The Nomenclature of Style: Brutalism,Minimalism, Art History and Visual Style in Architecture Journals

Naming styles or movements is a basic mechanism of architectural journals. The announcement of phenomena such as ‘critical regionalism’ or ‘deconstructivism’ involves referring architectural developments to a context in socio-politics or philosophy, and thus provides at least an initial resistance to their understanding as formal styles, which they quickly become. A different strategy is the naming of an architectural moment in the traditional form of an art historical style. Peter Reyner Banham and the Architecture Review's promotion of ‘Brutalism’ as an anti-aesthetic, look its conceptual form from explicit movements, with members and agenda, such as Futurism. Architectural Design's promotion of ‘Minimalism’ in the l990s exemplifies a different kind of style. In both cases, apparently divergent uses of ‘style’ are complicated by the process of naming, and by the tendency of the journal's graphic design to become the style—to become self-identifying.     

LE CORBUSIER'S HORIZON: Technique and the Architectural Plan

In this paper the difference between an architect's idea or ‘vision’ and its production through the plan is examined in some detail, using the work of the architect Le Corbusier as exemplar. One of Le Corbusier's more persistent ideas concerned the use of architecture to frame the view to the horizon—an idea that is acknowledged as a key aspect of the architect's thinking. For Le Corbusier, the experience of viewing the horizon took on a heightened subjective quality compared to other kinds of viewing and it was clearly an experience to be exploited and manipulated in architectural tenns. This paper begins with an extended discussion of Le Corbusier's concept of the horizon, as described in the architect's polemical writings, before dealing with the concept of the horizon a second time—as that concept which is constructed and mediated through techniques of the plan.     

THE ARCHITECTURAL NARRATIVE: On Michael Speaks' Ruminations on a ‘Big,Soft, Orange’

The Big, Soft, Orange exhibition on four Dutch architectural firms focuses on the (soft) processes these architects have evolved for dealing with the large scope(big) of contemporary architectural undertakings and the particular historical and geographical conditions these attempts address in the contemporary Netherlands (orange). Following the precedent of the curator. Michael Speaks' comments, the content of the exhibition will be seen to have broader relevance for Architecture. Speaks' own circumstance is considerably influenced by his relationship with, and critique of the work of, Frederic Jameson. By reading between Jameson and Speaks, this paper will use Speaks' exhibition to question the success of the architecture of postmodernity's preoccupation with overtuming the modern-modernism's Utopian assertions, its preoccupation with form, its totalising tendency, and the strictures of the ‘handed-down’ discipline of architecture with a telos in Building.From a Heideggerian perspective the paper will consider the architectural process as the concrete materialisation of the narrative of architectural production informs other than, but leading toward, the traditionally privileged architectural form: Building. Rather than the architectural approaches of postmodernity overturning modernism,it will be concluded that these approaches are merely innovative differentiation as they ‘flesh-out’ and articulate hitherto unformed narratives already extant within the reductive frames of modernity     

Gathering,Disposing and the Cultivation of Judgement in Sir Henry Wotton's: The Elements of Architecture

Employing a hermeneutic approach to Sir Henry Wotton's seventeenth century text on architecture, this paper discloses the discourse on judgement that lies at its heart. Wotton's conception of judgement is Aristotelian, and refers to Aristotle's Ethics; specifically his discourses on practical reasoning, legislation and political wisdom. Addressed to the aristocratic amateur architects of Jacobean England. The Elements of Architecture seeks to provide a ‘rule’ to guide the cultivation of good judgment in architecture. Nuances of the relationship between ‘rule’ and ‘example’ in Wotton's conception of judgement are examined, highlighting a consonance with the play between logos and ethos that is characteristic of Aristotelian ethics. This play, it is argued, is crucial to Wotton's conception of both judgement and architectural making     

Skin/Weave/Pattern

‘Fabric is the perfect mediator between the firm and the flowing.’ Nigel Coates celebrates the textile's rediscovery as a metaphor for the architectural envelope, liberating it from its reputation as having only a supporting, ‘comfort role’ in the interior. He describes his own experiments with textiles at Branson Coates Architecture and the Royal College of Art (RCA), in which they alternately become skin, weave and pattern operating at every scale from the individual body to the urban plan. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Eisenman beyond Eisenman: language and architecture revisited

Until the 1990s, architectural criticism was based on the idea that architecture could be compared to language, and the tools for interpreting architecture were similar to those of linguistics and literary criticism. Such a view was rejected by post-critical architecture, which started looking at architecture as an asignifying, performative and affective phenomenon. However, language philosophy after the ‘linguistic turn’, in particular what Felice Cimatti has called the ‘Italian language theory’, provides new tools for rigorously addressing the parallel between language and architecture. The architectural trajectory of Peter Eisenman's Houses will be re-interpreted through the lens of these theories.     

