Terms of Appropriation: Modern Architecture and Global Exchange

293 Pages·2017·95.6 MB·English

by  Amanda Reeser Lawrence

TERMS OF APPROPRIATION
This collection focuses on how architectural material is transformed, revised, swallowed
whole, plagiarized, or in any other way appropriated. It charts new territory within this
still unexplored yet highly topical area of study by establishing a shared vocabulary with
which to discuss, or contest, the workings of appropriation as a vital and progressive aspect
of architectural discourse. Written by a group of rising scholars in the field of architectural
history and criticism, the chapters cover a range of architectural subjects that are linked in
their investigations of how architects engage with their predecessors.
Amanda Reeser Lawrence received her PhD in history and theory of architecture from
Harvard University. She is a tenured Associate Professor in the School of Architecture at
Northeastern University. Lawrence is founding coeditor of the award-winning journal,
PRAXIS. She is the author of James Stirling: Revisionary Modernist (Yale University Press, 2013).
Ana Miljački is Associate Professor of Architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
where she teaches history, theory, and design. She holds a PhD in history and theory of
architecture from Harvard University. Her work focuses on the relationship between politics
and the products and circumstances of architectural labor. She is the author of The Optimum
Imperative: Czech Architecture for the Socialist Lifestyle 1938–1968 (Routledge, 2017).

