A4479 The Culture of Glass
History/Theory SeminarJoan Ockman
A seminar exploring the multiple symbolic and technical meanings of glass in modernist and postmodernist culture from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, drawing on literary and artist ic as well as architectural sources. An in-class analysis and a term design project are required.
TOPICS
Introduction
The Crystal Palace & the Great Exhibition, 1851, London: incomparable and fairylike spectacle
Analysis: Joseph Paxton, Crystal Palace
The late nineteenth century arcades as spirit of capitalism
Analysis: Typology of the arcade building
Out of the mud hut: from Cubo-Futurism to Constructivism in Russia
Analyses: Vesnin brothers, Pravda building (1924), Mostorg department store (1925)
Ivan Leonidov, Lenin Institute (1927)
Iakov Chernikov, architectural fantasies (1929-33)
The crystal cathedral: from the Glass Chain to the Bauhaus in Germany
Analyses: Bruno Taut, Glass Pavilion, Cologne (1914)
Walter Gropius, Fagus Factory (1910-11), Bauhaus proclamation (1919), Bauhaus, Dessau (1925-26)
Mies van der Rohe s almost nothing
Analyses: Mies van der Rohe, glass skyscraper projects (1919-22), Barcelona Pavilion (1929)
Glass and the new architecture : Licht, Luft, Oeffnung
Analyses: Le Corbusier, villas and projects of the 1920s
Richard Neutra, Health House (1928)
Electri-City: architecture and advertising in the metropolis
Analyses: Erich Mendelsohn, department stores (1926-29)
Oscar Nitschke, Maison de la Publicite (1935-36)
Bachelor machines
Analyses: Marcel Duchamp, The Large Glass (1915-23)
Pierre Chareau, Maison de Verre (1927-32)
Diller + Scofidio, A Delay in Glass (1987)
Postwar abstraction: aesthetics and technology of the glass plane
Analysis: SOM et al., curtain wall buildings of the 1950s
Mies redux: people in glass houses ...
Analyses: Mies van der Rohe, Farnsworth house (1945-50)
Philip Johnson, Glass House in New Canaan (1949)
Postmodernism the mirror stage
Analyses: Norman Foster, Willis Faber office building (1975)
Philip Johnson & John Burgee, Crystal Cathedral, Garden Grove, California (1980)
Conclusion