Tatlin’s Tower or The Monument to the Third International was a grand monumental building envisioned by the Russian artist and architect Vladimir Tatlin, but never built. It was planned to be erected in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, as the headquarters and monument of the Comintern (the third international). Wikipedia
30 St Mary Axe, also known as the Gherkin and the Swiss Re Building, is a skyscraper in London's main financial district, the City of London, completed in December 2003 and opened on 28 April 2004. It is 180 metres (591 ft) tall, with 40 floors. Its erection symbolised the start of a new high-rise construction boom in London. The building was designed by Lord Foster, his then business partner Ken Shuttleworth and Arup engineers, and was erected by Skanska in 2001–2004. Wikipdia
The chapel of Notre Dame du Haut, designed by Le Corbusier, is located in Ronchamp. The Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut, a shrine for the Catholic Church at Ronchamp was built for a reformist Church looking to continue its relevancy. Warning against decadence, reformers within the Church looked to renew its spirit by embracing modern art and architecture as representative concepts. Father Couturier, who would also sponsor Le Corbusier for the La Tourette commission, steered the unorthodox project to completion in 1954.This work, like several others in Le Corbusier’s late oeuvre, departs from his principles of standardization and the machine aesthetic outlined in Vers une architecture. It is interesting to note though, that even in this project, the structural design of the roof was inspired by the engineering of airfoils.
The chapel is clearly a site-specific response. By Le Corbusier’s own admission, it was the site that provided an irresistible genius loci for the response, with the horizon visible on all four sides of the hill and its historical legacy for centuries as a place of worship.
This historical legacy weaved in different layers into the terrain — from the Romans and sun-worshippers before them, to a cult of the Virgin in the Middle Ages, right through to the modern church and the fight against the German occupation. Le Corbusier also sensed a sacral relationship of the hill with its surroundings, the Jura mountains in the distance and the hill itself, dominating the landscape.
The nature of the site would result in an architectural ensemble that has many similitudes with the Acropolis, starting from the ascent at the bottom of the hill to architectural and landscape events along the way, before finally terminating at the sanctum sanctorum itself, the chapel.
The building itself is a comparatively small structure enclosed by thick walls, with the upturned roof supported on columns embedded within the walls. In the interior, the spaces left between the wall and roof, as well as asymmetric light from the wall openings serve to further reinforce the sacral nature of the space and buttress the relationship of the building with its surroundings. Wikipedia
The Giza Necropolis stands on the Giza Plateau, on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt. This complex of ancient monuments includes the three pyramids known as the Great Pyramids, along with the massive sculpture known as the Great Sphinx. It is located some 8 km (5 mi) inland into the desert from the old town of Giza on the Nile, some 25 km (15 mi) southwest of Cairo city centre. One of the monuments, the Great Pyramid of Giza, is the only remaining monument of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Wikipedia
SPACES/TIMES/ARCHITECTURES! Always a good idea to go for a plural version! It gives us the scope for debate, discussion, dialogue and the acknowledgement of difference as a positive and essential aspect of the worlds we inhabit.
The Sydney Opera House is a multi-venue performing arts centre on Bennelong Point in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It was conceived and largely built by Danish architect Jørn Utzon, who in 2003 received the Pritzker Prize, architecture's highest honour.[1] The citation stated
“ There is no doubt that the Sydney Opera House is his masterpiece. It is one of the great iconic buildings of the 20th century, an image of great beauty that has become known throughout the world – a symbol for not only a city, but a whole country and continent. ” The Opera House was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site on 28 June 2007.[2] It is one of the 20th century's most distinctive buildings, and one of the most famous performing arts centres in the world. Wikipedia
Are there different architectures, non-architectures even, in different times and/or places?
In Mongolia the traditional yurt, a circular dome shaped structure, easily dis-assembled and re-assembled, is a portable house, constructed on principals that relate to materials and the way gravity holds it all together, for the use of nomadic social groups as they range their herds over the wide empty plains.
Is this architecture, or housing? a heat control technology more akin to the way clothing both protects and expresses human bodies, human identities and human cultures?
What kind of spatial concepts are relevant in this way of life, and relevant to this structure? Could it be that non-visual spatial concepts apply? Do we take space for granted? Do we assume that space is defined visually?
When you step inside the yurt, the circular walls and the dome shaped roof seem to echo a sense of the way space here is experienced. The walls are a thin curtain form, creating shelter, yes but also echoes the way the plane of the plain moves dynamically and infinitely to the horizon, and in all directions. The dome shaped roof keeps out the rain and echoes the limitless sky.