TERMS OF APPROPRIATION
Modern Architecture and
Global Exchange
Edited by Amanda Reeser Lawrence
and Ana Miljački
First published 2018
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 selection and editorial matter, Amanda Reeser Lawrence and Ana Miljački;
individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Amanda Reeser Lawrence and Ana Miljački to be identified as the authors
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 utilised in
any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
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retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to
infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lawrence, Amanda Reeser, editor. | Miljački, Ana, editor.
Title: Terms of appropriation : modern architecture and global exchange /
edited by Amanda Reeser Lawrence and Ana Miljački.
Description: New York : Routledge, 2018. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017029019| ISBN 9781138940031 (hb : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781138940048 (pb : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315674506 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Architecture, Modern—20th century—Philosophy. |
Appropriation (Architecture)
Classification: LCC NA680 .T366 2018 | DDC 724/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017029019
ISBN: 978-1-138-94003-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-94004-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-67450-6 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
CONTENTS
About the contributors vii
Acknowledgments x
Introduction: authorship, transfer, rights,
re-enactments 1
PART I
Authorship 11
1 Signed, anonymous: the persona of the architect
in the Mansion House debate 13
Timothy Hyde
2 The anxiety of anonymity: on the historiographic problem
of Walter Gropius and The Architects Collaborative 24
Michael Kubo
3 The power of association: Le Corbusier and the banlieues 50
Kenny Cupers
PART II
Transfer 73
4 Edvard Ravnikar’s eclecticism of taste and the politics of appropriation 75
Vladimir Kulić
vi Contents
5 Cold War adaptations: SIAL Školka’s real and imaginary
architectural dialogues with the West 94
Ana Miljački
6 Translation theory and the intertwined histories of building
for self-governance 116
Esra Akcan
PART III
Rights 139
7 Architecture and copyright: rights of authors and things
in the age of digital reproduction 141
Ines Weizman
8 Sufficient originality: the legal contours of creativity in architecture 160
Sarah M. Hirschman
9 Architectural patents beyond Bucky Fuller’s Quadrant 186
Kevin Emerson Collins
PART IV
Re-enactments 213
10 By the book: Philip Johnson’s Ledoux redo at the University of Houston 215
Amanda Reeser Lawrence
11 A careful misreading of precedent: the politics of transparency in the
work of Lina Bo Bardi 234
David Rifkind
12 Not exactly the same: on the fantasy of “Chinese architectural copies” 248
Winnie Wong
13 Città analoga: Aldo Rossi’s visual theory on display 263
Léa-Catherine Szacka
Index 277
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
Esra Akcan is Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture at Cornell University.
She completed her architecture degree at METU in Turkey, and her PhD and postdoctoral
degrees at Columbia University. She is the author of Architecture in Translation (Duke), Turkey:
Modern Architectures in History (Reaktion, with S. Bozdoğan), Çeviride Modern Olan (YKY),
(Land)Fill Istanbul (124/3), and over a hundred articles in multiple languages. She is the recipi-
ent of awards from the American Academy and the Institute for Advanced Studies in Berlin,
Getty, Clark, CCA, Graham, Mellon, UIC, DAAD, and KRESS/ARIT. Her forthcoming
book is Open Architecture.
Kevin Emerson Collins is Professor of Law and Director of the Intellectual Property and
Technology Law program at the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis. He writes
regularly on patent protection for software and biotechnology, and he is the author of a
forthcoming book on the intellectual property of architecture. Before becoming a legal aca-
demic, he earned a MArch from Columbia University and worked as a project architect with
Bernard Tschumi Architects.
Kenny Cupers is Associate Professor in the History and Theory of Architecture and Urbanism
at the University of Basel. He is the author of The Social Project: Housing Postwar France (2014),
editor of Use Matters: An Alternative History of Architecture (2013), and co-author of Spaces of
Uncertainty (2002).
Sarah M. Hirschman is an architect in practice in San Francisco and LeFevre Emerging
Practitioner Fellow at the Knowlton School of Architecture, Ohio State University. She was
founding director of the Keller Gallery at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Depart-
ment of Architecture and co-curator with Ana Miljački of Un/Fair Use, an exhibition about
architectural copyright, shown at the Center for Architecture in New York in 2015 and at UC
Berkeley’s Wurster Gallery in 2016. Research for this text was conducted with funding from
the Lawrence B. Anderson Award.
viii About the contributors
Timothy Hyde is Associate Professor of Architectural History at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology. He is the author of Constitutional Modernism: Architecture and Civil Society in
Cuba, 1933–1959 and is the chair of the Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative.
Michael Kubo is Assistant Professor at the University of Houston. His dissertation, titled Archi-
tecture Incorporated: Authorship, Anonymity, and Collaboration in Postwar Modernism, examines The
Architects Collaborative and the rise of the architectural corporation after 1945. His publica-
tions include Heroic: Concrete Architecture and the New Boston (2015) and OfficeUS Atlas (2015).
Vladimir Kulic’ (Florida Atlantic University) is an architectural historian, critic, and cura-
tor. His past and current projects include Modernism In-Between: The Mediatory Architectures of
Socialist Yugoslavia (2012), an exhibition on Yugoslav architecture at the Museum of Modern
Art in New York (2018), and an edited volume on postmodernism in the former socialist
world (2018).
David Rifkind holds degrees from the Boston Architectural Center (BArch), McGill Uni-
versity (MArch), and Columbia University (PhD). He teaches courses in architectural history,
theory, and design at Florida International University. His research deals with the relationships
between politics, culture, and the built environment since the late nineteenth century, with
special emphasis on Italy and Ethiopia.
Léa-Catherine Szacka is Assistant Professor at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design.
She completed a PhD in architectural history and theory at the Bartlett School of Architec-
ture with focus on the history of architecture exhibitions and of postmodernism. She is the
author of Exhibiting the Postmodern: The 1980 Venice Architecture Biennale (Marsilio, 2016). Her
articles have appeared in Log, AA Files, OASE, JAE, Journal of Architecture, and Les Cahiers du
MNAM.
Ines Weizman (PhD) is Professor of Architecture Theory, Director of the Bauhaus-Institute
of History and Theory of Architecture and Planning, and Director of the Centre for Docu-
mentary Architecture at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. She trained as an architect at the
Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and the Ècole d’Architecture de Belleville in Paris, the Sor-
bonne, the University of Cambridge, and the Architectural Association, where she completed
her PhD thesis in History and Theory. Her publications include Architecture and the Paradox of
Dissidence (Routledge, 2014), Before and After: Documenting the Architecture of Disaster with Eyal
Weizman (Strelka Press, 2015). She edited with Jorge Otero-Pailos the issue “Preservation and
Copyright” for the journal Future Anterior (University of Minnesota Press). Her articles have
appeared in AA Files, ADD, ARCH+, Harvard Design Magazine, JAE, Perspecta, and Volume.
Winnie Wong is a historian of modern and contemporary art and visual culture, with a
special interest in fakes, forgeries, frauds, copies, counterfeits, and other non-art challenges
to authorship and originality. She is Associate Professor of Rhetoric and History of Art at
the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Van Gogh on Demand: China and
the Readymade (University of Chicago Press, 2014), which was awarded the Joseph Levenson
Book Prize in 2015. With Mary Ann O’Donnell and Jonathan Bach, she co-edited Learn-
ing From Shenzhen: China’s Post-Mao Experiment from Special Zone to Urban Model (University
About the contributors ix
of Chicago Press, 2017). Her articles have appeared in positions, Current Anthropology, Public
Domain Review, Artforum, and others. Winnie received her PhD from the Massachusetts Insti-
tute of Technology and was elected Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows.