Writing, according to Panayotis Tournikiotis, has always exerted a powerful influence on architecture. Indeed, the study of modern architecture cannot be separated from a fascination with the texts that have tried to explain the idea of a new architecture in a new society. During the last forty years, the question of the relationship of architecture to its history -- of buildings to books -- has been one of the most important themes in debates about the course of modern architecture.
Tournikiotis argues that the history of modern architecture tends to be written from the present, projecting back onto the past our current concerns, so that the "beginning" of the story really functions as a "representation" of its end. In this book the buildings are the quotations, while the texts are the structure.
Tournikiotis focuses on a group of books by major historians of the twentieth century: Nikolaus Pevsner, Emil Kaufmann, Sigfried Giedion, Bruno Zevi, Leonardo Benevolo, Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Reyner Banham, Peter Collins, and Manfredo Tafuri. In examining these writers' thoughts, he draws on concepts from critical theory, relating architecture to broader historical models.
Author(s): Panayotis Tournikiotis
Publisher: The MIT Press
Year: 1999
Language: English
Pages: 358
City: Cambridge
The Historiography of Modern Architecture
Preface
Introduction
1 The Art Historians and the Founding Genealogies of Modern Architecture
The Parallel Démarches of Pevsner and Kaufmann
The Parallel Lives of the Artist and the Historian
The Paradox of Theory and the Diaspora of the Art Historians
2 The Critical Resurgence of Modern Architecture
The History Lesson
The Path of the Modern Language
The Fundamental Principles of Architecture
3 The Social Confirmation of Modern Architecture
Architecture as a Synthesis of Visible and Invisible Elements
Society Always Precedes Architecture
The Meaning of Commitment and the Primacy of the "General Will"
The Positive and Arbitrary Values of Architecture
4 The Objectification of Modern Architecture
Romanticism and Reintegration: The Genealogy of the Future
The History of Architecture is the Great Procession of Styles
The Aesthetics of the New Architecture
The International Style
The New Architecture and the Malaise of Objectivity
5 History in Search of Time Present
From the Zeitgeist to the Mainstream of History
The Fundamental Principles of Architecture
6 Architecture, Time Past, and Time Future
Architecture in the World of Ideas
Oecodomics and the Principles of Architecture
The Idea of Historic Continuity, and the Path of "Banal" Architecture
7 History as the Critique of Architecture
The Meaning of History
The Criticism of Architecture
The Brechtian Poetics of Architecture
8 Modern Architecture and the Writing of Histories
The History of Modern Architecture is Written in the Plural
The History/Theory/Project of Architecture
The History of Art/The History of Architecture
The Past/Present/Future of Architecture: Difference Versus Identity
Modern Architecture and Historicity
Notes
Preface
Introduction
1 The Art Historians and the Founding Genealogies of Modern Architecture
2 The Critical Resurgence of Modern Architecture
3 The Social Confirmation of Modern Architecture
4 The Objectification of Modern Architecture
5 History in Search of Time Present
6 Architecture, Time Past, and Time Future
7 History as the Critique of Architecture
8 Modern Architecture and the Writing of Histories
Bibliography
Index of Names
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