteenth Century,” in Charles Baudelaire, A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism (London: Verso, 1983), 159. 17 Heinrich Wölfflin, The Principles of Art History, trans. M. D. Hottinger (New York: Dover, 1950). 18 Michael P. Steinberg, “The Collector as Allegorist: Goods, Gods, and the Objects of History,” ed. M. P. Steinberg, Walter Benjamin and the Demands of History (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), 109. 19 Here I am benefiting from Sigrid Weigel’s association between a Benjaminian understanding of image and Sigmund Freud’s description of the language of the unconsciousness in dream images. See Weigel, Body and Image-Space: Rereading Walter Benjamin (New York: Routledge, 1996). 20 Quoted in Thomas Y. Levin, “Walter Benjamin and the Theory of Art History,” October 47 (Winter 1988): 80. 21 See Gevork Hartoonian, Ontology of Construction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). On the controversy between Semper and Riegl, see Harry Francis Mallgrave, Gottfried Semper, Architect of the Nineteenth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996). 22 Walter Benjamin, “N [Re the Theory of Knowledge, Theory of Progress],” in Benjamin: Philosophy, Aesthetics, History, ed. Gary Smith, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989), 48. 23 Margaret Iversen, Alois Riegl: Art History and Theory (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1993), 13. 24 On Heinrich Wölfflin’s and Alois Riegl’s place in Walter Benjamin’s discourse, see Michael P. Steinberg, “The Collector as Allegorist,” 88-118. 25 Walter Benjamin, “Rigorous Study of Art,” October 47 (Winter 1988): 84-90. Thomas Y. Levin reminds us that Benjamin borrowed his title from Hans Sedlmayr’s lead piece in a book of essays by an art historian from Vienna, published in 1931. See also Christopher S. Wood, ed. The Vienna School Reader: 12

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 Politics and Art Historical Method in the 1930s (New York: Zone Books, 2000), part one and two in particular. 26 Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, 27. 27 Demetri Porphyrios, Architectural Design,100. 28 On Jacques Derrida’s discourse on deconstruction, and his discursive implications for architectural historiography, see Mark Wigley, The Architecture of Deconstruction (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1993). For the importance of archival studies, see Beatriz Colomina, Privacy and Publicity (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1994). 29 Pragmatism is implied in Stan Allen’s work and his thoughtful criticism of architectural theories that rely on textuality rather than the dialectics of theory and practice. See Allen, Practice Architecture, Technique and Representation (Amsterdam: G+B Arts, 2000). 30 Michael Hays, “Notes on Narrative Method in Historical Interpretation,” Footprint (Autumn 2007): 23-30. 31 This subject will be discussed on different occasions throughout this volume. For a philosophical discussion of the idea of autonomy see Andrew Bowie, Aesthetic and Subjectivity (London: Manchester University Press, 1990). On autonomy and its place in contemporary architectural theories, see the entire issue of Perspecta 33, “Mining Autonomy,” (2002). More important is Anthony Vidler’s recent take on contemporary historiography of architecture. See Vidler, Histories of the Immediate Present (Cambridge: the MIT Press, 2008). 32 Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory (London: Routledge, 1984). Also important is Peter Burger who historicizes the historical avant-garde in its failed attempt to brush aside art’s autonomy and the reconciliation of art with life. Burger, Theory of the Avant-garde (Minneapolis: the University of Minnesota Press, 1984). 33 Here I am drawing parallels with Tomas Llorens’s analysis of the situation in post-war Italy. His is a seminal text responding to Manfredo Tafuri’s approach to the historical avant-garde discussed in Teorie e Storia dell’Architettura (Cambridge: the MIT Press, 1973). The English translation is titled, Architecture and Utopia (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1976). See Llorens, “Manfredo Tafuri: Neo-Avant-Garde and History,” in Architectural Design 51 6/7 (1981): 84.

Chapter One 1

The letter is published in Sokratis Georgiadis’s introduction to the English edition of Sigfried Giedion, Building in France, Building in Iron, Building in FerroConcrete, trans. J. Duncan Berry (Santa Monica: The Getty Centre Publication Programs, 1995), 1-78. 2 Walter Benjamin, in Sokratis Georgiadis, Building in France, 53. 3 Kevin MacLaughlin, “Virtual Paris: Benjamin’s Arcade Project,” in ed. Gerhard Richter, Benjamin’s Ghosts (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 212. 4 The intention is not to revive the eighteenth-century archaeological approach to the past, but the understanding of the past as a recovery; construction based on the

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 memories of the past and the demands of the present. For a critique of “archaeology” as an approach to the past, see Barry Bergdoll, Oxford Art Journal 5 2 (1983): 3-13. 5 I am paraphrasing Walter Benjamin’s remarks mainly because Benjamin refers to the angel as a male. For the history and a comprehensive account of Benjamin’s “thesis on history”, see O. K. Werckmeister, “Walter Benjamin’s Angel of History, or the Transfiguration of the Revolutionary into the Historian,” in Critical Review (Winter 1996): 239-267. For Benjamin’s “Thesis on the Philosophy of History,” see Benjamin, Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, (New York: Schoken Press, 1969), 253-264. 6 On the concept of ruin in Walter Benjamin’s discourse see Beatrice Hanssen, Walter Benjamin’s Other History (Berkeley: University of California, 1998), chapter 4, 96-81. For the concept of transitoriness in reference to fashion and “time” in Walter Benjamin’s discourse on history, see Andrew Benjamin, “Being Roman Now: The Time of Fashion, a Commentary on “Theses on the Philosophy of History” XIV,” unpublished essay, 2003. 7 Françoise Choay, The Invention of the Historic Monument (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 13. In this book, Choay pursues the development of the idea of monument from its anthropological dimension in preRenaissance time to Alberti’s discourse on monument as a work of art until the nineteenth century when the purpose of the Latin monumentum gave way to the historic monument. 8 Fritz Breithaupt, “History as the Delayed Disintegration of Phenomena,” in ed. Gerhard Richter, Benjamin’s Ghosts,191. 9 Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Railway Journey: The Industrialisation of Time and Space in the 19th Century (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1986), 15. See also Sigfried Giedion, Mechanisation Takes Command, a Contribution to Anonymous History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1948). 10 Harry Harootunian, History’s Disquiet (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 19. 11 Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” in Illuminations, 262. 12 Walter Benjamin, “Thesis on the Philosophy of History,” in Illuminations, 255. 13 Walter Benjamin, “Moscow Diary,” October 35 (Winter 1985). 14 Hubertus Gassner, “The Constructivists Modernism on the way to Modernization,” in The Great Utopia: The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde, 1915-1932 (New York: Guggenheim Museum, 1992), 318. 15 Susan Buck-Morss, Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in the East and West (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2000), 179. 16 Sigfried Giedion, Building in France, 87. 17 Sokratis Georgiadis, Building in France, 53. 18 On this subject see Gevork Hartoonian, Crisis of the Object (London: Routledge Press, 2006). 19 On this subject see Susan Buck-Morss, Dreamworld and Catastrophe, especially chapter 2, titled “On Time,” 42-96.

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 20

Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in Illuminations, 240. 21 James S. Ackerman, Origins, Imitation, Conventions (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2002), 249. 22 For example, see David Watkin, Morality and Architecture Revisited (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001). 23 I am paraphrasing John McCole in Walter Benjamin and the Antinomies of Tradition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), 172. The author makes these claims based on Benjamin’s remarks on “Experience and Poverty”. For a comprehensive exploration of Benjamin’s concept of “experience” see Andrew Benjamin, “Time and Task: Benjamin and Heidegger Showing the Present”, in ed. Andrew Benjamin & Peter Osborne, Walter Benjamin’s Philosophy: Destruction and Experience (London: Routledge press, 1994), 216-250. 24 For the complex “influence” of Freud’s work on Benjamin see Laurence A. Rickels, “Suicitation: Benjamin and Freud,” in ed. Gerhard Richter, Benjamin’s Ghosts, 142-153. 25 Gianni Vattimo, The End of Modernity (John Hopkins University Press, 1988), 79-89. 26 Beatrice Hanssen, Walter Benjamin’s Other History, 54. 27 I am benefiting from Andrew Benjamin’s reflections on “Time and task,” in A. Benjamin & P. Osborne, ed., Destruction and Experience, 212-245. 28 For Walter Benjamin, revolution is “a moment of danger”, and offers the historian the opportunity “to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up.” Benjamin, “Thesis of History,” in Illuminations, 255. 29 Manfredo Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1976). 30 The work of two historians, Manfredo Tafuri and Kenneth Frampton, are discussed in the final chapter of this volume. 31 H. Wölfflin, Principles of Art History, trans. M. D. Hortinger (New York: Dover Publications, 1950). Also see Michael Podro, The Critical Art Historians of Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 98-110. 32 Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings vol. 2, 1927-1934 (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), 665. 33 On this subject see Harry Francis Mallgrave, “Epilogue, The Semper Legacy: Semper and Riegl,” in Gottfried Semper (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 355-381. Also see Debra Schafter, The Order of Ornament, The Structure of Style: The Theoretical Foundations of Modern Art and Architecture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), especially 32-59. 34 Alois Riegl, “The Dutch Group Portrait,” October 74 (Fall 1995): 3-35. 35 Margaret Iversen, Alois Riegl: Art History and Theory (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993), 8. 36 Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, in Illuminations, 222.

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Alina Payne, “Architecture, Ornament and Pictorialism: notes on the relationship between the arts from Wölfflin to Le Corbusier,” in ed. Karen Koehler, The Built Surface (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Co., 2002), 54-72. 38 Walter Benjamin, “Rigorous Study of Art,” trans. Thomas Y. Levin, October 47 (Winter 1988): 87. 39 See for example, Bernard Cache, “Digital Semper,” in Anymore (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2000), 190-197. 40 Quoted in Ann-Marie Sankovitch, “Structure/Ornament and the Modern Figuration of Architecture,” The Art Bulletin, LXXX 4 (December 1998): 715. 41 Peter Osborne, “Small-scale Victories, Large-scale Defeats: Walter Benjamin’s Politics of Time,” in Andrew Benjamin & Peter Osborne, ed. Destruction and Experience, 88. 42 Andrew Benjamin, “Benjamin’s Modernity,” in ed. David S. Ferris, Cambridge Companion to Walter Benjamin (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 149. Discussing interruption in Benjamin’s essay on Goethe’s “Elective Affinities”, and the Arcades Project, Andrew Benjamin associates the understanding of modernity with Benjamin’s discourse on “caesura”, a concept essential for understanding modernity’s departure from the past and thus the interruption of historical continuum so important for historicism. 43 Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” in Illuminations, 262. 44 Susan Buck-Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1989), 68. For Peter Osborn’s critic of Buck-Morss’s reading of the “dialectical images”, see footnote no. 41 here. Andrew Benjamin argues that, “the dialectical image is an interruption. The image becomes a type of temporal montage and therefore should not be understood within the conventions of image.” Andrew Benjamin, “Benjamin’s Modernity,” 111. 45 Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 3, 1935-1933 (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002), 267. 46 Carlo Ginzburg, History, Rhetoric, and Proof (London: University Press of New England, 1999), 24. 47 Andrew Benjamin, “Benjamin’s Modernity,” 107. 48 On this subject see James S. Ackerman, Origin, Imitation, and Construction (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002), especially the introduction. 49 This is Walter Benjamin characterizing the differences between the early Romantic understanding of knowledge and the modern concept of criticism. See Benjamin, “The Concept of Criticism,” Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, volume 1, 1913-1926 (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), 152. 50 Here Beatrice Hanssen, suggests a contrast between Martin Heidegger’s essay on the work of art where the Greek Temple is praised in terms of its poetry and Walter Benjamin, for whom “the ancient temple no longer had any place. From now on, it could exist only as a ruin.” Hanssen, Walter Benjamin’s Other History, 78. 51 On this distinction see Beatrice Hanssen, Walter Benjamin’s Other History, chapter 2 in particular.

