Architecture and Capitalism: 1845 to the Present

262 Pages·2013·2.541 MB·English

by  Peggy Deamer

Architecture and
Capitalism
Architecture and Capitalismtells a story of the relationship between the economy and
architectural design. Eleven historians each discuss in brand new essays the time
period they know best, looking at cultural and economic issues, which in light
of current financial crises you will find have dealt with diverse but surprisingly
familiar issues. Told through case studies, the narrative begins in the mid-
nineteenth century and ends with 2011, with introductions by editor Peggy
Deamer to pull the main themes together so that you can see how other architects
in different times and in different countries have dealt with similar conditions.
By focussing on what previous architects experienced, you have the opportunity
to avoid repeating the past.
With new essays by Pier Vittorio Aureli, Ellen Dunham-Jones, Keller
Easterling, Lauren Kogod, Robert Hewison, Joanna Merwood-Salisbury, Robin
Schuldenfrei, Deborah Gans, Simon Sadler, Nathan Rich, and Michael Sorkin.
Peggy Deameris a professor of architecture at Yale University, New Haven, USA.
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Architecture and
Capitalism
1845 to the Present
Peggy Deamer
First published 2014
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Simultaneously published in the UK
by Routledge
2Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
©2014 Taylor & Francis
The right of the editor to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for
their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Architecture and capitalism : 1845 to the present / [edited by] Peggy Deamer.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Architecture and society—History. 2. Architecture—Economic aspects. I. Deamer, Peggy, editor
of compilation.
NA2543.S6A6272 2013
720.1’08—dc23
2012046775
ISBN: 978-0-415-53487-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-53488-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-49902-3 (ebk)
Typeset in Joanna and Univers
by Keystroke, Station Road, Codsall, Wolverhampton
Printed and bound in the United States of America on acid-free paper.
Acquisition Editor: Wendy Fuller
Editorial Assistant: Laura Williamson
Production Editor: Jennifer Birtill
Project Assistant to Peggy Deamer: Dariel Cobb
Contents
Notes on contributors vii
Timeline xi
Preface xxxi
PEGGY DEAMER
Introduction 1
PEGGY DEAMER
1 Straight lines or curved? The Victorian values of John Ruskin and
Henry Cole 8
ROBERT HEWISON
2 The first Chicago school and the ideology of the skyscraper 25
JOANNA MERWOOD-SALISBURY
3 The display window as educator: the German Werkbund and cultural
economy 50
LAUREN KOGOD
4 Capital dwelling: industrial capitalism, financial crisis, and the Bauhaus’s
Haus am Horn 71
ROBIN SCHULDENFREI
5 Big work: Le Corbusier and capitalism 98
DEBORAH GANS
6 The varieties of capitalist experience 115
SIMON SADLER
7 Manfredo Tafuri, Archizoom, Superstudio, and the critique of
architectural ideology 132
PIER VITTORIO AURELI
Contents
8 Irrational exuberance: Rem Koolhaas and the 1990s 150
ELLEN DUNHAM-JONES
9 Globally integrated/locally fractured: the extraordinary development
ofGurgaon, India 172
NATHAN RICH
10 Spectacular failure: the architecture of late capitalism at the Millennium
Dome 189
SIMON SADLER
Coda: liberal 202
KELLER EASTERLING
Afterword: architecture without capitalism 217
MICHAEL SORKIN
Index 221
Contributors
Peggy Deameris Professor of Architecture at Yale University. She is also a visiting
scholar at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand. She has taught at
Parsons, Columbia, and Princeton as well as The University of Auckland, Unitec,
and Victoria University in New Zealand. She received her BA from Oberlin
College, her B.Arch from The Cooper Union and her Ph.D. from Princeton
University. She is a principal in the firm of Deamer, Studio. She is author of the
Millennium House (Monacelli Press, 2004) and co-editor of Rereading Perspecta (MIT
Press, 2009) with Alan Plattus and Robert A. M. Stern. She is also the co-editor,
with Phil Bernstein, of Building in the Future: Recasting Architectural Labor (Princeton
Architectural Press, 2010) and BIM in Academia(Yale School of Architecture, 2011).
Dariel Cobbisan Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Hartford.
She received a BA in architecture from UC Berkeley and an M.Arch from Yale
where she was also a teaching Fellow in both the School of Architecture and the
History of Art Department. Her recent conference publications have focused on
ephemeral conceptualizations of space across cultural modes.
Robert Hewisonhas spent a lifetime working on aspects of Ruskin. His first book,
John Ruskin: The Argument of the Eye,was published by Princeton University Press in
1976; his most recent in this field is Ruskin on Venice: The Paradise of Cities,published
by Yale University Press in 2010. He was Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford
and co-curator of the Tate Britain exhibition “Ruskin, Turner and the Pre-
Raphaelites” in Ruskin’s centenary year, 2000. He has written on the arts for the
Sunday Timessince 1981, is an Associate of the think tank Demos, and a Visiting
Professor at the Ruskin research center, Lancaster University. He is writing a study
of the cultural policies of the New Labour government, 1997–2010.
