Narrating Architecture: A Retrospective Anthology

513 Pages·2006·26.44 MB·English

by  J. Madge

1111
2 Narrating Architecture
3111
4
5
6
7
8
9
10111
1 The Journal of Architecture is jointly published by The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and
2 Routledge. An international journal committed to advancing architectural discourse in its widest sense,
3 its aim is to seek diverse views of the past, present and future practice of architecture, and to attract a
4 wide variety of perspectives from the architectural and related professions, as well as from academics.
5 This anthology brings together in one volume a selection of papers that stand out after ten years of
6 publication. The editors give readers access to international contributions in a carefully structured book,
7 bringing coherence to a wide range of topics. The book is divided into seven parts: Architects and the
8 practice of design; Architecture and the discourses of science; Issues of materiality; Narratives of domes-
9 ticity; Problems of building; The sociology of architectural practice; Identity and the appropriation of place.
20111 It offers those teaching or running seminars in this subject area a readily available collection of recent
1 research in several key areas.
2
3
4 James Madgeworked initially as an architect in various private and public offices and subsequently as
5 a sole practitioner. He taught full-time at the University of Westminster until his retirement in 2001. He
6 now pursues projects concerned with the production of critical and historical text.
7
8 Andrew Peckhamwas educated at Cambridge University and the Polytechnic of Central London. He
9 teaches full-time at the University of Westminster and has recently published a chapter on Aldo Rossi in
30111 An Architects Guide to Fame, 2005.
1
2
3
4
5111
1111
1111
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10111
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
20111
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
30111
1
2
3
4
5111
Narrating
1111
2 Architecture
3
4
5
6
7
8 A retrospective anthology
9
10111
1
2
3
4 Edited by
5
James Madge and Andrew Peckham
6
7
8
9
20111
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
30111
Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group
LONDON AND NEW YORK
1
2
3
1111
2
3
4
First published 2006 5
by Routledge 6
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN 7
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 8
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY10016 9
10111
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
1
© 2006 The Royal Institute of British Architects 2
© 2006 James Madge and Andrew Peckham for volume and part introductions 3
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006. 4
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s 5
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” 6
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or 7
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now 8
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any 9
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers. 20111
1
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data 2
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
3
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data 4
A catalog record has been requested 5
ISBN10 0-415-37435-9 (hbk) 6
ISBN10 0-415-38564-4 (pbk) 7
ISBN10 0-203-08856-5 (ebk) 8
ISBN13 978-0-415-37435-4 (hbk) 9
ISBN13 978-0-415-38564-0 (pbk) 30111
ISBN13 978-0-203-08856-2 (ebk) 1
2
3
4
5111
Contents
1111
2
3111
4
5 Introduction vii
6
Foreword xi
7
8 Illustration credits xiii
9
10111
Part 1 Architects and the practice of design 1
1
Language, sites and types: a consideration of the work of Álvaro Siza Robert A. Levit 3
2
3 Architecture as artifice Karin Jaschke 29
4 Frank Gehry: roofing, wrapping, and wrapping the roof Gevork Hartoonian 39
5
6
7 Part 2 Architecture and the discourses of science 71
8 Proun: an exercise in the illusion of four-dimensional space Richard J. Difford 73
9
Complexities Reinhold Martin 105
20111
1 The meaning of molluscs: Léonce Reynaud and the Cuvier-Geoffroy Debate
2 of 1830, Paris Paula Young Lee 129
3
4
Part 3 Issues of materiality 159
5
6 Between the barrier and the sieve: finding the border in the Modern Movement
7 Helmut Lethen 161
8 The problem of our walls Brian Hatton 173
9
Ruins revisited: modernist conceptions of heritage Brigitte Desrochers 189
30111
1
2 Part 4 Narratives of domesticity 201
3
Creating space out of text: perspectives on domestic Regency architecture or Three essays
4
on the picturesque Isabel Allen 203
5111
1111
vi Contents
Tenuous boundaries: women, domesticity and nationhood in 1930s Turkey 1111
Gülsüm Baydar 227 2
3
The meanings of domesticity Bart Verschaffel 243
4
5
Part 5 Problems of building 253 6
Frank Lloyd Wright and the concrete slab and column Leonard K. Eaton 255 7
8
Berlage’s Beurs – concept and method Jan Molema 287
9
Invention from war: a circumstantial modernism for Australian architecture 10111
Philip Goad andJulie Willis 315 1
2
3
Part 6 The sociology of architectural practice 339
4
What Vitruvius said Richard Patterson 341 5
‘Primitive wisdom’ and modern architecture Felicity Scott 361 6
7
The networks of tropical architecture Hannah le Roux 379
8
9
Part 7 Identity and the appropriation of place 399 20111
1
Identity and memory in the modern metropolis: elements for a discussion.