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52 Quoted in Carlo Ginzburg, Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1992), 101. 53 Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, volume 1, 1913-1926, 148. 54 On this subject see Gevork Hartoonian, “Notes on Critical Practice”, Architectural Theory Review, 7 1 (2002): 1-14. 55 Here I am benefiting from Harry Harootunian in “The Benjamin Effect: Modernism, Repetition, and the Path to Different Cultural Imagination,” in ed. Michael P. Steinberg, Walter Benjamin and the Demands of History (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), 62-87.

Chapter Two 1

See John Summerson, “The case for Theory of ‘Modern’ Architecture,” in The Unromantic Castle (London: Thames and Hudson, 1990), 257-265. The most positive and informative reviews of Pioneers is discussed by Alina Payne, Harvard Design Magazine (Winter/Spring 2002): 66-70. Mention should also be made of Peter Draper, ed. Reassessing Nikolaus Pevsner (London: Ashgate Publishing Co., 2004). 2 Panayotis Tournikiotis, The Historiography of Modern Architecture (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1999), 21. The other two important texts with a similar approach are Emil Kaufmann’s, Von Ledoux bis Le Corbusier (1933), and Sigfried Giedion’s, Space, Time, Architecture (1941). The latter will be discussed in chapter 4 here. 3 David Watkin, Morality and Architecture (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 81. 4 See the introduction to Panayotis Tournikiotis, The Historiography of Modern Architecture. 5 David Watkin, “Sir Nikolaus Pevsner: A Study in historicism,” Apollo 136 367 (September 1992): 169. 6 For a critique of D. Watkin’s reading of Pevsner, see Reyner Banham, “Pevsner’s Progress,” A Critic Writes (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 216222. Originally published in The Times Literary Supplement 17 February (1978): 191-192. 7 Victor Margolin, “Design History or Design Studies; Subject Matter and Methods,” Design Issues 11 1 (spring 1995): 7. 8 Paul Crossley, “Introduction,” in ed. Peter Draper, Reassessing Nikolaus Pevsner, 10. 9 Theodor Adorno, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 54-55. 10 I am benefiting from Hal Foster, “Antinomies in Art History,” in Design and Crime (London: Verso, 2002), 83-89. 11 See Also, Emil Kaufmann, “Three Revolutionary Architects, Boullee, Ledoux, and Lequeu,” Transactions on the American Philosophical Society 42 3 (1952). 12 For a discussion of periodization relevant to contemporary discourse, see Fredric Jameson, “Periodizing the 60s,” in ed. S. Sayres, A. Stephenson, S. Aronowits, F.

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 Jameson, The 60s Without Apology (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1998). One can detect the idea of enclosure in Manfredo Tafuri’s work, particularly the discussion presented in the project of history. Most recently Michael Hays has re-approached Tafuri, suggesting that periodization as discussed by Jameson might offer a way out of Tafuri’s totalization effect. See Hays, “Prolegomenon for a Study Linking the Advance Architecture of the Present to that of the 1970s through Ideologies of Media, the Experience of Cities in Transition, and the Ongoing Effects of Reification,” in Perspecta 32 (2001): 100107. 13 See Wolfgang Kemp’s introduction to Alois Riegl’s The Group Portraiture of Holland (Santa Monica: The Getty Centre, 1999), 12. 14 See Gevork Hartoonian, “Architecture and Capitalism: Can Architecture Take it?” in Architectural Theory Review, 8:1 (2003): 44-56. 15 Stephen Games, Pevsner the early Life: Germany and Art (London: Continuum, 2010), 92. 16 For biographical information see Alec Clifton-Taylor, “Nikolaus Pevsner,” Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain (1985): 1-6. 17 Stephen Games, Pevsner the early Life, 156-157. 18 For Pevsner’s knowledge of this subject see “Reflections on not teaching art history,” in Pevsner: the Radio Talks (London: Methuen, 2002), 155-162. 19 See N. Pevsner, “Semper,” in Some Architectural Writing of the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 254-268. 20 Marlite Halbertsma, “Nikolaus Pevsner and the end of a tradition,” Apollo (January 1993): 107-109. On the influences of German art history traditions on N. Pevsner also see Ute Engel, “The formation of Pevsner’s art history: Nikolaus Pevsner in Germany 1902-1935,” in ed. Peter Draper, Reassessing Nikolaus Pevsner, 30-55. 21 Stephen Games, Pevsner the early Life, 106-115. 22 Margaret Iversen, Alois Riegl, 8. 23 James Ackerman, Origins, Imitations, Conventions (Cambridge: the MIT Press, 2002). 24 This observation is suggested in Hal Foster, Compulsive Beauty (Cambridge: the MIT Press, 1993). 25 J. M. Richards, “Architectural Criticism in the Nineteen-Thirties,” in Concerning Architecture (London: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1968), 252-257. 26 Meyer Schapiro, “The New Viennese School,” Art Bulletin 17 (1936): 258. 27 On this subject see Perspecta 33 (2002). 28 Emil Kaufmann, “Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, Inauguration of a New Architectural System,” Journal of the American Society of Architectural Historians 3 (July 1943): 13. 29 Anthony Vidler, Histories of the Immediate Present (Cambridge: the MIT Press, 2009), 49. 30 Meyer Schapiro, Art Bulletin 17 (1936): 266. 31 N. Pevsner, Pioneers of Modern Design (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1974), 122.

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 32

Ute Engel, “The formation of Pevsner’s art history: Nikolaus Pevsner in Germany 1902-1935,” in ed. Peter Draper, Reassessing, 31. 33 In addition, mention should be made of H. Sullivan and Frank L. Wright in America. In 1860, the former had read the first English translation of Gottfried Semper’s text, Der Stil. Also important is the work of Lewis Mumford who was familiar with the European proponent of the modern movement. On this subject, see M. David Samson, “Unser Newyorker Mitarbeiter, Lewis Mumford, Walter Curt Behrendt, and the Modern Movement in Germany,” in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 55 (June 1996): 126-139. 34 See Ute Engel, “The formation of Pevsner’s art history: Nikolaus Pevsner in Germany 1902-1935,” in ed. Peter Draper, Reassessing, 38. 35 N. Pevsner, Pioneers, 19. 36 I have discussed this subject extensively in, “Looking Forward, Looking Backward: Delightful Delays,” in ed. Gevork Hartoonian, Walter Benjamin and Architecture (London: Routledge, 2010), 23-38. 37 I am benefiting from Nancy J. Troy’s discussion of the subject in Modernism and the Decorative Arts in France: Art Nouveau to Le Corbusier (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991). 38 Gottfried Semper, The Four Elements of Architecture and other Writings, trans. Harry F. Mallgrave and Wolfgang Herrmann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 134. 39 Quoted in Wolfgang Herrmann, The Four Elements of Architecture, 27. 40 Gottfried Semper, The Four Elements of Architecture, 144. 41 Otto Wagner, Modern Architecture, trans. Harry Francis Mallgrave (Santa Monica: the Getty Center for the History of Art and Humanities, 1988), particularly the chapters on style and construction. 42 N. Pevsner, Pioneers, 118. 43 Ozenfant, Foundations of Modern Art, trans. John Rodker (New York: Dover Publications, 1952). 44 Paul Zucker, “The Paradox of Architectural Theories at the Beginning of the ‘Modern Movement’,” The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians X 3 (1951): 8-14. 45 Christopher Wood, The Vienna School Reader: Politics and Art Historical Method in the 1930s (New York: Zone Books, 2002), 14. 46 Wolfgang Kemp, “introduction,” Alois Riegl, The Group Portraiture of Holland (Santa Monica: The Getty Centre, 1999), 2. 47 Quoted in Wolfgang Kemp, Alois Riegl, 3. In the second part of his introduction to Riegl’s text, Kemp enumerates problems arising from Riegl’s methodology. 48 N. Pevsner, Pioneers, 215. 49 See Harry F. Mallgrave, “Introduction” in Empathy, Form, and Space; Problems in German Aesthetics, 1873-1893, (Santa Monica: Getty Center, 1994), 3. 50 Pevsner, Pioneers, 217. 51 H. Wölfflin, “Prolegomena to a Psychology of Architecture,” in ed. Harry F. Mallgrave, Empathy, 149-190.

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N. Pevsner, Pioneers, 124. Even when Pevsner lists the bridges, which aesthetically were delightful to him, he underlines those that used iron, but even those that used simple and unadorned pylons. 53 The argument presented here is also applicable to the content of chapter seven where praise of architects, such as F. L. Wright, Adolf Loos and others, does not qualify their work to adhere to Pevsner’s principles of historical judgement. 54 Harry F. Mallgrave, “introduction” in Empathy, 3. 55 On this subject see Stanford Anderson, “Sachlichkeit and Modernity, or Realist Architecture,” in Otto Wagner: Issues and Debates, Reflections on the Raiment of Modernity, ed. Harry F. Mallgrave, (Santa Monica: Getty Center for the History of Arts and Humanities, 1993). 56 Harry F. Mallgrave, “introduction,” in Empathy, 2. 57 Wolfgang Kemp, Alois Riegl, 3. 58 See Harry Francis Mallgrave, Modern Architectural Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 91-113. 59 Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge & the Discourse on Language (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1972), 9. 60 Fredric Jameson, A Singular Modernity (London: Verso, 2002), 28. 61 N. Pevsner, “Modern Architecture and the Historian,” RIBA Journal, (April 1961): 230-240. 62 Alan Colquhoun, “Three Kinds of Historicism,” Architectural Design 53 9/10 (1983), republished in Colquhoun, Modernity and the Classical Tradition: Architectural Essays 1980-1987 (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1989), 3-20. 63 Alan Colquhoun, “Three Kinds of Historicism,” 14. 64 On this subject see Simon Sadler’s insightful historicisation of Archigram. Sadler, Archigram: Architecture Without Architecture (Cambridge: the MIT Press, 2005). 65 Manfredo Tafuri, Theories and Histories of Architecture (New York: Harper and Row Publishers1980), 30. 66 On this subject see Nikolaus Pevsner, Some Architectural Writers of the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972). For an informative reading of this book see Alexandrina Buchanan, “Nikolaus Pevsner and the architectural writers of the nineteenth century,” in ed. Peter Draper, Reassessing, 95-109. 67 On This subject see “coda” in the last chapter of the present volume. 68 On this subject see Simon Sadler, Archigram. 69 Manfredo Tafuri, Theories and Histories of Architecture, 151. 70 N. Pevsner, “Modern Architecture and the Historian,” RIBA Journal (April 1961): 236. 71 N. Pevsner, “Canons of Criticism,” Architectural Review 109 49 (January 1951). 72 Alison and Robert Smithson, “Prelude to the Heroic Period of Modern Architecture,” in The Heroic Period of Modern Architecture (London: Thames and Hudson, 1981), p. 5. 73 Heinrich Wölfflin, “Prolegomena to a Psychology of Architecture,” Harry F. Mallgrave, ed., Empathy, Form, and Space, 149-190. 74 For further elaboration on this subject see chapter 1 in this volume.

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75 See Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Vintage Books, 1973). For a thorough discussion of the subject see Fredric Jameson, A Singular Modernity . 76 Heinrich Wölfflin, “Prolegomena to a Psychology of Architecture,” 150-182. 77 Barbara Miller Lane, National Romanticism and Modern Architecture in Germany and Scandinavian Countries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 13. 78 National Romanticism, a movement in applied arts and architecture spans the years between 1885 and 1920. For a comprehensive discussion of National Romanticism see Barbara Miller Lane, 2003. 79 See William Morris, “The Revival of Architecture,” in N. Pevsner, Some Architectural Writers of the Nineteenth Century, 315-324. 80 Alex Potts, “Introduction” to Johann Joachim Winckelmann, History of Art of Antiquity, trans. Harry Francis Mallgrave (Santa Monica: the Research Institute Publication Program, 2006), 4. 81 On the thematic of post-war architectural debates in England and reactions to Pevsner’s essay mentioned here, and his ideas on “picturesque,” see Reyner Banham, “Revenge of Picturesque: English Architectural Polemica, 1945-1965,” ed. John Summerson, Concerning Architecture (London: The Penguin Press, 1968), 252-257. 82 For basic references to the subject of post-war regionalism see Joan Ockman, Architecture Culture 1943-1968 (New York: Rizzoli International Publication Inc., 1993). 83 N. Pevsner, Some Architectural Writers of the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972). 84 See Pevnser’s essay on William Morris in Some Architectural Writers, 269-289. 85 Criticizing both classical and Gothic revival architecture in his country, Morris saw the alternative in “the utilitarian brick box with a slate lid which the Anglo Saxon generally in modern times considers as a good sensible house with no nonsense about it.” Morris, “The Revival of Architecture,” in N. Pevsner, Some Architectural Writers, 315. 86 William Morris, “The Revival of Architecture,” 323. 87 See N. Pevsner, Ruskin and Viollet le Duc: Englishness and Frenchness in the Appreciation of Gothic Architecture (London: Thames and Hudson, 1969), 42. 88 I am paraphrasing Fredric Jameson’s argument on periodization in A Singular Modernity. 89 Panayotis Tournikiotis, “The Historiography of Modern Architecture,” in ed. Hubert-Jan Henket & Hilde Heynen, Back from Utopia (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2002), 290. This text is based on the author’s book of the same title published in 1999. Again, as was discussed in the introduction to this volume, what is problematic in Tournikiotis’s vision of history is that for him historiography is reducible, or has already been reduced, to a narrative with its own structural modalities. 90 N. Pevsner, The Englishness of English Art (London: The Architectural Press, 1956), 182.

