Max Bill : art of the intellect and architecture of functional beauty / Tania Calovi Pereira.

Format:

• Book
• Manuscript
• Thesis/Dissertation

Author/Creator:

• Pereira, Tania Calovi.

Contributor:

• Leatherbarrow, David, advisor.
• University of Pennsylvania.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

• Penn dissertations--Architecture.
• Architecture--Penn dissertations.

Local Subjects:

• Penn dissertations--Architecture.
• Architecture--Penn dissertations.

Physical Description:

xvi, 344 pages : color illustrations ; 29 cm

Production:

2009.

Summary:

• This Dissertation studies the theory and works of the Swiss artist and architect Max Bill, and more specifically the relationship between his art and architecture. As a student in the Bauhaus from 1927 to 1929 Max Bill studied under the directorship of Walter Gropius and his efforts to unify the arts with a rational orientation and input from sociologists and gestalt psychologists. Though this synthesis of the arts was never realized in the Bauhaus, it has remained a sought after ideal as it had been long before Gropius' time. This Dissertation argues that Max Bill's artwork and architecture represent one way of achieving this synthesis. To show how this was developed, this Dissertation also examines the historical lineage of Bill's work and the particular and functional methodologies he used.
• To this day formalism and a superficial regard for aesthetics hinders the discussion and exchange of concepts between art and architecture. I argue that Max Bill realized a consistent body of works and theory that deeply integrated and mutually benefited these fields, and reconciled the aesthetics with scientific inquiry, which is a goal pursued today even more that in the 19th Century.
• The primary sources for this study are images of Bill's artwork and architecture as well as those of painters and architects that were influential in his career, reaching back to the ancient and primitive examples that contributed to the lineage of Bill's Concrete design. The first chapter of this dissertation accounts for Bill's education and the influences that led to his Concrete design, the second discusses the modern and historical artistic models that preceded his work, and the third concludes by analyzing his artwork and architecture to define how through several discreet architectural functionalities Bill achieved a meaningful and diverse range of production.

Notes:

• Adviser: David Leatherbarrow.
• Thesis (Ph.D. in Architecture) -- University of Pennsylvania, 2009.
• Includes bibliographical references and index.