The historiography of modern architecture / Panayotis Tournikiotis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Tournikiotis, Panayotis, 1955-

Contributor:

Wunsch, Aaron V., Former owner.

Cox & Solman, translator.

Graphic Composition, Inc., compositor.

Hidryma Iōannou Ph. Kōstopoulou, sponsor, funder.

Language:

English

Greek, Modern (1453-)

Subjects (All):

Architecture, Modern--20th century--Historiography.

Architecture, Modern.

Historiography.

Architecture, Modern--Historiography.

Local Subjects:

Architecture, Modern--Historiography.

Genre:

Endpapers

Physical Description:

xi, 344 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, [1999]

Summary:

Writing, according to Panayotis Tournikiotis, has always exerted a powerful influence on architecture. Indeed, the study of modern architecture cannot be separated from a fascination with the texts that have tried to explain the idea of a new architecture in a new society. During the last forty years, the question of the relationship of architecture to its history--of buildings to books--has been one of the most important themes in debates about the course of modern architecture.

Tournikiotis argues that the history of modern architecture tends to be written from the present, projecting back onto the past our current concerns, so that the "beginning" of the story really functions as a "representation" of its end. In this book the buildings are the quotations, while the texts are the structure.

Tournikiotis focuses on a group of books by major historians of the twentieth century: Nikolaus Pevsner, Emil Kaufmann, Sigfried Giedion, Bruno Zevi, Leonardo Benevolo, Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Reyner Banham, Peter Collins, and Manfredo Tafuri. In examining these writers' thoughts, he draws on concepts from critical theory, relating architecture to broader historical models.

Contents:

Chapter 1 The Art Historians and the Founding Genealogies of Modern Architecture 21

The parallel demarches of Pevsner and Kaufmann

The parallel lives of the artist and the historian

The paradox of theory and the diaspora of the art historians

Chapter 2 The Critical Resurgence of Modern Architecture 51

The history lesson

The path of the modern language

The fundamental principles of architecture

Chapter 3 The Social Confirmation of Modern Architecture 85

Architecture as a synthesis of visible and invisible elements

Society always precedes architecture

The meaning of commitment and the primacy of the "general will"

The positive and arbitrary values of architecture

Chapter 4 The Objectification of Modern Architecture 113

Romanticism and reintegration: the genealogy of the future

The history of architecture is the great procession of styles

The aesthetics of the new architecture

The International Style

The new architecture and the malaise of objectivity

Chapter 5 History in Search of Time Present 145

From the Zeitgeist to the mainstream of history

Chapter 6 Architecture, Time Past, and Time Future 167

Architecture in the world of ideas

Oecodomics and the principles of architecture

The idea of historic continuity, and the path of "banal" architecture

Chapter 7 History as the Critique of Architecture 193

The meaning of history

The criticism of architecture

The Brechtian poetics of architecture

Chapter 8 Modern Architecture and the Writing of Histories 221

The history of modern architecture is written in the plural

The history/theory/project of architecture

The history of art/the history of architecture

The past/present/future of architecture: difference vs. identity

Modern architecture and historicity.

Notes:

Illustrated endpapers (corresponds to illustration from page 1)

Book set by Graphic Composition, Inc.

"This work was translated from the Greek by Cox and Solman, Athens, with the support of the John F. Costopoulos Foundation." -- Provided by publisher.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 319-335) and index.

Local Notes:

Athenaeum circulating copy: From the Library of Aaron V. Wunsch.

ISBN:

0262201178

OCLC:

40417752