This in all directions spatial experience is about being on the surface of the planet, standing on the earth with your head in the sky.
What kind of space is this?
Sigfried Giedion 1888-1968 published Space, Time & Architecture in 1941 which turned out to be an influential standard history of modern architecture, whilst his Mechanization Takes Command established a new kind of historiography. His ideas and books had an important conceptual influence on the members of the Independent Group at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in the 1950's era.
The idea of space/time has had a profound impact as a powerful aspect of a new cosmological theory, but also as an expression of the way human experience has been transformed in our technical, industrial and post-industrial civilization. Cubism was said to be an art that embodied this new concept in a picturing that was definitely NOT a straightforward visual representation of the 3 dimensions of space. Apollinaire, the cubists champion talked up the idea of the "4th dimension" to explain this modern art! Guillaume Apollinaire was a French poet, writer and art critic born in Italy to a Polish mother. Among the foremost poets of the early 20th century, he is credited with coining the word "surrealism" and writing one of the earliest works described as surrealist, the play Les Mamelles de Tirésias (1917, used as the basis for a 1947 opera).
Analytical Cubism is one of the two major branches of the artistic movement of Cubism and was developed between 1908 and 1912. In contrast to Synthetic cubism, Analytic cubists "analyzed" natural forms and reduced the forms into basic geometric parts on the two-dimensional picture plane. Colour was almost non-existent except for the use of a monochromatic scheme that often included grey, blue and ochre. Instead of an emphasis on colour, Analytic cubists focused on forms like the cylinder, sphere and the cone to represent the natural world. During this movement, the works produced by Picasso and Braque shared stylistic similarities. Both Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque moved toward abstraction, leaving only enough signs of the real world to supply a tension between the reality outside the painting and the complicated meditations on visual language within the frame, exemplified through their paintings Ma Jolie (1911), by Picasso and The Portuguese (1911), by Braque.
In Paris in 1907 there was a major museum retrospective exhibition of the work of Paul Cezanne shortly after his death. The exhibition was enormously influential in establishing Cézanne as an important painter whose ideas were particularly resonant especially to young artists in Paris. Both Picasso and Braque found the inspiration for Cubism from Paul Cézanne, who said to observe and learn to see and treat nature as if it were composed of basic shapes like cubes, spheres, cylinders, and cones. Picasso was the main analytic cubist, but Braque was also prominent, having abandoned Fauvism to work with Picasso in developing the Cubist lexicon. Wikipedia
Spacetime
In physics, spacetime (or space–time; or space/time) is any mathematical model that combines space and time into a single continuum. Spacetime is usually interpreted with space being three-dimensional and time playing the role of a fourth dimension that is of a different sort than the spatial dimensions. According to certain Euclidean space perceptions, the universe has three dimensions of space and one dimension of time. By combining space and time into a single manifold, physicists have significantly simplified a large number of physical theories, as well as described in a more uniform way the workings of the universe at both the supergalactic and subatomic levels.
In classical mechanics, the use of Euclidean space instead of spacetime is appropriate, as time is treated as universal and constant, being independent of the state of motion of an observer. In relativistic contexts, however, time cannot be separated from the three dimensions of space, because the rate at which time passes depends on an object's velocity relative to the speed of light and also on the strength of intense gravitational fields, which can slow the passage of time. Wikipedia
He describes three types of space conception which you will find useful to the extent that it opens up the idea that there are different kinds of space and spatial concepts, spatial experiences and spatial functions.
Ancient Egyptian Architectures
Abu Simbel (Arabic: أبو سنبل or أبو سمبل) is an archaeological site comprising two massive rock temples in Nubia, southern Egypt on the western bank of Lake Nasser about 290 km southwest of Aswan. It is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site known as the "Nubian Monuments",[1] which run from Abu Simbel downriver to Philae (near Aswan).