2
The case of São Paulo Elisabetta Andreoli 401
3
Hearth and cloth: dwelling practice and production in Eastern Tibet Suzanne Ewing 419 4
The classical model of the Spanish-American colonial city René Martínez Lemoine 439 5
6
From shikumento new-style: a rereading of lilonghousing in modern Shanghai
7
Chunlan Zhao 453
8
9
Index 483 30111
1
2
3
4
5111
Introduction
1111
2
3111
4
5 This book is a collection of material which has the plot: in any case, their cumulative effect has
6 appeared in volumes one to nine of The Journal of been, precisely, to constitute discourse as narrative.
7 Architecture. It celebrates the first ten years, during Writers of architecture, then, tell (to themselves,
8 which this publication has provided a platform for to each other and to the world) stories of what
9 original investigations in the field of architecture architecture does: in which architecture, however
10111 both within the UK and internationally. In placing defined, is the leading protagonist. These stories,
1 this material under the generic title of ‘narrative’, whether enshrining compositional or operative
2 we intend to locate it within a conceptual frame principles or revealing experiential or ethical sensi-
3 which has persisted, in a variety of guises, bilities, develop as spatial narrative, a characteristic
4 throughout the second half of the twentieth mode of thought in both ‘familiar’ and self-
5 century, and in narrating, specifically, architecture, consciously ‘avant-garde’ architectural practice and
6 we attribute to this particular narrative a charac- experience. Taken in this context, the variety of
7 teristically spatial implication. perspectives adopted by contributors to The Journal
8 With every new twist and turn in the develop- of Architecture, reflect an editorial openness that
9 ment of architectural, and more generally, cultural provides an unbiased outlet for critical investigation
20111 theory during the later twentieth century, one may of the subject. Without declaiming any particular
1 detect an impulse to displace or, at least, to slant, The Journalhas accepted the narrative variety
2 suspend narrative as the dominant mode. That is of architectural discourse, not explicitly promoting
3 to set in its place conceptual structures, either more the more arcane manifestations of contemporary
4 normative, or more critically provisional. There are theory but restricting itself to the task of narrating
5 those, for instance, who would see in architecture architecture.
6 primarily the tangible necessity of an abstract and All the work which is collected in this volume,
7 transcendental intuition; and those, on the like much of the work which has appeared in The
8 contrary, for whom architecture and its narrative Journal of Architectureduring its first ten years of
9 are merely a mask to be stripped away in order to publication (whether or not produced within an
30111 reveal a disguised material reality (not to mention institutional academic framework), may legitimately
1 those for whom the manipulated surface, the be described as research within the field of archi-
2 appearance of the profession at its ‘face value’; is tecture. The issue of research within the field of
3 epitomised in architectural journalism). Though architecture has been, increasingly, a matter of
4 these amending voices have not necessarily deep anxiety in the world of architectural educa-
5111 enriched it, they have unquestionably complicated tion. Schools of architecture see their future threat-
1111
viii Introduction
ened by institutional prejudice as to what, in terms it need signify no more than collective intellectual 1111
of their own discipline, academic research ought or, endeavour, shared in a specific field of activity. One 2
indeed, is able to be. Technical building research, characterised by salient questions, dilemmas in 3
carried out generally by non-architects, has tended need of resolution, circumstances calling for the 4
to concentrate on the evaluation of available prod- reappraisal of previous assumptions, or emergent 5
ucts and procedures in the light of, or as a basis data to be absorbed into an operative body of 6
for, building legislation. As such, it falls short of the knowledge. Architectural discourse exhibits all of 7
criteria for pure science, out of key with the intel- these features, along, no doubt, with many others 8
lectual ethos of academic life. Research in archi- common to groups whose economic interest is 9
tectural history or theory is an activity typically closely bound up with the maintenance of public 10111
pursued by (and vigorously defended by) academics credibility. Only a small part of any discourse falls 1
whose formation has been in History or Art History under the proper description of research: small, 2
and who, for the same reason, can, on occasion, that is, in relation to the persistent background 3
have an ambivalent role within schools of architec- noise with which the self-image of a profession is 4
ture. While the issues explored in Cultural Studies fabricated, nurtured, fetishised and propagated in 5
are widely perceived as relevant in the specific field each new generation. Research might be charac- 6
of architecture, it is by no means clear how such terised as a part of that which remains of a 7