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N. Pevsner, “The Genesis of the Picturesque,” first published in Architectural Review XCVI (1994), reprinted in Studies in Art, Architecture & Design, vol. 1 (London: Thames & Hudson, 1968), 86. 92 N. Pevsner, The Englishness of English Art, 61. See also his views in “the Genesis of the Picturesque,” Pevsner, Studies in Art, Architecture and Design, vol. 1, 1968, 78-101. The essay was originally published in Architectural Review XCV (1944). 93 Paul Crossley, “Introduction,” ed. Peter Draper, Reassessing Nikolaus Pevsner, 12. 94 Fredric Jameson, A Singular Modernity, 35. 95 According to the author, when a picture of William Morris was shown to Walter Gropius, he said: “I owe him so very much.” N. Pevsner, Pevsner on Art and Architecture: The Radio Talks, 36. 96 I am alluding to Reyner Banham’s introductory remarks to Guide to Modern Architecture (London: The Architectural Press, 1962), 15. On Banham’s relation with his “lieber Meister,” see Nigel Whitely, “The Puzzled lieber Meister: Pevsner and Reyner Banham,” in Peter Draper ed., Reassessing Nikolaus Pevsner, 12.

Chapter Three 1

Under the title of “Modern Architecture,” the main idea of the book was discussed in two essays appearing in Architectural Review 63 (April 1928): 337, and (May 1928): 453-460 respectively. 2 The bibliography provided at the end of the book suggests that Henry-Russell Hitchcock was aware of major architectural manuscripts of the time published in French, German, and English. See Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Modern Architecture: Romanticism and Reintegration, first published in 1929, here from (New York: Da Capo Press, 1993), 239-241. 3 H. R. Hitchcock, “English Architecture in the early 20th Century,” Zodiac 18 (1968): 8. Also see his essay for an exhibition catalogue titled, Modern Architecture in England (New York: Museum of Modern Arts, 1937). 4 On the educational background of H. R. Hitchcock, see Paolo Scrivano, “A Thirty-Year Project: Henry-Russell Hitchcock’s Architecture: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” in ed. Frank Salmon, Summerson and Hitchcock (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 171-192 5 Helen Searing, “Henry-Russell Hitchcock: The Architectural Historian as Critic and Connoisseur,” in ed. Elisabeth Blair MacDougall, The Architectural Historian in America (London: the University Press of New England, 1990), 259. 6 On this subject see Marie Frank, “Hitchcock and Harvard: the Historical Context of Formalist Aesthetics,” in ed. Frank Salmon, Summerson and Hitchcock, 209220. 7 To my knowledge, Barry Bergdoll is one of the few historians to highlight this subject. See Bergdoll, “Romantic Modernity in the 1930s, Henry-Russell

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 Hitchcock’s Architecture: Twentieth and Nineteenth Centuries?”, in ed. Frank Salmon, Summerson and Hitchcock, 193-208. 8 The idea of a pastoral approach to modernity is discussed by Marshall Berman, All That is Solid Melts into Air: the experience of Modernity (London: Verso, 1982). For a discussion that expands the notion of pastoral for a critical review of the complexities involved in architecture’s relation to modernity, see Hilde Heynen, Architecture and Modernity (Cambridge: the MIT Press, 1999), 8-24. 9 For a discussion of the ethos of Romanticism, and the differences between German Romanticism and that of England and France, see Arnold Hauser “German and Western Romanticism,” The Social History of Art, vol. 2 (New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1951), 660-661. If one subscribes to Hauser’s discourse, then, Hitchcock’s interest in technique and the aesthetic sensibilities initiated by abstract painting qualifies him to be part of the “liberal” faction of Romanticism. 10 H. R. Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, 13. 11 See Fiske Kimball, American Architecture, originally published in 1928, here from AMS edition 1970, 111. On F. Kimabll, see Lauren Weiss Bricker, “The Witting of Fiske Kimball: a Synthesis of Architectural History and Practice,” in ed. Elisabeth Blair MacDougall, The Architectural Historian in America, 215-236. 12 Fiske Kimball, Gazette Des Beaux-Arts 25 (February 1944): 95-112. 13 Fiske Kimball, 1944, 112. 14 Fiske Kimball, 1944, 96. 15 See Stanley Cavell, “The Philosopher in American Life” in, In Quest of the Ordinary (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 4-6. 16 Andrew Bowie, Aesthetics and Subjectivity: from Kant to Nietzsche (New York: Manchester University Press, 1990), 3. 17 H. R. Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, 5. The 1750s coincided with the rise of archaeological interest in Gothic and Classical art and architecture. 18 In addition to my emphasis on periodization, the suggested dialectics was recently taken up by Barry Bergdoll in, “Romantic Modernity in the 1930s, HenryRussell Hitchcock’s Architecture: Twentieth and Nineteenth Centuries?,” in ed. Frank Salmon, Summerson and Hitchcock, 193. 19 The universal dimension of the logos of making is implied in Le Corbusier’s Towards a New Architecture. Hitchcock had little familiarity with the French architect’s work when he visited Paris in the summer of 1925. See his remarks in “Le Corbusier and the United States,” Zodiac 16 (1966): 6-23. He did, however, review Le Corbusier’s book, which was published in 1927, in Architectural Record, 90-91. 20 See Hitchcock, “The Acclimatisation of Modern Architecture in Different Countries,” a paper read before the Architectural Association, and published in The Architectural Association Journal (June-July 1946): 3-9. 21 H. R. Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, 5. 22 Geoffrey Scott, The Architecture of Humanism (1914) (London: The Architectural Press Ltd, 1980), 40. 23 Geoffrey Scott, 82.

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24

See Henry-Russell Hitchcock, “Humanism and the Fine Arts” in ed. G. H. Gratten, Critique of Humanism (Port Washington: Kenneth Press, Inc. 1968), 214. 25 See Fiske Kimball, (1944): 95-112. 26 H. R. Hitchcock, “Early Victorian Architecture 1837-1851,” in the Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects 11 (September 1937): 993. 27 Barry Bergdoll, “Romantic Modernity in the 1930s, Henry-Russell Hitchcock’s Architecture: Twentieth and Nineteenth Centuries?,” in ed. Frank Salmon, Summerson and Hitchcock, 193. 28 Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, p.6. 29 See H. R. Hitchcock, The Architecture of H. H. Richardson and his Time (New York: the Museum of Modern Art, 1936). 30 Lewis Mumford, The Brown Decades (New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1955), 113. 31 See H. R. Hitchcock, “Humanism and the Fine Arts,” and Lewis Mumford, “Towards an Organic Humanism” in ed. G. H. Gratten, Critique of Humanism (Port Washington: Kenneth Press, Inc. 1968), 195-236, & 337-360, respectively. For an updated discussion of the many implications of humanism see Design Book Review 41/42 (winter/spring 2000). Particularly Paolo Scrivano, “Humanism: Some Notes on Two Seminal Books,” the same place, 80-83. The two books reviewed are Modern Architecture: Romanticism and Reintegration, and The International Style. 32 Caroline van Eck, Organicism in nineteenth-century architecture: An inquiry into its theoretical and philosophical background (Amsterdam: Architecture & Nature Press, 1994). 33 Montgomery Schuyler, “Modern Architecture” in ed. W. H. Jordy and Ralph Coe, American Architecture and Other Writings (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961), 115. Schuyler’s article was originally published in Architectural Record (July-Sept. 1894). 34 H. R. Hitchcock, “Modern Architecture: the Traditionalists and the New Tradition,” in The Architectural Record LXIII (January-June 1928): 337-349. 35 H. R. Hitchcock, The Architectural Record (1928): 340. 36 Caroline van Eck, Organicism, 18. 37 Caroline van Eck, Organicism, 19. 38 Caroline van Eck, Organicism, 241-255. 39 Lewis Mumford, “Towards an Organic Humanism” in ed. G. H. Gratten, Critique of Humanism, 355. 40 Alan Colquhoun, Modern Architecture (London: Oxford University Press, 2002), 36. 41 H. R. Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, 240. For Hitchcock’s use of the term “Chicago School” see Modern Architecture, 5. Almost all critics and historians interested in the subject underline Chicago School’s contribution to modern architecture in America. Mention should be made of Montgomery Schuyler and Fiske Kimball. There is no mention of Schuyler’s contribution in Hitchcock’s book. Schuyler’s American Architecture, first published in 1928, is referred to by other critics as a good source for discussing Romanticism in American

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 architecture, but also for the author’s definition of modern architecture in the index of emerging new materials and new building types. 42 H. R. Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, 28. 43 H. R. Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, 38. 44 Geoffrey Scott, The Architecture of Humanism, 102. 45 Fiske Kimball, American Architecture, 1970 (1928), 150. 46 Petrus Berlage, “Modern Architecture,” in Sergio Polano, ed., Hendrik Petrus Berlage (Milan: Electa Architecture, 2002), 92. Berlage spent two months in America during which he acquired direct knowledge of the work of H.H. Richardson, H. Sullivan, and F. L. Wright. For Berlage, the character of the new architecture “is that of matter-of-fact simplicity, equal in construction as in ornamentation, whilst as regards form in a general sense, geometrical arrangement is to be perceived.” Berlage, 2002, 98. Again, as the reader will notice, these ideas will be used in H. R. Hitchcock’s formulation of the New Tradition. 47 Heinrich Hübsch, “In What Style Should We Build?,” in ed. Harry Francis Mallgrave, In What Style Should We Build (Santa Monica: Getty Research Institute, 1992), 63-102. 48 H. R. Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, 292. 49 H. R. Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, 294. 50 As will be discussed in the next chapter, Otto Wagner’s project developed after his book, Modern Architecture, should also be considered as possessing a cosmopolitan dimension. Though ambiguous, the idea of cosmopolitan architecture designates a work whose tectonic is embellished in reference to both industrial building techniques and the thematic of architecture’s disciplinary history. The modification of the latter, nevertheless, cannot dismiss the aesthetic implications experienced in various modern artistic productions. 51 Montgomery Schuyler, “Romanesque Revival in America” in ed. W. H. Jordy and Ralph Coe, American Architecture, 224. Schuyler’s article was originally published in Architectural Record (Oct.-Dec. 1891). 52 For J. M. Richards, “Criticism in the Thirties” in John Summerson, ed. Concerning Architecture (Baltimore: Penguin Books Inc, 1968), 252-257. 53 H. R. Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, 12. 54 This matter concerned Lewis Mumford who considered that Sullivan’s accentuation of the vertical in the Wainwright Building “was in both its immediate and its ultimate effects an unfortunate solution.” Mumford, The Brown Decades, 152. 55 H. R. Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, 293. Here Hitchcock takes liberty with Hugh Morrison’s assessment of Sullivan. 56 Fiske Kimball, American Architecture, 159. 57 See Gevork Hartoonian, Ontology of Construction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). 58 H. R. Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, 294. Nikolaus Pevsner notes that the use of the word landscape in Shaftesbury alludes to the first appearance of the word “in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century to designate painted scenery and already in Milton’s Allegro (1632) was used for real scenery of an appeal similar