The twin temples were originally carved out of the mountainside during the reign of Pharaoh Ramesses II in the 13th century BC, as a lasting monument to himself and his queen Nefertari, to commemorate his alleged victory at the Battle of Kadesh, and to intimidate his Nubian neighbors. However, the complex was relocated in its entirety in the 1960s, on an artificial hill made from a domed structure, high above the Aswan High Dam reservoir. Wikipedia
Following the tradition of many pharaohs, the masterpiece of Hatshepsut's building projects was her mortuary temple. She built hers in a complex at Deir el-Bahri. It was designed and implemented by Senemut at a site on the West Bank of the Nile River near the entrance to what now is called the Valley of the Kings because of all the pharaohs who later chose to associate their complexes with the grandeur of hers. Her buildings were the first grand ones planned for that location. The focal point was the Djeser-Djeseru or "the Sublime of Sublimes", a colonnaded structure of perfect harmony nearly one thousand years before the Parthenon was built. Djeser-Djeseru sits atop a series of terraces that once were graced with lush gardens. Djeser-Djeseru is built into a cliff face that rises sharply above it. Djeser-Djeseru and the other buildings of Hatshepsut's Deir el-Bahri complex are considered to be significant advances in architecture. Wikipedia
Ancient Greek Architectures
The Temple of Hephaestus and Athena Ergane (Greek: Ναός του Ηφαίστου και της Αθηνάς Εργάνης), also known as the Hephaisteion (Ηφαιστείον) or Theseion (Θησείον), is the best preserved ancient Greek temple. It is a Doric order peripteral temple, located at the north-west side of the Agora of Athens, on top of the Agoraios Kolonos (Αγοραιος) hill. Wikipedia
Ancient Roman Architectures
Late Roman/Byzantine ArchitecturesThe Pantheon (pronounced /pænˈθiː.ən/ or /ˈpænθi.ən/, Latin: Pantheon, from Greek: Πάνθεον, meaning "Every god") is a building in Rome, originally built by Marcus Agrippa as a temple to all the gods of Ancient Rome, and rebuilt in the early 2nd century AD. A near-contemporary writer, Cassius Dio, speculates that the name comes from the statues of many gods placed around the building, or from the resemblance of the dome to the heavens. The intended degree of inclusiveness of the dedication to "all" the gods is debated.
The building is circular with a portico of three ranks of huge granite Corinthian columns (eight in the first rank and two groups of four behind) under a pediment opening into the rotunda, under a coffered, concrete dome, with a central opening (oculus) open to the sky. Almost two thousand years after it was built, the Pantheon's dome is still the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome. The height to the oculus and the diameter of the interior circle are the same, 43.3 metres (142 ft). A rectangular structure links the portico with the rotunda. It is one of the best preserved of all Roman buildings. It has been in continuous use throughout its history, and since the 7th century, the Pantheon has been used as a Roman Catholic church dedicated to "St. Mary and the Martyrs" but informally known as "Santa Maria Rotonda." Wikipedia
Hagia Sophia (Turkish: Ayasofya, from the Greek: Ἁγία Σοφία, "Holy Wisdom"; Latin: Sancta Sophia or Sancta Sapientia) is a former Orthodox patriarchal basilica, later a mosque, now a museum in Istanbul, Turkey. Famous in particular for its massive dome, it is considered the epitome of Byzantine architecture and to have "changed the history of architecture."
It was the largest cathedral in the world for nearly a thousand years, until the completion of the Seville Cathedral in 1520. The current building was originally constructed as a church between 532 and 537 A.D. on the orders of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian, and was in fact the third Church of the Holy Wisdom to occupy the site (the previous two had both been destroyed by riots). It was designed by two architects, Isidore of Miletus and Anthemius of Tralles. The Church contained a large collection of holy relics and featured, among other things, a 15m (49 foot) silver iconostasis. It was the seat of the Patriarch of Constantinople and the religious focal point of the Eastern Orthodox Church for nearly one thousand years. It was the church in which Cardinal Humbert marched up to the altar and excommunicated Cerularius, marking the official start of the Great Schism.In 1453, Constantinople was conquered by the Ottoman Turks and Sultan Mehmed II ordered the building to be converted into a mosque.[2] The bells, altar, iconostasis, and sacrificial vessels were removed, and many of the mosaics were eventually plastered over. The Islamic features — such as the mihrab, the minbar, and the four minarets outside — were added over the course of its history under the Ottomans. It remained as a mosque until 1935, when it was converted into a museum by the Republic of Turkey.
For almost 500 years the principal mosque of Istanbul, Hagia Sophia served as a model for many of the Ottoman mosques such as the Sultan Ahmed Mosque (Blue Mosque of Istanbul), the Şehzade Mosque, the Süleymaniye Mosque, the Rüstem Pasha Mosque, and the Kılıç Ali Paşa Mosque.