relevance is to yield a form of research which archi- discourse after all the gossip, narcissism, attention 8
tects would be particularly fitted to carry out. seeking and striking of postures have been boiled 9
Neither, in the fields of management and law, away (implicated though it may well be in all or 20111
crucially though these may impinge upon architec- any of these activities). 1
tural practice, is there an academic expertise Research in science (or any other academically 2
specific to architects or one generally cultivated in ‘respectable’ field of research) is, first and foremost, 3
departments of architecture, which is likely to for the benefit of those who are regularly engaged 4
develop these fields of study substantially in acad- in it. The supposed benefit to society at large is a 5
emic terms. happy, though not a necessary, outcome. So the 6
What, then, is the nature or the source of this research which is produced within architectural 7
‘research’ which we confidently claim to have discourse be primarily of value to those whose 8
discovered in the first nine volumes of The Journal regular concerns are architectural. Society will, no 9
of Architecture? To be sure, it touches in various doubt, benefit in the long run if the discourse of 30111
ways on building science, history, cultural studies, architecture is lively, relevant and well-informed; 1
law, management, as well as numerous other hopefully, the benefit would be in the form of more 2
related disciplines, but its centre of gravity lies else- coherent architecture. But there is certainly no need 3
where. If the term ‘discourse’ may have been over- to apologise for the fact that research in architec- 4
worked and over-loaded with pejorative overtones, ture is likely to be of greater interest to thoughtful 5111
Introduction ix
1111 and reflective architects, than to members of the the more outstanding work. The reader should not
2 general public. The belief, so often expressed expect to find, under any given heading, work of
3 among architects, that their activity and concerns a uniform nature but, rather, that the clustering of
4 ought, necessarily, to be extended so as to embrace work underlines the diversity of thought which
5 and, even, to merge with the activity and concerns writers have brought to apparently comparable
6 of the public at large, is a delusion. This can only topics. None of the sections is intended to be taken
7 lead to anxiety and frustration within the profes- as a definitive or, in any way, comprehensive review
8 sion (and to a degree of irritation in the world of its subject. The research, which has illuminated
9 outside). The writing collected in this volume is the discourse of architecture over the last ten years,
10111 research, which will, properly, be of particular is to be understood as ‘work in progress’, of which
1 interest to those involved in architecture. the selection presented in this book may provide a
2 What unifies this collection of writing, then, is snapshot.
3 that it belongs within the discourse of architecture: We are presenting this material to reflect preoc-
4 what diversifies it is the variety of questions which cupations which have figured significantly in the
5 have been addressed, the sources from which archi- thinking of architects, and their critics, during the
6 tectural knowledge has been produced. The imme- period under review, but also to lend substance to
7 diacy or the comparative abstraction of the matters the notion of research in architecture which is not
8 investigated, and the variety of thematic relation- merely the shadow of research in another disci-
9 ships to adjacent or complementary discourses and pline. This is to empower, as far as a single publi-
20111 disciplines, adds to its cogency. It has been our cation can do so, the reflective, self-conscious and
1 intention to present the widest possible range of self-critical elements within architectural discourse.
2 material (if only to establish, for the record, the Inevitably, there was work of high quality worthy
3 range of issues which have surfaced within archi- of inclusion but which, given the textual constraints
4 tectural discourse during the last ten years), as far to which we have been working, did not achieve
5 as is possible, without imposing upon it a precon- the highest priority. These, inevitably difficult, deci-
6 ceived form or agenda. This, as a narrative rather sions have been made in the light of consistent
7 than an hierarchical structure, parallels the editorial criteria:
8 practice of The Journal of Architecture.
9 The seven headings under which we have assem- 1 The work was, in some way, surprising,
30111 bled the material were not conceived as a ‘shop- substantially unlike anything, whether or not by
1 ping list’ to be matched by the selection of suitable the same author, which the reader would be
2 examples in each case. On the contrary, the head- likely to have encountered before or which is
3 ings were identified in order to give coherence to already available in a comparable publication.
4 the range of the papers which we found ourselves It could be seen to amount, in its own right,
5111 wanting to include; they arose from the nature of to more than an account of the content of