Theory

•  Kate Nesbitt: ‘Theory is a discourse that describes

the practice and production of architecture and identifies challenges to it’

•  Theory overlaps with but differs from architectural history - it poses alternative solutions, it is speculative, anticipatory and catalytic

•  ‘Theory deals with architecture’s aspirations as much as its accomplishments’

•  Since the 1960s: the pluralist period loosely defined as ‘postmodern’

•  Architectural theory became truly interdisciplinary

Types of theory

•  Prescriptive, proscriptive, affirmative, critical

Prescriptive theory offers new or revived solutions for specific problems

Proscriptive theory states what is to be avoided in design

•  Critical theory is broader than either - it evaluates the built world and its relationship to society

•  It is polemical, often expresses political and ethical orientation and aims to stimulate change

•  It is speculative, questioning and sometimes utopian

Theoretical treatise: defining the scope of the discipline

•  Theoretical treatises are concerned with the origins of a practice

Example: ‘the origin of architecture is in imitation of nature - mimesis - and man’s desire to improve upon it’

Basic subject matter of treatises:

•  1 requisite qualities of an architect (with regard to personality, education, experience, etc.)

•  2 requisite qualities of architecture (Vitruvius: ‘firmness, commodity, delight’)

•  3 a theory of design or construction method (Abbot Laugier) •  4 examples of the canon of architecture (Villa Savoye) •  5 attitude about the relationship between theory and practice

(useful, predictable - or not)

Postmodernism

‘The 1960s are in many ways the key transitional period in which the new international order (neocolonialism, the Green Revolution, computerization, and electronic information) is at one and the same time set in place and is swept away and shaken by its own internal contradictions and by external resistance.’

Fredric Jameson, ‘Postmodernism and Consumer Society’

Challenges to the Modern Movement

The demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe housing complex, 1972 (St Louis): the failure of modern architecture’s vision for housing (this example: a bureaucratic application of modernist principles)

The aesthetic of modernism was also increasingly seen as a sign of the corporate, commercial world - the social programme was lost:

‘European modern architecture was imported to America without its ideological component’ Colin Rowe

•  Architectural theory becomes institutionalised in this period

•  1967-68: independent think tanks founded in New York and Venice

•  Manhattan: Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies (IAUS) •  Similar in its mission to London’s Architectural Association (AA,

founded 1847) was •  Established by a board of architects (led by Peter Eisenman) in

opposition to the existing education •  It published Oppositions and October journals and a series of books like Aldo Rossi’s The Architecture of the City (1982, Italian 1966)

•  Italian architects among the most influential theorists of the period •  Architectural Institute at the University of Venice (IAUV) important

in particular (also Rome and Milan) •  1968 Manfredo Tafuri founded the Institute of Architectural History at

IAUV (Critical theory and Marxism) •  ‘School of Venice’ - a number of important architects

Mid-1960s: publication of several important

treatises

•  Aldo Rossi, The Architecture of the City (1966)

•  Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966)

•  Christian Norberg-Schulz, Intentions in Architecture (1965)

•  Christopher Alexander, Notes on the Synthesis of Form (1964)

Venturi:

•  the importance of looking at and using architectural history in contemporary design; a manifesto for historicist eclecticism

•  hybrid/pure, distorted/straightforward, ambiguous/articulated

•  Communication of meaning on various levels; encourages multiple interpretations

•  Robert Venturi, Denise Scott-Brown, Learning from Las Vegas (1972) In a decade, his theory became widespread

•  Charles Jencks, The Language of Post-Modern Architecture (1977) Codifies the emerging movement as a style

•  1969, conference at the MoMA followed by the 1972 publication Five Architects

•  Modern Movement-inspired work, countertendency in abstraction in relation to Venturi

•  Peter Eisenman, •  Michael Graves, •  Charles Gwathmey, •  John Hejduk, •  Richard Meier became known as the ‘New

York Five’

•  Common ground is formalist: interest in early Le Corbusier and cubism

•  The Venice Bienalle 1980 - Paolo Portoghesi: The Presence of the Past ‘Nostalgic and scenographic’: negative judgement passed by some critics

MoMA exhibition in 1988 “Deconstructivist Architecture’

•  Aimed to show a new movement, but the work wasn’t as related/homogenous as suggested

•  The term is a combination of philosopher Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction and Russian Constructivism

•  Rem Koolhaas and Zaha Hadid closest to Constructivism (through formal explorations)

•  Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi closest to philosophical deconstruction (critique and dismantling of disciplinary boundaries)

•  Frank Gehry, Steven Hall, Coop Himmelb(l)au - not similar to the above (characteristic for their intuitive and sensuous approach to materials)