DRAWING THE LINE BETWEEN TECHNOLOGY AND NATURE IN ARCHITECTURAL THEORY: Blade Runner's Critique of the Intention of the ‘Primitive Hut’

This essay examines our struggle with the technology of architecture by considering the conceptions of the ‘primitive hut’ put forward by Vitruvius, Marc-Antoine Laugier, Gottfried Semper, and Joseph Rykwert. In claiming the ‘natural origins’ of architecture, the notion of the ‘primitive hut’ has paradoxically supported the intention of architecture to cut itself free of nature and the earth. Architecture has, in this way, held open the possibility that it might overcome the limitations that frustrate its attempts to accommodate. In the film Blade Runner, both the depiction of a futuristic urbanism in a state of decay and the expression of an ambiguous relation between the built and the natural provoke a reassessment of the architectural ‘blade’ that desires the separation between nature and technology. Both Rem Koolhaas' discussion of the skyscraper and Piranesi's etchings depicting classical scenes will be viewed as similar critiques of this dichotomy. By framing the examination within K. Michael Hays' critique of the extreme positions of determinism and autonomy in architectural theory, the paper concludes that criticism has a responsibility to mediate these extremes by expressing the nature of the technological/architectural struggle.     

Post-War Modernism: Maxwell Fry's buildings at the University of Liverpool

This paper considers the architecture and design process of Liverpool University's Veterinary School and Civil Engineering building, designed by the modernist pioneer architect, Edwin Maxwell Fry (1899–1987) in the period 1955–60. The architecture of Britain in the aftermath of the Second World War marked a departure from the modernism associated with the International Style, ‘white cubes’ and ‘primitive functionalism’, and there was a move amongst architects and reports in the architectural press that sought to review architecture through the agendas of ‘expressive’, ‘formal’ and even ‘vernacular’ design. Both of Fry's buildings initially appear as subscribers to the functionalist doctrine, adopting a sombre, even aloof exterior, but a closer inspection reveals that they are not just the routine, clichéd modern buildings that became so prevalent and scorned throughout the 1950s. They demonstrate some of the wider concerns architects had at that time, namely: monumentality, the use of art and murals as a means of conveying meaning, and a concern for context within a functional-vernacular tradition. These notions were also astutely tracked through the architectural journals along with ‘formalism’ (leading to Brutalism) and perhaps most significantly through Nikolaus Pevsner's determination to bind the English picturesque tradition with the lineage of Modernism.     

Eric de Maré: between the functional and the beautiful

Eric de Maré’s photographs were very widely published in post-war Britain and his images may be seen to have influenced a generation of architects. Perhaps more than any polemic or lengthy rationale they expanded the possibilities of architectural design; his pioneering work on the photography of early industrial buildings seen in ‘The Functional Tradition’, published as an article in The Architectural Review in 1957 and subsequently as a book, helped to create a new language at a time ready for such change.

De Maré was part of the wider architectural culture of the Architectural Press and The Architectural Review, and acknowledged the influence of the long-time proprietor de Cronin Hastings as well as other contributors such as John Piper, Gordon Cullen and J.M. Richards. There are clear links with another major position in British architectural work of that period, the ‘New Brutalism': the Smithsons’ ideas of honesty of form and materials are very close to the lessons which were drawn from de Maré's photographic evidence, whilst drawing attention to the ordinary and unvalued was the common ground basic to both positions. More than this, his images of worn surfaces and ageing structures are informed by an acute architectural sensibility. De Maré's work represents a repudiation of the utopianism of Modernist practice and theory, in favour of a new kind of beauty, redemptive in the harshly utilitarian modern world.     

Architecture is the pattern of human mind in space: Claude F. Bragdon and the spatial concept of architecture

‘Space’ has held a central position within the architectural discourse throughout the twentieth century and a number of twenty-first-century publications suggest interest in this notion is not to be diminished any time soon. Seen from our contemporary perspective, the association between architecture and space could therefore seem ordinary and self-evident. However, existing scholarship has dated the adoption of the term ‘space’ in architectural vocabulary—as a fundamental category of architecture—no earlier than the 1890s. This early phase has been strongly associated with the German language and nineteenth-century German aesthetic philosophy, whereas, by contrast, the adoption of the term in architectural discourse in the English language is considered to have followed several decades later. This paper discusses the largely unknown case of the American Claude Fayette Bragdon (1866–1946), an English-speaking architect who adopted the notion of ‘space’ as early as the 1890s: concurrently with his German contemporaries. Through analysis of existing scholarship, archival material and Bragdon's published writings mainly up to the appearance of his book The Beautiful Necessity in 1910, it throws light on the main sources of Bragdon's ‘spatial’ concept of architecture and demonstrates connections to transcendental aesthetics and ground-breaking advances in nineteenth-century mathematics.     

