A8940 Modern Architecture since 1968: Theory into Practice
History/Theory SeminarKenneth Frampton
INTRODUCTION
This seminar is predicated on the central paradox of our information age, namely Lewis Mumford's prophecy that we shall soon become so inundated with information as to succumb to a new barbarism, arising from the fact that, without an evaluative system, we will no longer be capable of assimilating such a plethora of data.
The volume of magazines, books, articles, etc., produced over the past 20 years (1975-1995) has escalated enormously, with the result that very few people have either the time or the capacity to process this endless flow of material and subject it to some kind of analytical reflection. Whether we like it or not we are witness to a kind of intellectual consumerism, in which we are blown hither and thither by the winds of change, subject to one mode of beholding after another. It is my contention that a critical magazine may function as a seismograph registering slow and subtle shifts in ideology as one set of received ideas gradually gives way to another.
This slow but discernible change may be revealingly set against other ideological markers such as the appearance of particularly seminal books or exhibitions or more substantial ly perhaps against recognizable ruptures in material history such as the Student Revolt of 1968 the emergence of the European Community, the Portuguese Spring or, say, the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The ostensible task of this seminar is to sift through this material with the aim of collectively arriving at a number of conclusions. Needless to say, at this stage, such findings can only be posited as provisional goals. Given the complexity of the mat erial under consideration such aims may be best formulated as a series of questions such as:
1) What are the key buildings and projects featured in the magazine Lotus over the past twenty years and why?
2) How do these buildings relate to particular ideological notions and approaches such as these may be seen as having been articulated in Lotus or as appearing elsewhere, either in other magazines or in seminal books of the epoch?
3) What kinds of changes in material history or political philosophy find themselves reflected in the slowly changing editorial line of this magazine as it has evolved across time?
4) In what way does this gradually evolving discourse relate to similar but specifically distinct changes occurring in other magazines of comparable stature over similar time intervals, during the two decades under consideration? One may fairly compare for example the discourse of Lotus to those pursued by such publications as Domus , Casabella, Spazio e Societa , L' Architecture d Aujourd hui , The Architectual Review , Bauen und Wohnen and even so called little magazines such as Oppositions , 9H and Assemblage .
PERIODIZATION AND ANALYTICAL METHOD
As far as Lotus is concerned much of its discourse was patently derived from the Italian Tendenza that is to say from polemical positions adopted in the mid-sixties by three Italians who had served in the second half of the fifties as editorial assistants on the post-war Casabella , then under the editorship of Ernesto Rogers; namely, Aldo Rossi, Giorgio Grassi and Vittorio Gregotti. Each of these men produced a categoric text that would strongly influence the next fifteen to twenty years of practice; these were Rossi's L' Architettura Della cittá (1966) Grassi's La Constrazione logica dell architettura (1966) and Gregotti's Il territorio de architecttura (1966).
We are obliged to break down the twenty years under consideration in order to arrive at a working method for the group as a whole. Assuming that such events as the publication of Charles Jencks's The Language of Post Modern Architecture (1977) or the Advent of Venice Biennale (1980) constitute break points in the evolution of architectural ideology in general, one may elect to break down the twenty year period into the following blocks: 1974-77; 1977-80; 1980-83; 1983-86; 1986-89; 1989-92; 1992-95.
The intention is that two students should be assigned to each of these blocks and that they should then make two seminar presentations, one covering the ideological debate of the period as represented in Lotus (and in other magazines) and the other treating with the canonical buildings realized during the same period and how these seem to be related to the ideological discourse of the years under consideration.
The aims of this seminar are as follows:
1. To bring into focus the vicissitudes of the debate surrounding the theory and practice of architecture over the past twenty years.
2. To impart an understanding in depth of certain aspects of this discourse.
3. To reveal, as far as this is possible, the way in which ideological changes are related to certain changes in the material history of the society.
4. To create a time chart or map showing the interrelationship between a certain historical ruptures , b influential and/or canonical texts of the period (essays or books), c the realization of certain seminal works or projects, e particular transformations in editorial, curatorial and pedagogical leadership.