Although it is sometimes referred to as Santa Sophia, the Greek name in full is Ναός τῆς Ἁγίας τοῦ Θεοῦ Σοφίας, Church of the Holy Wisdom of God. It was to this, the Holy Wisdom of God, that the Church was dedicated ("Sophia" being the phonetic spelling in Latin of the Greek word for wisdom). So Santa Sophia should be understood as the italianate title of the church, Holy Wisdom; not as a reference to any saint named Sophia, but as a reference to the philosophical and theological concept of "Sophia". Wikipedia
Saint Mark's Basilica (Italian: Basilica di San Marco a Venezia), the cathedral church of Venice, is the most famous of the city's churches and one of the best known examples of Byzantine architecture. It lies on Piazza San Marco (in the San Marco sestiere or district) adjacent and connected to the Doge's Palace. For its opulent design, gilded Byzantine mosaics, and its status as a symbol of Venetian wealth and power, from the 11th century on the building was known by the nickname Chiesa d'Oro (Church of gold). Wikipedia
Medieval European Architectures
The Cathedral of Our Lady of Chartres, (French: Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Chartres), a Latin Rite Catholic cathedral located in Chartres, about 80 kilometres (50 mi) southwest of Paris, is considered one of the finest examples in all France of the Gothic style of architecture. The current cathedral is one of at least four that have occupied the site.
From a distance it seems to hover in mid-air above waving fields of wheat, and it is only when the visitor draws closer that the city comes into view, clustering around the hill on which the cathedral stands. Its two contrasting spires — one, a 105 metre (349 ft) plain pyramid dating from the 1140s, and the other a 113 metre (377 ft) tall early 16th century Flamboyant spire on top of an older tower — soar upwards over the pale green roof, while all around the outside are complex flying buttresses. Chartres is noted for its many large stained glass windows. Dating from the early 13th century, the glass largely escaped harm during the religious wars of the 16th century; it is said to constitute one of the most complete collections of medieval stained glass in the world, despite "modernization" in 1753 when some of it was removed by well-intentioned but misguided clergy. Of the original 186 stained glass windows, 152 survive. The windows are particularly renowned for their vivid blue colour, especially in a representation of the Madonna and Child known as the Blue Virgin Window, a traditional iconography known as the Seat of Wisdom. The Jesse Tree window is another noted window at Chartres.
Orson Welles famously used Chartres as a visual backdrop and inspiration for a montage sequence in his film F For Fake. Welles’ semi-autographical verse spoke to the power of art in culture and how the work itself may be more important than the identity of its creators. Feeling that the beauty of Chartres and its unknown artisans/architects epitomized this sentiment, Welles said:
WikipediaOurs, the scientists keep telling us, is a universe which is disposable. You know it might be just this one anonymous glory of all things, this rich stone forest, this epic chant, this gaiety, this grand choiring shout of affirmation, which we choose when all our cities are dust; to stand intact, to mark where we have been, to testify to what we had it in us to accomplish. Our works in stone, in paint, in print are spared, some of them for a few decades, or a millennium or two, but everything must fall in war or wear away into the ultimate and universal ash: the triumphs and the frauds, the treasures and the fakes. A fact of life ... we're going to die. "Be of good heart," cry the dead artists out of the living past. Our songs will all be silenced – but what of it? Go on singing. Maybe a man's name doesn't matter all that much.
Renaissance Architectures
Leon Battista Alberti (February 18, 1404 – April 20, 1472) was an Italian author, artist, architect, poet, priest, linguist, philosopher, and cryptographer, and general Renaissance humanist polymath. Alberti's life was described in Giorgio Vasari's Vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori, e architettori or 'Lives of the most excellent painters, sculptors and architects'. Alberti regarded mathematics as the common ground of art and the sciences. "To make clear my exposition in writing this brief commentary on painting," Alberti began his treatise, Della pittura (On Painting), "I will take first from the mathematicians those things with which my subject is concerned."
This treatise (Della pittura ) was also known in Latin as De Pictura, and it relied in its scientific content on classical optics in determining perspective as a geometric instrument of artistic and architectural representation. Alberti was well-versed in the sciences of his age. His knowledge of optics was connected to the handed-down long-standing tradition of the Kitab al-manazir (The Optics; De aspectibus) of the Arab polymath Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham, d. ca. 1041), which was mediated by Franciscan optical workshops of the 13th-century Perspectivae traditions of scholars such as Roger Bacon, John Peckham and Witelo (similar influences are also traceable in the third commentary of Lorenzo Ghiberti, Commentario terzo).
