320 research outputs found
Pierre Charpentrat and Baroque functionalism
No full textThe recent discovery that “Corbu is baroque,” as he mockingly puts it, fits not at all with what he stands for. “Baroque” is “an accusation,” a dismissal of the sincerity of a life’s work hastily produced by frenzied journalism rather than thoughtful criticism, proof of a superficial interest in the psyche of the star architect to the detriment of his work. Le Corbusier scorns the speculation about his personal beliefs that the architecture of the chapel invites and he ends his preface by accusing certain journalists of “[breaking] the rules” and entering the site of the chapel before its inauguration, “[gunning] me with their flash-cameras.” One of them, an American of course, pursued him with the question of whether it required a Catholic to build such a chapel. Le Corbusier replied with “foutez-moi le camp.”2No Full Tex
The future of the Baroque, c. 1980
No full textThe tercentenary commemorations in 1967 of Borromini’s death had demonstrated how an historical subject like the oeuvre of this key figure of the Roman baroque could sustain the attentions of many varied modes of historical analysis. Lectures, exhibits, books, films and many other interventions treated Borromini’s buildings (realized and otherwise), his drawings and inventories (as sources and documents alike), the Opus Architectonicum, secondary historical and biographical accounts and so forth as legitimate historical subjects. They had visited upon them the disciplinary tools of art historians from Rudolf Wittkower to Giulio Carlo Argan alongside new scholarship by those invested in Borromini’s archives, in the restoration of his buildings, in his manner of design, in his reception and in the lessons offered by his work to the present. Borromini emerged from this event as a complex and interdisciplinary historical and biographical subject that could exist in an architectural culture experiencing a watershed moment of disciplinary maturity – a form of détente between conflicting historiographical investments, with the academic and public program of the anno borrominiano demonstrating a format within which these interests could occupy the same corpus. The investment of the architect-historian in such a figure as Borromini was, at this time, as legitimate as that of the art historian specializing in architecture (or, even generally, in the art of the seventeenth century), as was that of the architect practicing (and thinking) in a manner demonstrating his or her cognizance of the present’s historicity.No Full Tex
Entwurf einer historischen Architektur
No full textOn 26 July 1721 the "Wiener Diarium" informed its readers that a new book by the general surveyor of constructions, Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, titled "Entwurff Einer Historischen Architectur", was ready for subscribers to collect from the architect’s place. The Entwurff is a collection of 86 sheets illustrating the architecture of the Jews, Egyptians, Syrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Turks, Siamese, Chinese and Japanese, along with some of the author's projects. Upon the third centenary of the author’s death this re-print proposes to look back at Fischer’s book as a precise cultural project, reacting to a specific historical and geographical context, and yet suggesting a more general attitude that can challenge contemporary architecture as well. The volume is accompanied by a complete translation of the original texts and complemented with essays by Maarten Delbeke, Steven Lauritano and Pier Paolo Tamburelli
The “Restless Allure” of (Architectural) Form: Space and Perception between Germany, Russia, and the Soviet Union
No full textThis essay – as well as Luka Skansi, Teaching Architecture: “Space”, the Basic Course at Vchutemas, “Casabella”, ISSN 0008-7181, Mar. 2015, year 79, iss. 847, pp. 4-19, 108-111 – is the outcome of research conducted on the Schickler-Lafaille Collection at the CCA – Canadian Centre for Architecture. In the collection, we find a valuable photographic fund which documents the experimental work conducted within the VKhUTEMAS classrooms, one of the main Soviet educational institutions following WWI, and the place where 20th-century Soviet architectural culture was formed. The collected works comprise a vast selection of images depicting models and drawings produced by students of the 'Space' course taught by architect Nikolaj Ladovskij and assisted by Vladimir Krinskij and Nikolaj Dokuchaev, one based on the renowned psychoanalytical method.
The course was part of the so-called Osnovno otdelenie, the preliminary course program, and was regarded a fundamental step in the educational system and a key opportunity to direct students’ attention to the more general problems of architecture, rather than demanding their immediate involvement in more specialised disciplinary tracks.
The essay depicts the origins of teaching techniques in German art history and philosophy, in the so-called Munich Formalist school, where many Russian-Soviet artists and art theorists were formed before the First World War (Vladimir Favorskij, Aleksander Gabričevskij, Naum Gabo, Igor Grabar, and many others)
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