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 to that of the picture. The term picturesque, so important during the second half of the eighteenth century, is heralded in this use”. N. Pevsner, “The Genesis of the Picturesque,” first published in Architectural Review XCVI (1944), reprinted in Studies in Art, Architecture & Design, vol. 1 (London: Thames & Hudson, 1968), 86. 59 N. Pevsner, “The Genesis of the Picturesque,” 101. 60 Quoted in Marie Frank, “Hitchcock and Harvard: the Historical Context of Formalist Aesthetics,” in ed. Frank Salmon, Summerson and Hitchcock, 235. 61 Caroline van Eck, Organicism, 254. 62 Caroline van Eck, Organicism, 262-278. 63 H. R. Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, 19-22. 64 H. R. Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, 37. 65 H. R. Hitchcock leaves his reader to guess what he meant by the word fabrik. One is tempted to recall Gottfried Semper’s reflections on the importance of the weaving industry for the art of wall making. This is important because F. L. Wright used the idea, and it also appeared in H. P. Berlage’s comments on Sullivan’s architecture. Berlage used the word fabric to describe the wall surface in Sullivan’s handling of ornament and structure. See G. Fanelli, “Unity Within Diversity” in ed. Sergio Polano, Hendrik Petrus Berlage, 19. And yet, as far as the idea of picturesque is concerned one can assume that “fabrik” alludes to that quality of English gardens (against those of Le Notre) in which according to N. Pevsner, nature follows its own nature in worshipping “visible harmony, of the ‘primitive taste’ .” Pevsner, “The Genesis of the Picturesque”, 78-101. 66 H. R. Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, 7. 67 This is not to dismiss the historian’s reference to Christopher Hussey’s study of picturesque buildings in England and that picturesque “was the substitution of emotion for reason, and of passion for decorum.” Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, 7. 68 Here I am benefiting from Ernst Cassirer’s The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, first published in 1932, here from trans. F. C. A. Koelln & James P. Pettegrove (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955). 69 On the argument motivated by Edmund Burke’s discussion of the two themes of sublime and beautiful, see Eileen Harris, “Burke and Chambers on Sublime and Beautiful” in ed. D. Fraser, H. Hibbard, M. J. Lewine, Essays in the History of Architecture Presented to Rudolf Wittkower (London: Phaidon 1969), 207-213. 70 On this subject and different interpretations of nature as “autonomous” entity with its own laws though interpreted differently during the late seventeenth and eighteenth century, see N. Pevsner, “The Genesis of the Picturesque,” 78-101. For the historical context of Pevsner’s essay, see Reyner Banham, “Revenge of Picturesque: English Architectural Polemics, 1945-1965” in John Summerson, ed., Concerning Architecture (Baltimore: Penguin Books Inc, 1968), 265-273. 71 Emil Kaufmann, “Three Revolutionary Architects, Boullee, Ledoux, and Lecquee” in Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 42 part 3 (October 1952).

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 72

Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas on the Sublime and Beautiful, first published in 1757, here from ed. James T. Boulton, (London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968), 76-77. 73 The term in-itself is borrowed from E. Kant. See Andrew Bowie, “Modern Philosophy and the Emergence of Aesthetic Theory” in Aesthetics and Subjectivity: From Kant to Nietzsche (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), 15-34. 74 Ernst Cassirer’s The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, first published in 1932, here from trans. F. C. A. Koelln & James P. Pettegrove (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955), 41. 75 Ernst Cassirer’s The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, 48. 76 N. Pevsner’s account of Shaftesbury’s discourse on picturesque hints at the importance of the idea of construction. He speculated that Shaftesbury “uses wilderness as a symbol of nature in her primitive state and thus a symbol of universal order, Newton’s, Hooke’s and Wren’s order, the all-pervading order revealed to the seventeenth century by microscope and telescope”. N. Pevsner, “The Genesis of the Picturesque,” 83. On Shaftesbury also see Ernst Cassirer in the previous footnote. 77 See G. G. Scott, On Gothic Architecture, 1875. 78 H. R. Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, 70. 79 H. R. Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, 73. 80 H. R. Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, 94. 81 Lewis Mumford, “Modern Architecture,” The New Republic March 19 (1930): 131. 82 H. R. Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, 1993, 93. 83 Lewis Mumford, The South in Architecture (New York: Da Capo Press, 1967), 106. 84 L. Mumford, The South in Architecture, 103. 85 L. Mumford, The South in Architecture, 91. Mumford makes it clear that his sympathy with “romantic theorists” differs from that of Pugin in England, and the American Richard Upjohn. Similar to the “lovers of classics,” Upjohn, according to Mumford, made the same mistake by ‘making out of the architecture of the Middle Ages a fixed ideal …’ (89). 86 Aspects of which are discussed in ed. Harry F. Mallgrave, Otto Wagner (Santa Monica: The Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1993). 87 For a brief view of the lectures presented in the mentioned gathering, see The Museum of Modern Art Bulletin (Spring 1948). 88 Caroline van Eck, Organicism. Also see the next footnote. 89 See the proceedings of the symposium titled “Architecture 1918-1928: From the November Group to the C.I.A.M. Functionalism and Expressionism,” May 4 and 5, 1962, Avery Architectural Library, Columbia University, 1963, 10. 90 Quoted in Joan Ockman, ed. Architecture Culture 1943-68 (New York: Rizzoli, 1993), 109. The article was first published in New Yorker October 11 (1947).

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J. L. Sert, F. Leger, S. Giedion, “Nine Points on Monumentality,” in Ockman, ed. Architecture Culture, 29. The article was originally published in Paul Zucker, New Architecture and City Planning, (New York: Philosophy Library, 1944). 92 See the proceedings of the symposium titled “Architecture 1918-1928: From the November Group to the C.I.A.M. Functionalism and Expressionism,” May 4 and 5, 1962, Avery Architectural Library, Columbia University, 1963, p. 41. 93 Andrew Bowie, Aesthetics, 24. 94 H. R. Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, 104. 95 Quoted in a symposium held in Museum of Modern Art titled “What is Happening to Modern Architecture?” For a summary of the papers presented, see The Museum of Modern Art Bulletin (Spring 1948): 4-21. 96 H. R. Hitchcock, “The Decade 1929-39” in Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 24 1 (March 1965): 5. 97 The review was first published in New Republic, March 1930. The main points of Lewis Mumford’s review is discussed by Robert Woitowicz, “Lewis Mumford: The Architectural Critic as Historian,” in ed. Elisabeth Blair MacDougall, The Architectural Historian in America, 240. 98 Robert Woitowicz, “Lewis Mumford: The Architectural Critic as Historian,” in ed. Elisabeth Blair MacDougall, The Architectural Historian in America, 241. 99 See footnote 102 below. 100 Lewis Mumford quoted in “What is Happening to Modern Architecture?” See footnote 87 here. 101 The statement should be read in the context of the author’s reading of Mumford’s The Brown Decades, 1931. Francesco Dal Co, “Winners and Losers, Interpreting the Mumford of the Brown Decades,” in ed. R. E. Somol, Autonomy and Ideology: Positioning an Avant-Garde in America (New York: Monacelli Press, 1997), 198. 102 On this subject see Hubert Damisch, “The Space Between: A Structuralist Approach to the Dictionnaire,” Architectural Design Profile 50 3/4 (1980): 84-89. 103 Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, 119-120. On Hitchcock’s rapport with Dutch architecture see, Helen Searing, “Henrry-Russell Hitchcock and Dutch Architecture,” in ed. Frank Salmon, Summerson and Hitchcock, 243261. 104 H. R. Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, 123. 105 H. R. Hitchcock, Painting Toward Architecture (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1948), 16. 106 H. R. Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, 143. 107 For a comprehensive discussion of this aspect of Auguste Perret’s work, see Kenneth Frampton, Studies in Tectonic Culture (Cambridge: the MIT Press, 1995) 121-158. 108 H. R. Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, 147. 109 On the importance of abstract painting for the formation of modern architecture see, Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Painting Towards Architecture, 13. Also see HenryRussell Hitchcock, “The place of Painting and Sculpture in Relation to Modern Architecture,” Architects’ Year Book 2 (1947): 12-23.

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 110

H. R. Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, 161. One is also reminded of Pevsner’s notorious remark that “Lincoln cathedral is a work of architecture; a bicycle shed is a building.” Pevsner, An Outline of European Architecture (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1948), xix. 111 H. R. Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, 154. 112 H. R. Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, 156. 113 H. R. Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, 227. 114 H. R. Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, 157. 115 H. R. Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, 227. 116 H. R. Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, 182. 117 H. R. Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, 182. 118 For Hitchcock’s remark on Reitveld’s work, see Modern Architecture, 184. 119 H. R. Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, 188. 120 H. R. Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, 160. 121 For Hitchcock’s criticism of Thomas Jefferson’s architecture see Modern Architecture, 12. 122 H. R. Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, 159. 123 H. R. Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, 159. 124 H. R. Hitchcock, Painting Towards Architecture, 15-16. 125 H. R. Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, 192. 126 H. R. Hitchcock, Painting Towards Architecture, 34. 127 On the tectonic of column and wall in Mies van der Rohe’s architecture, see Gevork Hartoonian, “Mies van der Rohe: the Genealogy of Column and Wall,” first published in the Journal of Architectural Education 42/2 (Winter 1989), revised and extended for Ontology of Construction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 128 Kenneth Frampton observes that, the architectonics of the “Four Compositions” adhere to the dichotomous legacy of the Western domestic tradition initiated in Arts and Crafts practice, on the one hand, and the regular, and symmetrical typologies developed by Andreas Palladio. Frampton, Le Corbusier (London: Thames and Hudson, 2001), 70. 129 H. R. Hitchcock, Modern Architecture, 188. 130 Detlef Mertins has demonstrated the criticality of the two ideas of construction and transparency in the early cubism, and how these were internalised into the formative years of modernism in architecture. Mertins, “Transparencies yet to Come: Sigfried Giedion and the Prehistory of Architectural Modernity” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1996), chapter 2. 131 H. R. Hitchcock, “The International Style Twenty Years After,” Architectural Record (August 1951): 97. On Hitchcock’s review of post-war architecture, see Philip Goad, “Genius and Bureaucracy: Hitchcock, Summerson and Post-war Modern Architecture,” in ed. Frank Salmon, Summerson and Hitchcock, 281-311.

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 Chapter Four 1

My project is less ambitious than what Detlef Mertins has accomplished in “Transparency Yet to Come: Sigfried Giedion and the Prehistory of Architectural Modernity,” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1996). 2 On this subject see Kojin Karatani, Transcritique on Kant and Marx, trans. S. Kohso (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2003). 3 Quoted in Sokratis Georgiadis, Sigfried Giedion: An Intellectual Biography, trans. Collin Hall (Zurich: Edinburgh University Press, 1993), 15. Stanislaus von Moos’s review of Georgiadis’s book is of interest. Moos underlines the importance of visual images in the later work of Lewis Mumford and S. Giedion, two historians and critics otherwise worlds apart in their approach to architecture and the city. See von Moos, “Mumford versus Giedion: Reviewing the Machine Age,” Design Book Review 19 (Winter 1991): 25-30. 4 Andrew Bowie, Aesthetics and Subjectivity: from Kant to Nietzsche (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), 5. 5 Harry Francis Mallgrave, “Introduction,” Empathy, Form, and Space: Problems in German Aesthetics, 1873-1893 (Santa Monica: Getty Centre, 1994), 91. The entire “introduction” is recommended. 6 Harry Francis Mallgrave, “Introduction,” 91. 7 Joseph Rykwert, “Sigfried Giedion and the Notion of Style,” The Burligton Magazine 96 613 (April 1954): 124. At the end of his review of Giedion’s corpus, the author praises Giedion, claiming that the Swiss historian’s “enthusiasm, his penetration, the overwhelming elegance of his argument will survive all criticism.” 8 On this subject see Chapter Two in this volume. 9 On this subject see Gevork Hartoonian, “In What Style Could They Have Built?” Fabrications 17.2 (2007): 6-25. 10 August Schmarsow, “The Essence of Architectural Creation,” in Harry Francis Mallgrave, Empathy, Form, and Space, 286. 11 Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Railway Journey (Berkeley: the University of California Press, 1986), 33-44, and 45-51. 12 The term is Walter Benjamin’s, and as we will see shortly, his vision of history shares some aspects of Sigfried Giedion’s discussion in Bauen in Frankreich, Bauen in Eisen-Bauen in Esienbeton. 13 I am using the term as discussed by Detlef Mertins, “Transparency yet to Come.” 14 Obviously I am recalling Manfredo Tafuri’s Theories and History of Architecture (New York: Harper and Row publishers, 1980), 141. 15 Sigfried Giedion, Building in France, Building in Iron, Building in FerroConcrete, (1928), trans. J. Duncan Berry (Santa Monica: The Getty Centre, 1995), 87. 16 Rejecting Gottfried Semper’s theory of dressing, Otto Wagner argued that, “construction always proceeds, for no art-form can arise without it, and the task of