The Thirteenth Villa

In a 1994 essay titled “New Variations on the Rowe Complex,” Greg Lynn reflects on the architectural issues of formal and spatial difference, variation, and, more generally, the ideal. Lynn presents what he identifies as a blind spot in Colin Rowe's comparative analysis of villas designed by Andrea Palladio and Le Corbusier—“the capacity for formal and spatial order to differentiate and become innovative.” The Thirteenth Villa is a conceptual project inspired by Lynn's provocations and attempts to generate a new villa, one comprised solely of the nonideal characteristics and traits of each of Palladio's eleven villas studied by Rudolf Wittkower.     

Architectural mimicry and the politics of mosque building: negotiating Islam and Nation in Turkey

This paper discusses the politics of mosque architecture in modern Turkey. The classical Ottoman mosque image has been reproduced in state-sponsored mosques throughout the second half of the twentieth century. Defining this particular design strategy as architectural mimicry, I discuss the emergence of this image through the negotiation between the nation-state and the ‘nationalist conservative’ discourse within the context of Cold War geopolitics. Comparing the Turkish case with the Islamic post-colonial world, I argue that the prevalence of architectural mimicry is related to the nostalgia it generates. Nostalgia is a discursive effect of architectural mimicry which is in tune with the nationalist conservative worldview in its relationship to the state's anti-communism. This particular image was taken up by the Islamist AKP in the 2000s, within the context of the global rise of political Islam. In this instance, the same representation took on a different meaning. It functioned as a simulacrum representing the ‘nation in Islam’ with a claim to authenticity amongst the competing Islamic representations.     

The Pompidou Centre: or the hidden kernel of dematerialisation

Already in the mid-1960s, with the first warnings of juvenile arraignments, an open critique of the naive enthusiasm with which the former generation had absorbed the myth of technology and communication came to the fore. So that Archigram members themselves, in proposing a cardboard megastructure for the ARCHIGRAM VII special issue (‘everybody's got their own mega-structure, do it yourself’ they wrote), kept an ironic distance from the modernistic belief in the linear evolution of society (Fig. 1).

Nevertheless, the dramatic decrease in the utopian mainstream that had characterised the ‘Year of Megastructures’, as Banham called it (1963), succeeded in producing an unrepeatable architectural gesture for the celebration of individual freedom and social equality. As one of the best-known contemporary icons, the Pompidou Centre was also responsible for turning the modernistic interest in functionality into the de-materialised aspects of urban fetishism. The hyper-objectification of its form and the consequent ‘transparency’ of its content led in fact to a new type of architectural fruition: that in which the ideological perception of the building exceeded the real possibilities suggested by its hyper-flexibility. Thus, the Pompidou also inaugurated a new era for the dogmatic myth of self-empowerment by means of self-learning (auto-didacticism) and mass jouissance.     

重楼危殿 巍峨凌空

青龙洞始建于明洪武年间，至今已有五百来年历史了。青龙洞除外貌神奇壮观外，它的建筑构造也非常奇特。青龙洞的古刹名寺有紫阳书院的圣人殿、老君殿、考祠和灵官殿、吕祖殿、观音殿、玉皇阁、望江楼、半亭、中元禅院的大佛殿、望星楼、六角亭、独柱亭、韦驮庙、燃灯古佛龛、万寿宫的文公祠、万寿宫正殿、客厅、杨泗殿、内戏台、外戏台、观戏厅以及厢楼等二十八幢建筑。此外还有用作山门的石碑坊（阙）两座。青龙洞古刹的建筑装饰不象一些寺庙那样金碧辉煌，而是古朴淡雅，别具一格。     

The architectural legacies of Kisho Kurokawa in China

Kisho Kurokawa (1934–2007) was a world-famous Japanese architect who made his impact on urban architecture in Japan and many other countries. His philosophy of symbiosis influenced several generations of designers and social architects in Japan and the world. In his heyday during the mid 1980s, Kurokawa started a twenty-year journey of architectural design and urban planning in China. His designs in China are closely involved with the contemporary architectural history and practice of the country: for example, in importing foreign architectural design, researching the formal design language and the emerging of private development. The authors traced the footprints of Kurokawa in China and investigated the relevant building and urban design cases. This paper reviews Kurokawa's outstanding works in China, tries to reveal the master's trajectory of adapting ‘symbiosis’ and ‘grey’ concepts in different conditions, and fills a gap in the understanding of modern Chinese and Japanese architecture.     

