Architecture as Language / [presented by] Bruno Zevi.

Format:

Sound recording

Contributor:

Zevi, Bruno, 1918-2000, narrator.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Architecture--Aesthetics.

Architecture.

Architecture, Modern--20th century.

Architecture, Modern.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (1 video file (29 minutes)): sound, color

Place of Publication:

London, England: Pidgeon Digital, 1980.

Summary:

Bruno Zevi is Professor of History of Architecture at the University of Rome, editorial director since 1955 of the magazine "L'Architetettura", and author of many books as well as monographs on Frank Lloyd Wright (see The World's Greatest Architect), Louis Sullivan, Erich Mendelsohn, Theo van Doesburg, and the De Stijl movement. He also writes a weekly architectural column in "L'Esperesso". The title of his most recent book "The Modern Language Of Architecture" is not to be confused with the subject of his talk in which he distinguishes between the two main languages of architecture, the "classicist" and the opposite "human, organic anti-classicist" which is based on content rather than appearance. The classicist language, emanating from the École des Beaux Arts in Paris in the nineteenth century, spread throughout the world and persists to this day. It is a language symbolic of power, authority, oligarchy, bureaucracy. The modern organic movement which rebelled against it, has no a priori form of symmetry or balance of volumes; it merely enumerates contents and functions; volumes grow to envelope the spaces occupied by people. Present-day architecture is accused of ruining the fabric of our cities. But, says, Zevi, it is the building's programmes that are wrong, and they lead to classicist-modern solutions instead of modern.

Contents:

Bruno Zevi

Top: British Museum, London. Bottom: Strozzi Palace, Florence

William Morris' Red House, 1859, Bexleyheath, Kent, UK

Functions, Spaces & Containers

Habitat 67, Montreal, By Moshe Safdie

Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, Italy, By Arrolfo di Cambio

Farm Building, USA

Workers' Club, Moscow, By Melnikov

Medieval House

Small Boxes Into Big Boxes. Free Assembly Of Specific Volumes

Building Complex In Rome By Studio Passarelli

Top: Brunelleschi's Duomo, Florence. Bottom: Torre Velasca, Milan, By Studio BPR

Guggenheim Museum, New York, By Frank Lloyd Wright

National Gallery, Washington DC, By I.M. Pei

Breaking The Box

Light In Hagia Sophia, Istanbul

Chapel At Ronchamp By Le Corbusier

Top & Bottom: Mummers Theater, Oklahoma, By John Johanson

Mummers Theater, Oklahoma, By John Johanson

The Parthenon, Athens

Edgar Kaufman's House, Falling Water At Bear Run, Pennsylvania, USA

Alberobello, Apulia, Italy

Olivetti Buildings At Ivrea, Italy

Drawing By Sant'Elia.

Notes:

Title from publisher's website (viewed April19, 2021).

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.