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 art, which is to idealize the existing, is impossible without the existence of the object.” Wagner, Modern Architecture (Santa Monica: Getty Centre, 1988), 93. 17 Detlef Mertins, “Transparencies Yet to Come,” 38. 18 Sigfried Giedion, Building in France, 87. 19 The idea of “a new optic” was also of interest to Walter Benjamin. After Sigmund Freud, Benjamin qualified photographic technique of close-up with that of the “unconscious.” On this subject and Giedion’s contribution, see Detlef Mertins, “Walter Benjamin’s glimpses of the unconscious: new architecture and new optics” in History of Photography 22 (summer 1998): 119-121. 20 Sigfried Giedion, Building in France, 90. 21 In a brilliant passage, Fredric Jameson maps the many qualities of the emerging sensory perception in the nineteenth century that was semi-autonomous, the consequences of which were felt not only in painting but also in novels. Jameson, The Political Unconscious (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981), 228-232. Mention should also be made of Rosalind Krauss’s discourse in The Optical Unconscious (Cambridge: the MIT Press, 1993). 22 For a discussion concerning the different constructive elements involved in the construction of the Suez Canal, the Statue of Liberty, and the Eiffel Tower, see Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, “Geometry/Labour= Volume/Mass?” October 106 (Fall 2003): 3-34. 23 Roland Barthes, “The Eiffel Tower,” The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies (New York: Hill and Wang, 1970), 8. 24 Roland Barthes, “The Eiffel Tower,” 9. 25 Joseph Rykwert, The Burlington Magazine, 123. 26 Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious, 229. 27 This would be a book subject, in which Giedion maps the impact of modernization in various production activities. See Giedion, Mechanization Takes Command (New York: Oxford University Press, 1948). For a concise review of this book see Kenneth Frampton, “Giedion in America: Reflections in a Mirror,” Architectural Design Profiles 51 6/7 (1981): 45-51. 28 Sigfried Giedion, Building in France, 93. 29 Sigfried Giedion, Building in France, 133-134. 30 The statement published in the journal L’Esprit Nouveau, no. 25, suggests that “the century of machine has awakened the CONSTRUCTOR; new tasks, new possibilities, and new means gave birth to him.” Quoted in Giedion, Building in France, 96. 31 Sigfried Giedion, Building in France, 99. 32 Sigfried Giedion, Building in France, 94. 33 Mitchell Schwarzer, German Architectural Theory, and the Search for Modern Identity, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 131. 34 Sigfried Giedion, Building in France, 100. 35 Schwarzer, German Architectural Theory, 182. On the difference of these two architects, also see Harry Francis Mallgrave, Gottfried Semper: Architect of the Nineteenth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 219-227.

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36

Detlef Mertins, “Transparency yet to Come”. See also Mertins, “Walter Benjamin’s Glimpses of the Unconscious: new architecture and new optics,” History of Photography 22 (Summer 1998): 116-126. 37 Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky, “Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal,” Perspecta 8 (1963): 45-54. 38 Slavoj Žižek, The Ticklish Subject (London: Verso, 1999), 11. 39 On posthumanism and the work of Hannes Meyer see K. Michael Hays, Modernism and Posthumanist Subject (Cambridge: the MIT Press, 1992). 40 This and the following discussion reiterates the point this author has made elsewhere. See Gevork Hartoonian, “Looking Backward, Looking Forward; Delightful Delays,” in ed. Hartoonian, Walter Benjamin and Architecture (London: Routledge, 2010), 23-38. 41 On this difference see Gevork Hartoonian, Modernity and its Other (College Station: Texas University Press, 1997), 139. 42 Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project (Cambridge: the MIT Press, 1999), 13. Elsewhere I have discussed the work of some Russian Constructivists in terms of wish-image where architecture is emancipated from its history. Gevork Hartoonian, Crisis of the Object, the architecture of theatricality London: Routledge, 2006), 20-23. 43 Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, 155. Benjamin takes note of a passage from Das Kapital where Karl Marx suggests that, “the supports and the load, in architecture, are also ‘form.’” 44 On different aspects of the issue of aesthetic central to the debate on iron, see Sokratis Georgiadis, “Introduction” to Sigfried Giedion, 10-12, and 21. 45 Giedion, Building in France, 120. 46 Giedion, Building in France, 122-123. 47 Giedion, Building in France, 142. 48 Giedion, Building in France, 152. 49 Giedion, Building in France, 153. 50 See Sokratis Georgiadis, Sigfried Giedion, 12-13. 51 To recall Walter Benjamin’s letter to S. Giedion is to indicate that they were aware of each other’s work. Notable are the 15 references to Giedion’s name listed in the index of Benjamin’s The Arcades Project. Observations of the following kind demonstrate Benjamin’s interest in Giedion. According to Benjamin, “each time what sets the tone is without doubt the newest, but only where it emerges in the medium of the oldest, the longest past, the most ingrained.” 64. 52 According to Sokratis Georgiadis, “Giedion at a very early stage, clearly and unequivocally rejected that branch of architecture that signalled the birth-pangs of the Neues Bauen.” See Georgiadis, Sigfried Giedion, 2. 53 On this subject see Gevork Hartoonian, “The Limelight of the House Machine,” The Journal of Architecture 6 1 (Spring 2001): 53-80 54 Giedion, Building in France, 176. 55 Giedion, Building in France, 169. 56 On this subject see Gevork Hartoonian, “The Limelight of the House-Machine,” 53-80.

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57 See Adolf Max Vogt, Le Corbusier, the Noble Savage: Toward an Archaeology of Modernism, trans. R. Donnell (Cambridge: the MIT Press, 1998). 58 Giedion, Building in France, 176. 59 This is clear from Kenneth Frampton’s review of Giedion’s book, where the author compares Adolf Behne’s inclination to project the achievements of modern buildings in the context of “urban environment”. The collectivity underpinning most Constructivist projects was dismissed by Giedion’s interest in “anonymous design” of the kind implied in industrial building types. Also informative are the cover pages of the two books. Whereas Behne’s The Modern Functional Building, 1926, is furnished by El Lizzisky’s design for a tower, that of Giedion demonstrates skeletal structure. See Frampton, “The Dialectics of Functionalism: Adolf Behne and Sigfried Giedion,” Design Book Review 39 (1997): 18-21. 60 Sigfried Giedion, Walter Gropius (New York: Dover Publications, Inc.), 6. 61 Detlef Mertins, “Walter Benjamin’s glimpses of the unconscious: new architecture and new optics,” in History of Photography, 118. 62 Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, 391. 63 Sigfried Giedion’s later writing, especially his return to concepts such as monumentality and regionalism, speaks for itself. Gone was the faith in technological progress, and the realization that “the command of mechanization went hand in hand with the increasing loss of humanity…” See Sokratis Georgiadis, “Introduction” to Giedion, Building in France, Building in Iron, 4. 64 Sokratis Georgiadis, Sigfried Giedion, 53. 65 On this subject it is enough to put Mumford’s and Giedion’s reflections on the Hudson River Parkway in New York next to each other. See van Moos, “Mumford versus Giedion: Reviewing the Machine Age,” Design Book review19 (Winter 1991): 25-30. 66 According to Sokratis Georgiadis, Sigfried Giedion visited The Bauhaus School during the summer of 1923, and met Walter Gropius for the first time, the result of which was a short monograph on the architect published in 1931. Georgiadis, “Introduction,” 1-2 67 I am recalling Manfredo Tafuri in Architecture and Utopia (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1986). 68 Gevork Hartoonian, “Adolf Loos: the Awakening Moments of Tradition in Modern Architecture,” Ontology of Construction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Also Kenneth Frampton, “In Spite of the Void: the Otherness of Adolf Loos,” Labour, Work, and Architecture (New York: Phaidon, 2002), 196218. 69 Massimo Cacciari, Figures of Architecture and Thought (New York: Rizzoli, 1990), specially the chapter “Loosian Dialectic,” 101-120. 70 Benedetto Gravagnuolo, Adolf Loos (New York: Rizzoli Publishing Co, 1988), 24. 71 Sokratis Georgiadis, Sigfried Giedion, 36. 72 Sokratis Georgiadis, Sigfried Giedion, 38. 73 Sigfried Giedion, “History and the Architect,” Zodiac 1 (1957): 56.

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74

Sokratis Georgiadis, Sigfried Giedion, 44. All the pages dedicated to Giedion’s book disclose the fact that Georgiadis travels in the same line as Giedion; a point of view, which in its assessment of modern architecture excludes the critical nature of the project of modernity and its impact on architecture. 75 On this subject and the influence of Adolf Behne’s essay “Art, Handicraft, Technology,” 1922, and for the formation of modern architecture in Germany, see George Baird, “The Labour of our Body and the Work of our Hand,” Harvard Architectural Review 7 (1989): 82-99. For a concise history of different theories of architecture permeating Weimar, see Francesco Dal Co, Figures of Architecture (New York: Rizzoli, 1990). 76 Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Use and Abuse of History (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1949). 77 I am benefiting from Kenneth Frampton’s opening chapters in Modern Architecture, a Critical History (London: Thames and Hudson, 1980), especially chapters 2 and 3. 78 On the subject of posthumanism see Michael K. Hays, Modernism and the Posthumanist Subject, 1992. Also, Detlef Mertins, Transparencies Yet to Come,” last chapter. 79 Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time, and Architecture: the Growth of a New Tradition, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1941), 14. To support the parallel he makes between natural sciences and artistic activity, the Giedion of the late 1920s took advantage of another historian, Alexander Dorner, who is not mentioned in Space, Time, and Architecture. Giedion’s reference to Dorner is mentioned in Georgiadis, Sigfried Giedion, 92. On the work of Dorner, see Joan Ockman, “The Road Not taken: Alexander Dorner’s Way beyond Art” in ed. R. E. Somol, Autonomy and Ideology, 80-121. 80 Andrew Bowie, Introduction to German Philosophy, from Kant to Habermas, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003), 82. 81 Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time, and Architecture, 20. 82 On this subject and Sigfried Giedion’s affiliation with the discourse of the Enlightenment, see Detlef Mertins, “System and Freedom: Sigfried Giedion, Emil Kaufmann, and the Constitution of Architectural Modernity” in ed. R. E. Somol, Autonomy and Ideology, 212-231. More on this subject in the next chapter. 83 Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time, and Architecture, 21. 84 Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, Hannah Arendt, ed. (New York: Schoken Books, 1969), 217-252. 85 In the Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy 1860, J. Burckhardt reiterated his belief that art is the best mirror of its society. Highlighting the significance of Renaissance art for art history, the author underlines the exceptional socio-political situation of Italy in that period comparing it to other European countries. Sigfried Giedion not only intended to discuss the implication of Burckhardt’s association between art and society, but more importantly, the thinker’s belief that, even though art can be understood in its historicality, it has its own “internal laws” and can stand out of history as “the universal measure of civilization.” See Michael

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 Podoro, The Critical Art Historians of Art (New Haven: the Yale University Press, 1982), 183-187. 86 Heinrich Wölfflin, Renaissance and Baroque, trans. Lathrin Simon (London: Collins, 1964), 17. 87 Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time, and Architecture, 43-55. 88 Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time, and Architecture, 30. 89 Joseph Rykwert, The Burlington Magazine, 123. 90 Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time, and Architecture, 34. 91 According to Heinrich Wölfflin, techniques and material are important for architecture, but in rejection of the nineteenth-century tendencies to overestimate technical determinism, he emphasises the primacy of a conception of form that is informed by “the conception and representation of the human figure in the representational arts.” Wölfflin, Renaissance and Baroque, trans. Lathrin Simon (London: Collins, 1964), 79. 92 Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time, and Architecture, 40. 93 Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time, and Architecture, 408. 94 Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time, and Architecture, 407. 95 Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time, and Architecture, 430. 96 Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time, and Architecture, 239. 97 See Kenneth Frampton, “Giedion in America: Reflections in a Mirror,” Architectural Design 51 6/7 (1981): 45-51. 98 Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time, and Architecture, 304. 99 Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time, and Architecture, 334. 100 According to Sigfried Giedion, Le Corbusier’s design “represents a later stage” in the evolution of what William Le Baron Jenney had done in Chicago. Giedion, Space, Time, and Architecture, 305. 101 Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time, and Architecture, 339. 102 Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time, and Architecture, 320. 103 Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time, and Architecture, 384. 104 Caroline van Eck, Organicism in nineteenth-century architecture (Amsterdam: A&N Press, 1994), 19. 105 Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time, and Architecture, 384.