Looking through axonometric windows

From Frank Lloyd Wright's box-breaking corner windows to Le Corbusier's fenêtre en longueur and Mies van der Rohe's reflective glass walls, modernist architectural space emerged through the transformation of the window. As a mechanism for articulating the primordial architectural distinction between inside and outside, the window has long been a primary architectural element. In modern architecture, however, the types of window multiplied in response to new technologies, structural systems and cultural conditions. The window increased in importance as architects explored its capacity not only to control the transmission of light, air, heat, vision and information, but also to produce different kinds of space and to transform social distinctions such as those between public and private, self and other. In this essay I present a little-known chapter in that story: the series of windows American architect Claude Bragdon designed in 1915 using his system of ‘projective ornament’ (Fig. 1).     

Neue Messe Mailand – Netzstruktur und Tragverhalten einer Freiformfläche

New Trade Fair in Milan – grid topology and structural behaviour of a free‐formed surface. The connecting links between the exhibition pavilions of the new trade fair in Milan are mostly covered by innovative steel‐glass‐structures which are very attractive from the architectural point of view. At the main entrance the ‘Logo’ arises: A double‐curved free‐formed surface, which ascends in the sky like a volcano. With a height of 37 m this structure will be recognized from afar as the new fair's landmark. A 1.300 m long and 30 m wide free‐formed glass roof, the so‐called ‘Vela’, links the individual exhibition halls together along the main axis of the trade fair and absorbs the nearby Alps in its architectural design. Primary with the ‘Logo’ this paper specifies, besides the overall architectural concept, mainly the basic principles for the development of the grid topology and the characteristics of the structural system of the arbitrary curved free‐formed surfaces.     

Absent architectures: post-war housing in British children’s picture books (1960–present)

In the decades following World War II, British cities—and, to a lesser degree, rural areas—underwent radical architectural and structural transformations. Yet, architecture associated with post-war reconstruction is significantly underrepresented in children’s picture books of the period. The home, the street, and the high-street are, more often than not, depicted in a formal language associated with Georgian, Edwardian and Victorian architectural ideals. This paper explores what kind of cultural ideologies children are integrated into when it comes to the representation of post-war architecture. Specifically, the paper focuses on domestic space and asks what ideas of the ‘home’ are promoted. Drawing on Gaston Bachelard’s exploration of the relationship between domestic architecture and emotional/psychological response in The Poetics of Space (1957), and Jean Baudrillard’s theory of communication in the age of postmodernity, this paper maps the influence of post-war architectural design on a selection of children’s picture books published during the 1960s and 1970s. The paper concludes with an examination of two popular picture books published in 1996 and 2013, which trace the legacies of post-war architecture.     

READING,VOICE AND VOWEL: L PETER KOLLAR'S ARCHITECTURAL THEORY AS RHETORIC

L. Peter Kollar is best known for his proto-Platonic architectural theory and, for those who have heard him speak, for the way he delivers his concepts. Drawing upon the story of the ancient Greek maiden Phrasiklea as a rhetorical figure whose name equates with ‘famous-for-her-thoughts’, related by Jesper Svenbro in his book of the same name, Kollar's architectural theory is subjected to a structural then a rhetorical analysis. The structural analysis is tentatively proposed around his extensive use of triads, trichotomies and other multiples of three. The rhetorical analysis is proposed as a 'rhetoric of architecture' parallel with Lawrence J. Prelli's ‘rhetoric of science’, but primarily in three (!) discourses: the invented, the addressed, and the reasonable. A weak construction of architectural theory as a rhetorical practice is put forward following on from arguments offered in my book, The Theory of Architecture. Kollar's theory is proposed as a masterful, yet orthodox, weak rhetorical practice which is largely unadmitted as such. Because it claims reasonableness as the basis for its appeal and its closure, Kollar's theory leaves itself open to an interpretation that belies its claims to universality. In the largely tough-minded, pragmatic environment of architecture, Kollar is a lender-minded theorist using tough-talking to try to insinuate delicate and subtle ideas.