In both Della pittura and De statua, a short treatise on sculpture, Alberti stressed that "all steps of learning should be sought from nature." The ultimate aim of an artist is to imitate nature. Painters and sculptors strive "through by different skills, at the same goal, namely that as nearly as possible the work they have undertaken shall appear to the observer to be similar to the real objects of nature."However, Alberti did not mean that artists should imitate nature objectively, as it is, but the artist should be especially attentive to beauty, "for in painting beauty is as pleasing as it is necessary." The work of art is, according to Alberti, so constructed that it is impossible to take anything away from it or add anything to it, without impairing the beauty of the whole. Beauty was for Alberti "the harmony of all parts in relation to one another," and subsequently "this concord is realized in a particular number, proportion, and arrangement demanded by harmony." Alberti's thoughts on harmony were not new—they could be traced back to Pythagoras—but he set them in a fresh context, which fit in well with the contemporary aesthetic discourse. Wikipedia
Examples of the ideal cities include Filarete's "Sforzinda", a description of which was included in his Trattato di Architettura (c. 1465). The city of Sforzinda was laid out within an eight-pointed star inscribed within a circular moat. Further examples may have been intended to have been read into the so-called "Urbino" and "Baltimore" panels (second half of the fifteenth century), which show Classically influenced architecture disposed in logically planned piazzas. Late nineteenth-century examples of the ideal city include the Garden city movement of Sir Ebenezer Howard, realised at Letchworth Garden City and Welwyn Garden City in England. Poundbury, Prince Charles' architectural vision established in Dorset, is among the most recent examples of ideal city planning. Wikipedia
Poundbury can feel a bit spooky because it has the same film set artificiality that existed when Renaissance architects were realizing the "ideal" in their schemes.Architectures of Modernity
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, who chose to be known as Le Corbusier (October 6, 1887 – August 27, 1965), was a Swiss-French architect, designer, urbanist, writer and also painter, who is famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called Modern architecture or the International Style. He was born in Switzerland, but became a French citizen in his 30s.
He was a pioneer in studies of modern high design and was dedicated to providing better living conditions for the residents of crowded cities. His career spanned five decades, with his buildings constructed throughout central Europe, India, Russia, and one each in North and South America. He was also an urban planner, painter, sculptor, writer, and modern furniture designer.
It was Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye (1929-1931) that most succinctly summed up his five points of architecture that he had elucidated in the journal L'Esprit Nouveau and his book Vers une architecture, which he had been developing throughout the 1920s. First, Le Corbusier lifted the bulk of the structure off the ground, supporting it by pilotis – reinforced concrete stilts. These pilotis, in providing the structural support for the house, allowed him to elucidate his next two points: a free façade, meaning non-supporting walls that could be designed as the architect wished, and an open floor plan, meaning that the floor space was free to be configured into rooms without concern for supporting walls. The second floor of the Villa Savoye includes long strips of ribbon windows that allow unencumbered views of the large surrounding yard, and which constitute the fourth point of his system. The fifth point was the Roof garden to compensate for the green area consumed by the building and replacing it on the roof. A ramp rising from ground level to the third floor roof terrace allows for an architectural promenade through the structure. The white tubular railing recalls the industrial "ocean-liner" aesthetic that Le Corbusier much admired. As if to put an exclamation mark after Le Corbusier's homage to modern industry, the driveway around the ground floor, with its semicircular path, measures the exact turning radius of a 1927 Citroën automobile. Wikipedia
This is where constructivism (out of cubism/futurism, in Russia cubo-futurism) comes in. See Wikipedia entry below:
The term Construction Art was first used as a derisive term by Kazimir Malevich to describe the work of Alexander Rodchenko in 1917.[citation needed] Constructivism first appears as a positive term in Naum Gabo's Realistic Manifesto of 1920. Alexei Gan used the word as the title of his book Constructivism, which was printed in 1922.[1] Constructivism was a post-World War I outgrowth of Russian Futurism, and particularly of the 'corner-counter reliefs' of Vladimir Tatlin, which had been exhibited in 1915. The term itself would be coined by the sculptors Antoine Pevsner and Naum Gabo, who developed an industrial, angular approach to their work, while its geometric abstraction owed something to the Suprematism of Kasimir Malevich. The teaching basis for the new movement was laid by The Commissariat of Enlightenment (or Narkompros) the Bolshevik government's cultural and educational ministry headed by Anatoliy Vasilievich Lunacharsky who suppressed the old Petrograd Academy of Fine Arts and the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in 1918. IZO, the Commissariat's artistic bureau was run during the Russian Civil War mainly by Futurists, who published the journal Art of the Commune. The focus for Constructivism in Moscow was VKhUTEMAS, the school for art and design established in 1919. Gabo later stated that teaching at the school was focused more on political and ideological discussion than art-making. Despite this, Gabo himself designed a radio transmitter in 1920 (and would submit a design to the Palace of the Soviets competition in 1930).