Chapter Five 1

Charles Jencks for one has made fame for himself by systematic periodization of contemporary architecture. For example see Jencks, Architecture 2000 (London: Studio Vista, 1971), 46-47. 2 Jurgen Habermas, “Modernity-An Incomplete Project,” in ed. Hal Foster, The Anti-Aesthetic (Washington: Bay Press, 1983), 3-15. 3 This is roughly the time period Reyner Banham called the “zone of silence.” See Banham, “History Under Revision,” Architectural Review 4 (May 1960): 327. For the theoretical underpinning of the exhibition see Philip Johnson and H. R. Hitchcock, International Style Architecture. The entire project and the role played

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 by MoMA is revisited in Terrence Riley, The International Style: Exhibition 15 and the Museum of Modern Art (New York: Rizzoli Publication Inc., 1992). 4 Slavoj Žižek, Organs Without Bodies (London: Routledge, 2004), 14. 5 By “culture of building,” I mean tropes accumulated throughout the history of architectural theory and practice. I am thinking of ‘ideas concerning inside/outside relations, the dialogical rapport between column and wall, the tectonic achieved by symbolic embellishment of a constructed form, and that of the earth-work and the framework discussed by the nineteenth-century German architect Gottfried Semper. See Gevork Hartoonian, “Five Points: Unweaving the Old Cloth,” Architectural Theory Review 5 1 (2000): 44-55. 6 Manfredo Tafuri, Theories and History of Architecture (London: Granada, 1980), 141. 7 Anthony Vidler, Histories of the Immediate Present (Cambridge: the MIT Press, 2008), 12. 8 I am borrowing the concept of technification from Theodor Adorno’s discussion concerning the impact of electronic tools on music. Adorno, “Music and Technique” in Sound Figure (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 302. 9 Jacques Derrida, “Point de folie - Maintenant l’architecture,” AA Files 12 (Summer 1986): 65. 10 Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” in Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn, (New York, Schoken Books, 1973), 217-252. 11 See Giulio. Argan, The Renaissance City (London: Studio Vista, 1969). 12 For this author’s reflection on Mies van der Rohe and Adolf Loos, see Gevork Hartoonian, Ontology of Construction (Cambridge University Press, 1994). Also see Massimo Cacciari, Architecture and Nihilism: On the Philosophy of Modern Architecture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 101-138 . 13 For Hall Foster see, Compulsive Beauty (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1993), 30. 14 Colin Rowe, The Mathematics of the ideal Villa, and Other Essays (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1976), specially the chapter on Mies. 15 Interview with Manfredo Tafuri, published in the special issue of the journal on Tafuri. Casabella 619-620 (January-February 1995): 97-99. 16 Here I am following Slavoj Žižek’s formulation of “symbolic castration.” Žižek, Organs Without Bodies, 88. 17 In saying this I am thinking of Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), but also Colin Rowe’s differentiation between the Chicago architects’ understanding of steel frame structure and that of their European counterparts in general, and Le Corbusier’s formulation of the Dom-ino frame in particular. See Rowe, “Chicago Frame,” in The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa, 89-118. 18 As far as the significance of Mies van der Rohe is concerned, mention should be made of Francesco Dal Co, Figures of Architecture and Thought: German Architecture Culture, 1880-1920 (New York: Rizzoli, 1990). Also see this author’s Ontology of Construction. 19 Instead of listing every possible text, one rather should limit the scope of the list to those authors who published during the decade of the 1930s, the high days of the

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 formation of modernism in architecture, and in critique of the machinistic version of modernism. 20 Hal Foster, Compulsive Beauty, the last three chapters in particular. 21 The subject has been dealt with in many texts including Alfred Barr, Cubism and Abstract Art (Modern Museum of Art, New York City, 1936), Henry-Russel Hitchcock, Painting Toward Architecture (New York: Duell, Solan and Peace, 1924), and Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky, “Transparency Literal and Phenomenal,” 159-184. See also essays collected in Eve Blau and Nancy J. Troy, ed., Architecture and Cubism (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1997), specially essays by Yve-Alain Bois, 187-194, and Detlef Mertins, 219-251. 22 Andrew Bowie, Introduction to German Philosophy, from Kant to Habermas (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003), 13-40. 23 According to Clement Greenberg, in different historical conditions certain artistic activity might operate as a dominant art form. And “the dominant art in turn tries itself to absorb the functions of others.” By 1848 and the decline of Romanticism, Greenberg claims that painting slowly dissociated itself from the domination of literature, and moved towards autonomy as part of the historical attempt by avant-garde to separate itself from bourgeois society. Greenberg, “Towards a Newer Laocoon,” Collected Essays (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1986), 24. The essay was written in 1940. 24 Detlef Mertins, “Anything but Literal: Sigfried Giedion and the Reception of Cubism” in ed. Eve Blau and Nancy J. Troy, Architecture and Cubism, 219-251. 25 In Apres le Cubism, Ozenfant and Jeanerette claimed that cubism was “too decorative” and “too chaotic.” Quoted in Beatriz Colomina, “Where Are We?” in ed. Eve Blau and Nancy J. Troy, Architecture and Cubism, 148. 26 Fredric Jameson, A Singular Modernity (London: Verso 2002), 176. 27 Fredric Jameson, A Singular Modernity, 176. 28 Hal Foster, Design and Crime g(London: Verso, 2004), 100-103. 29 See for example, Anthony Vidler, Histories of the Immediate Present. 30 On this subject see Michael Hays, Architecture’s Desire, Reading the AvantGarde (Cambridge: the MIT Press, 2010). 31 Clement Greenberg, “Avant-garde and Kitsch” in Art and Culture: Critical Essays (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961), 5. 32 Clement Greenberg, Collected Essays, 28. 33 Clement Greenberg, Collected Essays, 32-34. 34 T. J. Clark, “Clement Greenberg’s Theory of Art,” Critical Inquiry 9 1 (Sept. 1982): 152. 35 Cited in T. J. Clark, “Clement Greenberg’s Theory of Art,” 153. 36 Clement Greenberg, The Collected Essays and Criticism: Modernism with a Vengeance, 1957-1969, John O’Brian ed. (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1993). 37 On the importance of this subject see Hubert Damisch, “Ledoux with Kant,” Perspecta 33: Mining Autonomy (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2002): 10-15. 38 Andrew Bowie, Aesthetics and Subjectivity, 5. 39 Fredric Jameson, A Singular Modernity, 175-176.

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Mark Jarzombek, “The Cunning of Architecture's Reason,” Footprint 1 (Autumn 2007): 36.  41 For the complete list of his recurrent themes that, according to Tafuri, the project of the enlightenment enforced on architecture, see Manfredo Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1976), 3. 42 Hubert Damisch, “Ledoux with Kant,” 14. 43 According to Hubert Damisch, “a new start from zero, from principle”, the revolution of 1897, “becomes the matrix of a truly human and rational history.” Hubert Damisch, “Ledoux with Kant,” 14. 44 Daniel Sherer, “Progetto and Ricerca: Manfredo Tafuri as Critic and Historian,” Zodiac 15 (1996): 47. 45 Mitchell Schwarzer, “Ontology and Representational in Karl Bötticher's Theory of Tectonics,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 52 3 (1993): 271.  46 On the arguments motivated by Edmund Burke’s discussion on the sublime and beauty see Eileen Harris, “Burke and Chambers on Sublime and Beautiful” in ed. D. Fraser, H. Hibbard, M. J. Lewine, Essays in the History of Architecture Presented to Rudolf Wittkower (London: Phaidon 1969), 207-213. 47 On this subject and different interpretations of nature as an “autonomous” entity with its own laws, though interpreted differently during the late seventeenth and eighteenth century, see N. Pevsner, “The Genesis of the Picturesque” first published in Architectural Review XCVI (1944), reprinted in Studies in Art, Architecture & Design, vol. 1 (London: Thames & Hudson, 1968), 78-101. For an understanding of the historical context and Pevsner’s essay see Reyner Banham, “Revenge of Picturesque: English Architectural Polemics, 1945-1965,” in John Summerson, ed., Concerning Architecture (Baltimore: Penguin Books Inc, 1968), 265-273. 48 Emil Kaufmann, “Three Revolutionary Architects, Boullee, Ledoux, and Lequeu” in Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 42 3 (October 1952). Also see Anthony Vidler, Histories of the Immediate Present, chapter 1, 1758. His argument hinges on the discursive force of autonomy for contemporary architectural historiography. 49 Detlef Mertins, “System and Freedom: Sigfried Giedion, Emil Kaufmann, and the Constitution of Architectural Modernity” in ed. R. E. Somol, Autonomy and Ideology: Positioning and Avant-garde in America (New York: The Monacellis Press, 1997), 223-229. The author clearly places “closure” at the centre of the project of modernity and stresses the failure of historical avant-garde, but also historians of the magnitude of Kaufmann and Giedion, in establishing a “new normality that would overturn Kant without returning directly to the metaphysical claims to substance”. Mertins, 1997, 230. On the idea of autonomy and its implications for contemporary architectural historiography see, Perspecta 33. 50 Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas on the Sublime and Beautiful, first published in 1757, here from James T. Boulton, ed. (London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968), 76-77.

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 51

The term in itself is borrowed from E. Kant. See Andrew Bowie, “Modern Philosophy and the Emergence of Aesthetic Theory” in Aesthetics and Subjectivity, 15-34. 52 Ernst Cassirer’s The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, first published in 1932, in F. C. A. Koelln & James P. Pettegrove, trans. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955), 41. 53 On the importance of Piranesi see Manfredo Tafuri, “The Wicked Architect: G. B. Piranesi, Heterotopia and the Voyage,” in Tafuri, The Sphere and the Labyrinth (Cambridge: the MIT Press, 1987), 25-54. On autonomy see, for example, Bernard Tschumi, “Architecture and Limits II,” Art Forum (September 1981): 36. 54 Marco De Michelis, “Aldo Rossi and Autonomous Architecture” in The Changing of the Avant-garde (New York: the Museum of Modern Art, 2002), 92. 55 Michael Hays, ed., Architecture Theory Since 1968 (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1998), 131-132. 56 Peter Eisenman, “Autonomy and Avant-garde: The Necessity of an Architectural Avant-garde in America” in ed. R. E. Somol, Autonomy and Ideology, 68-79. 57 Clement Greenberg, “Towards a Newer Laocoon,” 28. 58 Giorgio Ciucci, “The formative years,” Casabella 619-620, 23. In the same issue of the journal, also see Francesco Paolo Fiore, “The Autonomy of History,” 103111. 59 “A Conversation with Kenneth Frampton,” conducted by Stan Allen and Hal Foster, October 106 (Fall 2003): 35-58. 60 Peter Eisenman, “Autonomy and Avant-garde,” 68-79. 61 Hal Foster, “A Questionnaire on ‘The Contemporary’: 32 Responses,” October 130 (2009): 3. 62 For a critique of the idea of critical, see George Baird, “‘Criticality’ and its Discontents,” Harvard Design Magazine 21 (Fall 2004-Winter 2005): 16-21. Also see Reinhold Martin, “Critical of What? Towards a Utopian Realism,” Harvard Design Magazine 22 (Spring-Summer 2005): 104-109. These two texts draw their argument from the idea of the end of ideology and/or history. 63 For a comprehensive reading of Manfredo Tafuri’s project of history see Carla Keyvanian, “Manfredo Tafuri’s Notion of History and its Methodological Sources: From Walter Benjamin to Roland Barthes,” (Graduate Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1992). 64 See Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History” in Language, CounterMemory, Practice (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977). 65 On these subjects see Anthony Vidler, Histories of the Immediate Present, 175176. 66 Anthony Vidler, Histories of the Immediate Present, 171. 67 Manfredo Tafuri, “The Historical Project,” The Sphere and the Labyrinth (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1987), 14-15. 68 Manfredo Tafuri, Interpreting the Renaissance, princes, cities, architects, trans. Daniel Sherer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 51. 69 Felicity D. Scott notes that what is lost in Charles Jencks’ taxonomies of The Language of Post-modern Architecture (1977), for example, are, in Michel Foucault’s words, “dividing lines in the confrontations and struggles that