Coop Himmelb(l)au

Theoretical paradigms

•  The postmodern period characterised by a number of theoretical paradigms imported from other disciplines:

phenomenology, aesthetics, linguistic theory, Marxism, feminism

1 Phenomenology

•  This philosophical thread underlies a number of attitudes towards site, place, landscape and making

•  More recently, this strand has moved into problematising the body’s interaction with its environment

•  Martin Heidegger (1887-1976) ‘Building, Dwelling, Thinking’ •  One of the most influential phenomenological works for architectural

theory •  Dwelling is defined as ‘a staying with things’

•  Norwegian critic Christian Norberg-Schulz interprets dwelling as being at peace in a protected place

‘The primary purpose of architecture is hence to make a world visible. It does this as a thing, and the world it brings intro presence consists in what it gathers’

•  In Existence, Space and Architecture (1971) and onwards - he explores architecture and dwelling

•  Phenomenology of architecture: ‘concretization of existential space’ through the making of places

•  Finnish phenomenologist Juhani Pallasmaa psychic apprehension of architecture: ‘opening up a view into a

second reality of perception, dreams, forgotten memories and imagination’

Peter Zumthor contemporary example of architecture

that displays a ‘phenomenological sensibility’

2 Aesthetic of the sublime

•  Aesthetics deals with the production and reception of the works of art

•  The ‘sublime’ is the principal aesthetic category of modernity

•  The effect the work of architecture has on the viewer in the case of the sublime is visceral

•  The definitions of the sublime (such as the uncanny and the grotesque) give shape to the modern aesthetic discourse and coincide with ‘postmodern’ thought

•  The scientific strand in architectural modernism suppressed this aesthetic enquiry

•  Emphasis on rationality and function marginalised beauty and the sublime as subjective issues

•  Psychoanalytic and deconstructionist models revitalise this:

Anthony Vidler deals with the uncanny; Peter Eisenman with the grotesque

•  Uncanny in this context: ‘the return of the body into an architecture that had repressed its conscious presence’ (Vidler)

•  Grotesque: ‘the condition of the always present or the already within, that the beautiful in architecture attempts to repress’ (Eisenman)

3 Linguistic theory

•  Linguistic paradigms shaped cultural criticism •  Semiotics, structuralism, post-structuralism reshaped many

disciplines: literature, philosophy, anthropology, sociology and all critical activity

•  This development in the 1960s parallels the revived interest in meaning and symbolism in architecture

•  Architects studied how meaning is created in language and applied it to architecture

•  Modernism was characterised by the belief in a whole, or unity, while postmodernism introduces the notions of ‘multidimensional space’ and ‘a methodological field’

•  Poststructuralism is characterised by the ‘critique of the sign’

Kate Nesbitt: ‘Before structuralism, the act of interpretation sought to

discover the meaning which coincided with the intention of the author or speaker; this meaning was considered definitive. Structuralism does not attempt to assign a true meaning to the work (beyond its structure) or to evaluate the work in relation to the cannon. In poststructuralism, it is asserted that meaning is indeterminate, elusive, bottomless.’

•  Deconstruction (Jacques Derrida) is one of the most significant poststructuralist manifestations

•  Tschumi and Eisenman representatives in architecture

•  The philosophy of Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) is today emerging as the most productive in the context of culture and architecture

4 Marxism

•  Particularly important for the study of the city and its institutions

•  ‘School of Venice’ (Manfredo Tafuri) particularly influential in raising the issue of the relationship between class struggle and architecture

•  Tafuri: ‘the crisis of modern architecture…[is] a crisis of the ideological function of architecture’

•  Fredric Jameson: grass-roots resistance to the status quo is possible through Marxist theory

•  Important poststructuralist working with the questions of the structure of political power: Michel Foucault

•  The Frankfurt School (Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse) also fostered an interdisciplinary approach philosophy, history and psychology in order to explain the phenomena of culture

•  Walter Benjamin, although peripheral to the circle, became the most known and is often cited in architectural theory

5 Feminism

•  Activism in the 1960s drew attention to the disenfranchisement within democratic societies of groups defined by gender, race, or sexual orientation

•  This discourse often goes under the banner ‘the critique of the Other’

•  It broadens the discussion of architecture from formal grounds to cultural, historical and ethical grounds

•  Feminism is an important instance of this sort of critique

Postmodern architectural themes

1 History and historicism 2 Meaning 3 Place 4 Urban theory 5 Political and ethical agendas 6 The body

Nesbit, Kate, ed. Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture, An Anthology of Architectural Theory 1965-1995 (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996)