Constructivism as theory and practice derived itself from a series of debates at INKhUK (Institute of Artistic Culture) in Moscow, from 1920-22. After deposing its first chairman, Wassily Kandinsky for his 'mysticism', The First Working Group of Constructivists (including Liubov Popova, Alexander Vesnin, Rodchenko, Varvara Stepanova, and the theorists Alexei Gan, Boris Arvatov and Osip Brik) would arrive at a definition of Constructivism as the combination of faktura: the particular material properties of the object, and tektonika, its spatial presence. Initially the Constructivists worked on three-dimensional constructions as a first step to participation in industry: the OBMOKhU (Society of Young Artists) exhibition showed these three dimensional compositions, by Rodchenko, Stepanova, Karl Ioganson and the Stenberg Brothers. Later the definition would be extended to designs for two-dimensional works such as books or posters, with montage and factography becoming important concepts.
The sense that modern materials had a "plastic" quality is reflected in the constructivists experiments, some of which have been designated works of art. The expression of modernity and the power of technology to transform living spaces, life and work, society and culture, whole cities even, can be found in the sweep of ideas that crosses the pages of Space Time & Architecture.
On many pages illustrations of architecture and construction sit alongside images of art!
So art and architecture share a fundamental concern with space conceptions. So lets look back to Naum Gabo and then on to Calatrava!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santiago_Calatrava
Postmodernism and crisis
A postscript; The spaces conceptions and visions of artists and architects do not very often take account of social spaces, economic and practical spaces that form the social fabric of cities and neighbourhoods, and in the end provide human beings with the spaces that they need. Some of the ideas of Romanticism tend to an anti-human pro-aesthetic attitude, "High mountains are a feeling, the hum of human cities torture" (Byron). Not so helpful when creating the built environment. Aesthetics and power do go together. Visions can be dictatorial, and places that work socially, practically and humanly are usually visually messy. Tidying up urban fabric usually involves destroying social fabric.
Richard Sennett in his book The Conscience of the Eye (The Conscience of the Eye: The design and social life of cities, Faber and Faber (1991)), ends Part Two of the book (The Eye Searches for Unity) with a chapter called The Unexpected Consequences of Unity that ends with a section called The Religion of Art.
"The Christian City put great value on the inside - on shelter within buildings as on inner experiences. The Enlightenment city sought to take people outside - but on to fields and forests rather than streets filled with jostling crowds." (p. 97)
He writes about the way the Christian "belief in clarity and precision has reappeared in secular form, as the cult of the perfect object." (pp 114-117) he goes on to say: "In art the consequences of creating a self-sufficing, unified object is that it seems untouchable." (p. 116)
He ends this chapter reflecting that the architecture that Siegfried Giedion celebrated is embedded in a tragic irony (see http://breadslamtheatreofjapanesewhispers.blogspot.com/2009/11/architecture-hot-and-cold.html).
Richard Sennett (born Chicago, 1 January 1943) is the Centennial Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics, the Bemis Adjunct Professor of Sociology at MIT and Professor of the Humanities at New York University. Sennett is probably best known for his studies of social ties in cities, and the effects of urban living on individuals in the modern world. WikipediaThe death of Modernism
Pruitt-Igoe was a large urban housing project first occupied in 1954[2] and completed in 1955 in the U.S. city of St. Louis, Missouri. Shortly after its completion, living conditions in Pruitt-Igoe began to decay; by the late 1960s, the extreme poverty, crime, and segregation brought the complex a great deal of infamy as it was covered extensively by the international press. The complex was designed by architect Minoru Yamasaki, who also designed the World Trade Center towers.
At 3 PM on March 16, 1972 — less than 20 years after construction — the first of the complex's 33 buildings was demolished by the federal government. The other 32 buildings were destroyed over the next 2 years. The high-profile failure of Pruitt-Igoe has become an emblematic icon often evoked by all sides in public housing policy debate. The Pruitt-Igoe housing project was one of the first demolitions of modernist architecture and its destruction was claimed by postmodern architectural historian Charles Jencks to mark "the day Modern architecture died." Footage of the demolition of Pruitt-Igoe was incorporated into the film Koyaanisqatsi. The film's score features a song named for the complex, composed by Philip Glass. Wikipedia
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