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 functional arrangements or systematic organizations are designed to mask.” Scott, Architecture or Techno-utopia: Politics After Modernism (Cambridge: the MIT Press, 2007), 10. 70 Carlo Ginzburg, History, Rhetoric, and Proof (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1999), 24. 71 See the chapter titled “Ideology and Utopia,” in Manfredo Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia, 50-77. 72 Walter Benjamin, “The Author as Producer” in Peter Demetz, ed., Reflections (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), 222. 73 Pier Vittorio Aureli, The project of Autonomy (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2008), 12-13. 74 If one accepts that Rossi formulated one aspect of critical practice available at the time, another, according to Pier Vittorio Aureli, is a “critique of ideology of capitalist city, as this ideology manifested itself in the postwar recuperation of the Modern Movement and a new wave of technological avant-gardism in the 1960s,” discussed by Manfredo Tafuri and Branzi. See Aureli, The Project of Autonomy, 55. 75 Manfredo Tafuri, “The Historical Project,” 14 76 Pier Vittorio Aureli, “Recontextualising Tafuri’s Critique of Ideology,” Log 18 (Winter 2010): 90. 77 Manfredo Tafuri, “The Historical Project,” 7. 78 On the critical nature of Manfredo Tafuri’s dialogue with American neo-avantgarde groups see Diane Y. Ghirardo, “Manfredo Tafuri and Architectural Theory in the U.S., 1970-2000,” Perspecta 33, 38-47. 79 Carlo Olmo, “One History, Many Stories,” Casabella 619-620 (1995): 79. 80 Manfredo Tafuri, “Main Lines of the Great Theoretical Debates Over Architecture and Urban Planning 1960-1977,” A+U 1 (1979): 123. This article discusses the thematic of what later would be the essence of Tafuri’s discourse on the historical avant-garde and the historical project. 81 Manfredo Tafuri, “A Search for Paradigms: Project, Truth, Artifice,” trans. Daniel Sherer, Assemblage 28 (December 1995): 47. 82 Fredric Jameson, Valences of the Dialectic, London: Verso, 2009, p. 135. 83 Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky have been credited for converting a formalistic interpretation of cubism into an analytical tool. In their seminal essay, “Phenomenal Transparency vs. Literal Transparency”, instead of associating the space in the corner of Walter Gropius’s the Bauhaus School, the authors introduced phenomenal transparency underlying the structure of surface layering and the compositional laws governing the structure of form. See Rowe and Slutzky, The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and Other Essays, 159-184. Rowe’s work was consequential for the understanding of formal autonomy in reference to Zeitgeist or any other totalizing forces. More importantly, his methodology allowed architects to “invent” or choose strategies of formal analysis from the repertoire of history. 84 Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History (London: Thames & Hudson, 1980).

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 85

This subject is discussed in Kenneth Frampton, “The Status of Man and the Status of his Objects” in Frampton, ed., Modern Architecture and the Critical Present (London: Academy Editions, 1982), 7-19. This issue of Architectural Design profile was published on the occasion of the publication of Frampton’s Critical History, 1980. 86 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago press, 1958), 88. 87 Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays (New York: Harper and Row, 1977). 88 Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture, 297. 89 One year after the publication of Critical History, in discussing “regionalism,” Frampton extended the list of architects to include Alvaro Siza, Mario Botta, among others. See Kenneth Frampton, ed. Modern Architecture and the Critical Present, 77-83. 90 Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture, 10. 91 Peter Burger, Theory of Avant-Garde (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis, 1984). 92 Jurgen Habermas, “Modernity: An-Incomplete Project,” in ed. Hal Foster, The Anti-Aesthetic, 3. 93 Fredric Jameson, A Singular Modernity, 20. 94 The New York Five’s timely departure from the language of late modern architecture was seen as a radical alternative to postmodern simulation of historical forms. 95 See Kenneth Frampton’s editorial, “On Reading Heidegger,” Oppositions 4 (1974): 1-4. Also see Gianni Vattimo, The End of Modernity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985). This Italian thinker presents a fresh departure from the phenomenological reading of Heidegger. It is needless to describe the extent to which Vattimo’s discourse was significant for this author’s approach to the tectonic. See Gevork Hartoonian, Ontology of Construction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 96 Gevork Hartoonian, “Avant-Garde: Re-Thinking Architecture,” in Modernity and its Other, 103. This dimension of Frampton’s position is dismissed in Jameson’s reading of “Critical Regionalism.” See Fredric Jameson, The Seeds of Time (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 185-205. 97 Kenneth Frampton, “Critical Regionalism Revisited: Reflections on the Mediatory Potential of Built Form,” in ed. M. Umbach and B. Huppauf, Vernacular Modernism: Heimat, Globalisation, and the Built Environment (California: Stanford University Press, 2005), 193. 98 Ursula Suter, “The ‘Neues Bauen’ by other means: The International Building Brigades in the Soviet Union,” Daidalos 54 (1994): 49. 99 Kenneth Frampton, “Introduction,” Technology, Place and Architecture (New York: Rizzoli, 1998), 12. 100 Kenneth Frampton, “Intimation of Tactility: Excerpts from a Fragmentary Polemic,” in ed. S. Marble, D. Smiley, Architecture and the Body (New York: Rizzoli, 1988), 53.

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Notes



101

Anthony Vidler, “The Ledoux Effect: Emil Kaufman and the Claims of Kantian Autonomy,” Perspecta 33, 27. For the proceedings of the aforementioned conference, see in ed. R. Somol, Autonomy and ideology. On Emil Kaufmann and the idea of autonomy see the chapter on N. Pevsner in this volume. 102 Anthony Vidler, Histories of the Immediate Present. 103 I am benefiting from Fredric Jameson’s insightful reading of Paul Ricoeur in Time and Narrative. See Jameson, Valences of Dialectics, 484. 104 Hubert Damisch, “Ledoux with Kant”, Perspecta 33, 15. 105 Again I am benefiting from Fredric Jameson’s reading of Paul Ricouer’s project. Jameson, Valences of the Dialectic, 487. 106 Christopher Wood, “Why Autonomy?” in Perspecta 33, 49. 107 On the subject of the turn to textual discourse and its implications for “history,” see Patrick Joyce & Catriona Kelly, “History and Post-Modernism,” Past and Present, 133 (November 1991): 204-213. At the heart of the debate is the duality internal to textual interpretation of the social, and the claim that “history is never present to us in anything but a discursive form.” 28. 108 Mark Jarzombek, “Post-Modernist Historicism: The Historian’s Dilemma,” Threshold 1 (Spring 1982): 91-93. 109 Hyden White, “Against Historical Realism,” New Left Review 46 (July/August 2007): 93. 110 Hubert Damisch, “Ledoux with Kant,” Perspecta 33, 15. 111 Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes: the Short Twentieth Century, 1914-1991 (London: Abacus, 1995), 15. 112 On this subject see Fritz Neumeyer, The Artless World (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1991), 185-236 in particular. 113 Hubert Damisch, “Ledoux with Kant,” Perspecta 33, 15.

INDEX

Aalto, Alvar 66, 131, 135, 139, 144, 168 Abstraction 25, 40, 87, 148, 151152, 174; aesthetic of 150 Ackerman, James 19 Adorno, Theodor 11, 162 Alberti, L. B. 79, 129, 131, 146, 161 Althusser Louis 6 Arendt, Hannah 165 Argan, Giulio 146 art history 7, 22, 31-31, 35, 52, 59, 61-62, 126, 139; German tradition of 37; Viennese school of 36, 38, 44, 47-48, 54 Art Nouveau 51, 82-83, 85, 90, 132133, 150 Arts and Crafts 35-36, 42, 47, 53, 58, 96, 133, 166, 168 autonomy 3-4, 7, 11-13, 19, 21, 23, 36-37, 66, 126, 151-154, 157158, 170-172; concept of 59; of architecture 56; semi-12, 38, 159, 172-173, 175 Avant-garde 50, 143, 147, 153; historical 55; neo- 154, 170

Benjamin, Andrew 27 Benjamin, Walter 2, 3, 7-9, 13-14, 17-19, 22-28, 114-115, 118, 120-121, 124, 126-127, 145, 149, 163-167, 171; Angelus Novus 15, 26; anthropological dimension; loss of aura 7, 1920; technology 29; wish-images 7 Berlage, Petrus 39-40, 69, 73, 81, 89-90, 117 Berman, Marshall 64; see pastoral Botticher, Karl 46, 111-112, 114115, 118 Borromini, Francesco 129-130, 135 Boullee, E. L. 104, 155-156 Bowie, Andrew 103, 154 Breithaupt, Fritz 15 Breton, Andre 149 Brett, John 57 Buck-Morss, Susan 27 Burckhardt, J. 128, 130-131 Burger, Peter 167 Burke, E. 80, 155-156 Burnham, Daniel 88

Babbitt, Irving 68 Banham, Reyner 49-51, 58, 144-145 Baroque 22-23, 37, 75, 77, 79, 82, 103, 105, 117; architecture 128, 130 Barr, Alfred H. 85 Barthes, Roland 160 Bauhaus 56, 58, 64, 121-124, 133, 138, 151 Behen, A. 51, 61, 151 Behrendt, W. C. 42 Behrens, Peter 43, 45; AEG factory 46

Cacciari, Massimo 160 Cassirer, Ernst 80, 156 Cavell, Stanley 64 Chicago school architecture 47, 62, 68, 70, 72, 75, 77, 79, 87, 133135 Choay, Francoise 15 cladding 39-40, 42, 77, 90, 115, 119, 122, 135 Clark, T. J. 153-154 closure 3-4, 26, 35, 48, 52-53, 66, 101, 147, 158-159 Cole, Henry 36, 123

210

Index

Colquhoun, Alan 4-5, 50-51, 70 construction 23, 26-27, 29-30, 48, 65, 71, 73, 77, 81, 105, 112, 116, 133, 145 constructivist 18, 117; Russian 114115, 120, 144 Courbet, Gustave 56 critical 2, 167 ; practice 25; praxis 154; theory 158, see history Crossley, Paul 33 Crystal Palace 123 Cubism 123, 129-130, 134, 138 Cuijpers, J. H. 89 Cuvier Georges 68 Dal co Francesco 87-88 Damisch Hubert 155, 171, 174 Derrida Jacques 6, 145 De Stijl 94 disintegration 65-67, 79 Dom-ino-frame 112, 118-119, 151 Ecole des Beaux-Arts 61, 117 Eiffel, Gustave 107 Eiffel tower 107, 109-110, 116, 118, 121 Eisenman, Peter 157-158 Emerson R. W. 63-64, 69 Engel, Ute 39 engineering 71, 79, 81-82, 86, 91 Enlightenment 80, 102-103, 125126, 128, 154, 161, 171, 174 Expressionism 82-83, 85-86, 98, 117, 150; German 85 Foster Hal 146, 149, 152 Foucault, Michel 5-6, 10, 14, 49, 159, 161, 163 Frampton, Kenneth 2, 21, 26, 143145, 158-159, 146, 165-172, see chapter 5, and critical regionalism Frankfurt School 2, 158, 171 Freud, S. 20, 102, 106, 146, 160161, 167 Frey, Dagobert 54