Joanna Merwood-Salisburyis Associate Professor of Architecture at Parsons The
New School for Design in New York City. She is author of Chicago 1890: The
Skyscraper and the Modern City(University of Chicago Press, 2009) and a co-editor of
After Taste: Expanded Practice in Interior Design(Princeton Architectural Press, 2011). She
has published essays on architecture and design in a number of journals including
The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians,AA Files,Grey Room,Technology and Culture,
Design Issues,and Lotus International.
Contributors
Lauren Kogodearned BFA and B.Arch at the Rhode Island School of Design, MS
in Architecture at Columbia University, and is Ph.D. candidate in architectural
history and theory at Harvard University, writing on reforms in the spatial
organization and stylistic representation of middle-class German domestic life,
1890–1918. Kogod most recently was Lecturer in Architectural History and
Theory at Yale University.
Robin Schuldenfreiis Junior Professor of Art History at Humboldt University,
Berlin. Her publications include the edited volume Atomic Dwelling: Anxiety,
Domesticity, and Postwar Architecture (Routledge,2012) and with Jeffrey Saletnik,
Bauhaus Construct: Fashioning Identity, Discourse, and Modernism (Routledge,2009). Her
research focuses on the points of convergence between design, architecture, and
interior architecture, with an emphasis on the history and theory of the object,
particularly its status in society. She is currently working on a full-length study
of luxury and modernism in architecture and design in early twentieth-century
Germany.
Deborah Gansis the author of The Le Corbusier Guide,now in its third edition, as
well as numerous articles on Le Corbusier including the introduction to his Talks
With Students. She is currently Professor in Architecture at Pratt Institute and has
taught frequently as a visiting critic at Yale School of Architecture. She is an
architect and principal of Gans studio.
Simon Sadleris Professor of Architectural and Urban History in the Department
of Design at the University of California, Davis. Formerly he taught at the
University of Nottingham in the UK; Trinity College, University of Dublin, Ireland;
Birmingham City University, UK; and the Open University, UK. His publications
include Archigram: Architecture without Architecture(MIT Press, 2005); Non-Plan: Essays on
Freedom, Participation and Change in Modern Architecture and Urbanism(Architectural Press,
2000, co-editor Jonathan Hughes); and The Situationist City(MIT Press, 1998). He
serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Architectural Educationand the advisory
board of The Architect’s Newspaper and is a past UC Davis Chancellor’s Fellow and
Fellow of the Paul Mellon Center for Studies in British Art.
Pier Vittorio Aureliis an architect and educator. He teaches at the Architectural
Association in London and he is Visiting Professor at Yale School of Architecture.
His writing and teaching focus on the relationship between architectural form,
political theory, and urban history. He is the author of publications including
The Possibility of an Absolute Architectureand The Project of Autonomy: Politics and Architecture
Within and Against Capitalism.Aureli studied at the Istituto di Architettura di Venezia
(IUAV), before obtaining his PhD. from the Delft University of Technology. He
has taught at the Berlage Institute, Columbia University, the Barcelona Institute
of Architecture, and Delft University of Technology. Together with Martino
Tattara, Aureli is the co-founder of DOGMA, an office focused on the project of
the city.
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Contributors
Ellen Dunham-Jonesis a Professor of Architecture and Coordinator of the MS
Urban Design degree at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her work seeks to
cross-fertilize the worlds of contemporary theory and contemporary develop-
ment. She is co-author with June Williamson of Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design
Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs(Wiley, 2009/2011) and serves as Chair of the Board
of the Congress for the New Urbanism.
Nathan Richis an architect in New York City. He is currently a Project Architect
at Steven Holl Architects where he works on both regional and global projects.
In 2004–2005 he was a Henry Luce Scholar in Beijing, where he worked on the
preservation of China’s traditional hutongs. Nathan attended Wesleyan University
and the Yale School of Architecture.
Keller Easterlingis an architect and writer from New York City and a Professor
at Yale University. Her book, Enduring Innocence: Global Architecture and its Political
Masquerades(MIT, 2005) researches familiar spatial products that have landed in
difficult or hyperbolic political situations around the world. A previous book,
Organization Space: Landscapes, Highways and Houses in America,applies network theory to
adiscussion of American infrastructure and development formats. A forthcoming
book, Extrastatecraft: Global Infrastructure and Political Arts,examines global infrastructure
networks as a medium of polity.
Michael Sorkinis Principal of the Michael Sorkin Studio, President of Terreform
and of the Institute for Urban Design, Distinguished Professor of Architecture,
and Director of the Graduate Program in Urban Design at The City College of
New York.
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