Games, Stephen 35, Garnier, Charles 26, 117-118 Gassner, Hubertus 18 Geddes, Patrick 84 Georgiadis, Sokratis 117, 121, 123 Giedion Sigfried 1, 4, 7, 13, 31, 52, 61, 63, 67, 141, 144, 148-149, 150-151, 156, 163, 174; construction 18, see chapter 4 Gilly, Friedrich 63 Ginzburg, Carlo 28, 160-162 Gravagnuolo, B. 122 Greenberg, Clement 152-154, 156, 158, 171 Greene, G. T. 47 Gropius, Walter 4, 32-35, 39-40, 43, 46, 49-50, 52-54, 56, 58, 92, 94, 98, 120, 123, 135, 143; Fagus factory 44, 47 Habermas, Jurgen 143, 152, 167168 Halbertsma, Marlite 36 Hanssen, Beatrice 20 Harootunian, Harry 16 Hays, Michael 11 Hegel, G. W. F. 4-5, 154 Heidegger, Martin 149, 155, 166167 Hejduk, John 157 Hildebrand, Adolf von 103 historicism 4-5, 8 , 10-11, 49-53, 56, 66-67, 89, 95, 112, 141, 143144, 152, 161, 173; Foucauldian 155; postmodern 174 historiography 1, 11, 31-32, 34, 48, 50, 57, 61, 99, 101-102, 124, 141-142, 152, 164, 167, 172; architectural 26, 29-30; critical 143, 147-148; materialistic 17; post-war 144; pre-war 143, 148, 151 History 2, 5, 24-27, 32, 34, 43, 49,51, 53, 56, 66, 101-102, 115, 125-126, 134, 138, 144, 146, 148, 151-153, 157, 171, 174;

The Mental Life of the Architectural Historian angel of 127; architectural 7, 19, 21, 28, 52, 61, 65, 124, 155, 157, 147, 161, 173; critical 145, 165, 167, 173; disciplinary 34; the end of 10, 18, 158-159; vision of 34, 116, 127 Hitchcock, Henry-Russell 1, 4, 6, 101, 103, 116, 129, 144, 148150; historiography 62; new tradition 4, 7, 33, 52, 138; pastoral vision 79; vision of history 81, see chapter 3 Hobsbawm, Eric 174 Hoffmann, J. 69, 90 Horta, Victor 133 Howard, J. G. 85 Hubsch, Heinrich 5, 73, 104 Humanism 19, 36, 67, 70-71, 74, 114, 162 Iversen, Margaret 9, 24, 36 Jameson, Fredric 49, 57, 109, 141, 152, 154, 168 Jarzombek, Mark 154, 173 Jeanneret, Pierre 92 Jefferson, Thomas 63, 96 Jenney, W. Le Baron 134-35 Johnson, Philip 52, 66, 99; see style Kant, E. 103-104, 126, 128, 151, 155-156, 171 Kaufmann, Emil 34, 37-38, 40, 80, 104, 155-156 Kemp, Wolfgang 48 Kimball, Fiske 63, 71, 77 Klee, Paul 14, 97 Kunstwollen 8-9, 24, 28, 36, 43 Labrouste, Henri 40-41, 79, 112; Bibliotheque Nationale 112-113 Lane, B. Miller 53 Le Corbusier 4, 8, 18, 26, 34, 51, 56, 61, 71, 91-93, 97-98, 101, 105-106, 108-112, 117-123,



211

130-131, 134, 146, 148, 151, 155 Ledoux, Claude-Nicolas 34, 37-38, 40, 104 Leonidov, I. 120 Lequeu J. 104 Loos, Adolf 39, 93-95, 115-116, 121-122, 135, 139, 144, 146, 150, 168; Looshaus 95 Lyotard, Jean-Francois 16 Mackintosh, C. R. 58 MacLaughlin, Kevin 13 Mallgrave, H. F. 45, 47, 103 Marseilles 108 Marx, Karl 17-18, 106, 167 Marxism 36 Maybeck, Bernard 85 Mertins Detlef 114, 120, 151, 156 Meyer, Adolf 43-44 Meyer, Hannes 114, 169 Mies van der Rohe 97-98, 112, 115, 131, 135, 146; Lake Shore 147 Model factory 43-45, 47 modernism 62, 64, 93, 112, 139, 141, 150, 152, 159, 174 Modernity 3, 5, 11, 15-16, 49, 53, 56-57, 61, 72, 79, 84, 88, 100, 105, 116, 118, 127-128, 141144, 146-147, 152, 159, 163, 170, 172; concept of 59; ideology of 58; nihilism of 169, 174; pastoral vision of 67; project of 58, 145-147; rethinking 58 modernization 58, 65-67, 84, 88, 124, 127, 144, 147-148, 150151 Moholy-Nagy, Laszlo 31, 123 Mondrian, P. 118 monumentality 72-74, 76, 78 Moore, P. E. 68 Morris, William 31-32, 34, 39-40, 42-43, 49, 52-56, 58, 64, 143 Mumford, Lewis 4, 63-64, 68, 7072, 75, 82, 85-88, 92, 96, 121

212

Index

Muthesius, Hermann 47, 122, 143 Neue Bauen 146, 168 New tradition 62, 65, 68-69, 71-72, 74-75, 78-79, 81-83, 86-92, 94, 97-98, 131, 149-150; see Hitchcock Nietzsche, F. 160, 167 Olmo, Carlo 163 Olmsted, F. L. 71, 84, 88 organicism 46, 62, 68-70, 75, 86, 126, 138 ornamentation 40, 133, 151 Osborne, Peter 27 Oud, J. P. 94, 97 Ozenfant, A. 42-43 Panofsky, Erwin 5-6 Pastoral 61, 87, 100; see Hitchcock; see Berman, Marshall Payne, Alina 24 periodization 11, 34, 48-49, 59, 62, 65, 67, 78, 83, 116, 125-126, 143, see Pevsner Perret, Auguste. 69, 81, 90-91, 116117 Persico, E. 51 Pevsner Nikolaus 1, 4, 7, 66-67, 77, 92, 96, 101, 103, 129, 143-145, 147-151, 166; historiography 48; periodization 53; see chapter 2 Picasso, P. 129 Picturesque 67, 70, 77-79, 94, 96, 98 Pinder, Wilhelm 35-36, 59 Piranesi, G. B. 156 Popper, Karl 32 Porphyrios, Demetri 5-6, 10 Porter, Arthur 61 postmodernism 5, 142 Pugin 35, 54, 64 Realism 55 Redgrave, R. 36, 41



Regionalism 63, 83-84, 87, 90, 9293, 96, 171; critical 158, 165166, 168 reintegration 61-62, 64-65, 79, 90, 94; see Hitchcock Renaissance 15, 22-23, 29, 36, 6768, 71, 73, 99, 103, 106, 111, 128, 131, 146, 161; humanism 68 Richards, J. M. 37, 75 Richardson, H. H. 4, 62, 67-75, 7778, 82, 84-86, 88-90, 134; Marshall Field Wholesale Store 72-74, 77-79 Ricoeur, Paul 168, 171 Riegl, Alois 6-7, 9, 23, 25, 33-35, 38, 44-45, 48, 101, 126, 164; kunstwollen 8, 24, 28, 36, 43, Rodchenko, A. 18 Roebling John 71, 84 Romanticism 61, 65-66, 68, 70, 72, 74-75, 79-81, 83-85, 94-96, 102-103, 105, 124; American 64; national 117; German 62 Root, J. W. 70, 78, 87 Rossi, Aldo 157, 162 Rowe, Colin 114, 151 Rundbogenstil 73, 76 Ruskin, John 35, 40, 54-56, 59, 123 Sachlich 40, 48, 114, 150 Sachlichkeit 42, 48, 84, 112, 114, 150; Neue 150 Schapiro, Meyer 37-38 Scharoun, Hans 52 Schinkel, K. F. 39, 43, 63, 71, 79 Schivelbusch, Wolfgang 16, 104 Schlemmer, Oskar 45 Schmarsow, August 35-36, 104 Schmidt, Hans 169 Scholem Gerhard 14 Schuyler, Montgomery 68-69, 74 Schwarzer, Mitchell 111 Scolari, Massimo 157 Scott, Geoffrey 40, 67-68, 71, 81, 99

The Mental Life of the Architectural Historian Semper, Gottfried 9, 12, 24, 26, 28, 35, 38-43, 48, 55, 59, 71-73, 105, 111-112, 115, 118-119, 121; ur-form 25; see tectonic Siza, Alvaro 168; Swimming Pool 169 Slutzky, Robert 114, 151 Smith L. P. 62 Soane, John 69, 79 Stam, Mart 169 Steinberg, Michael 8 Structuralism 6, 10, 31-32, 153, 173; post- 31, 141 style 22, 24, 28-29, 57, 89, 91, 110111, 116, 122, 142, 157; Bay region 85, 87; historical 4, 77, 89, 132; new 31, 47, 51, 57, 66, 122-123; past 82; period 3-4, 11, 7-8; international 8, 11, 52, 66, 72, 83-84, 99, 101, 143-144, 148 sublime 80 Sullivan, Henry 70, 72, 76-78, 87, 134; Carson Pirie & Scott Store 136; Wainwright Building 76 Summerson, John 31, 49-51 Surrealism 36, 153 Tafuri, Manfredo 2, 5, 21, 26, 52, 121, 143-145, 147, 158-165, 170-172; operative criticism 51, 172 see chapter 5 Tallmadge, Thomas 70 Tatlin, V. 129 Taut, Bruno 92 techne 28, 105-106, 142 technification 20, 34, 145, 173-174 technique 13, 20-22, 25, 29, 38-39, 41, 47-48, 52-53, 66-67, 69, 72, 74-75, 78, 83, 86, 91-95, 97-99, 122-123, 131, 148, 151, 163; art and 64; construction 145; industrial 65; pre-modern 65 technology 8, 12, 18, 20-21, 46, 69, 83, 144, 148-149-150, 162, 166, 172; nihilism of 25, 154, 159



213

tectonic 12, 23, 25, 28, 38, 42, 7172, 74, 81, 90, 97, 114, 119, 145, 147, 158 theory 61, 141, 158, 173; critical 171; see Frankfurt School Thoreau H. D. 63-64 time 2, 10, 26, 34, 53, 57, 59, 124, 138, 161; historical 20; -now 12; natural 16; philosophy of 27, Tournikiotis, Panayotis 7, 32, 56 van de Velde, Henry 47, 92-93, 117, 122, 143 van Doesburg, T. 118 van Eck, Caroline 70, 78, 138; see organicism Vasari, G. 36, Vattimo, Gianni 20, 168 Venturi, Robert 148, 157 Vidler, Anthony 37, 145, 160, 171 Viollet-le-Duc 55-56, 59 Vischer, Robert 35, 45-46, 103 Vitruvius 105 Voysey, Charles 56-57 Wagner, Otto 39, 42, 90, 106, 132 Watkin, David 32, 36, 47, 57 Webb, Philip 36, 56 Weltanschauung 6 Werckmeister, O. K. 19 Werkbund 45, 54-55, 58, 64, 68, 92, 121-122 White, Hayden 173 Winckelmann, J. J. 54 Wittkower, Rudolf 148 Wolfflin Heinrich 7-8, 22, 24, 29, 33, 36, 43, 47, 52-53, 101-102, 125-126, 129, 164; painterly 23 Wood Christopher 43, 172 Wright, F. L. 26, 56, 66, 69-70, 72, 82, 84-86, 90-93, 116, 118, 134135, 138, 144; Larkin Administration Building 86; Henderson House 57; Robie House 137; Winslow house 45

214

Index

Zeitgeist 6, 14, 26, 31-32, 39, 42, 48, 53, 83, 92, 94-96, 115-116, 118, 123, 125, 127, 130, 133, 138, 141, 143-144, 148-150,



158, 160, 163, 171, 173; digital 59 Zevi, Bruno 26, 52, 144 Žižek, Slavoj 144 Zucker, Paul 43, 47