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Utopias and Architecture - School of Architecture PDF

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1471.qxd 9/30/2006 3:17 PM Page 1 Batch number:1 CHECKLIST (must be completed before press) (Please cross through any items that are not applicable) Front board: Spine: Back board: ❑ Title ❑ Title ❑ ISBN ❑ Subtitle ❑ Subtitle ❑ Barcode ❑ Author/edited by ❑ Author/edited by ❑ Series title ❑ Extra logo if required E T Utopias and Architecture ❑ Extra logo if required d H it E e General: d H ❑ Book size b A ❑ Type fit on spine y N D R B CIRCULATED Date: e n O o O s SEEN BY DESK EDITOR:REVISE NEEDED Initial: K K Date: O . P F a J APPROVED FOR PRESS BY DESK EDITOR Initial: p U a Date: d N o G p I A o u N lo P s S Y Nathaniel Coleman C H O L O G Y IS,BN !9778-1I-58B3915-1I47-1 www.routledge.com ï an informabusiness PC4 Royal Demy B-format Spine back edge Utopias and Architecture Utopias and Architecture is concerned with the enduring central question in architecture of how buildings communicate. Post-modern architecture often fails to create welcoming built environments, yet in this book Nathaniel Coleman shows how a significant contemporary architecture persists as a real possibility. Utopia is examined as fundamental to the invention of a meaningful architecture and Nathaniel Coleman traces the role of utopias for social imagination through archi- tectural theory and history, utopian literature, utopian studies, philosophy, sociology and anthropology. Comprising an investigation of architectural ideas and works of the 1950s and 1960s, the author focuses on Aldo van Eyck’s Amsterdam Orphanage, Louis I. Kahn’s Salk Institute and Le Corbusier’s La Tourette. These exemplary works, constructed when modernist orthodoxy was faltering, proposed an alternative modernity which revealed pathways to recuperating architectural meaning. Nathaniel Coleman extends his investigation into the present, examining Daniel Libeskind’s Berlin Jewish Museum, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien’s Neurosciences Institute and Renzo Piano’s Tjibaou Cultural Centre, buildings that continue to renew the tradition of modern architecture in distinct ways. Utopias and Architecturepresents an alternative to the predominant current modes of theorizing and p ractising. No book available on architecture examines utopia with equal depth, or so persuasively challenges conventional readings of the role of utopia for architectural invention, making this work a unique contribution to architectural design methodology, history and theory and utopian studies. Nathaniel Colemanfirst studied architecture at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York, and continued his education at the Rhode Island School of Design. He practiced in New York and Rome and completed his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania, where Joseph Rykwert was his supervisor. Currently a Senior Lecturer in Architecture and Urban Design and the Director of Architecture and Landscape, Coleman is also a member of the Centre for Tectonic Cultures Research Group at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. He previously taught in the US. Utopias and Architecture Nathaniel Coleman First published 2005 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group © 2005 Nathaniel Coleman Typeset in Univers by Keystroke, Jacaranda Lodge, Wolverhampton Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall 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 invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Da ta A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0–415–70084–1 (hbk) ISBN 0–415–70085–x (pbk) To the memory of my mother, Corrine Contents Illustration credits viii Acknowledgments ix Introduction: utopias and architectures? 1 Part 1: Conceptualizing utopias 7 1 Architecture and orientation 9 2 Situating utopias 24 3 Real fictions 46 4 Varieties of architectural utopias 63 5 Postwar possibilities 88 Part 2: Optimistic architectures 113 6 Le Corbusier’s monastic ideal 115 7 The life within 133 8 Fairy tales and golden dust 155 9 Kahn and Salk’s challenge to dualistic thinking 174 10 Aldo van Eyck’s utopian discipline 196 11 Story of another idea 214 12 The unthinkability of utopia 234 13 Into the present 257 Notes 297 Select bibliography 319 Index 327 vii Illustration credits The author and publisher gratefully acknowledge the following for permission to reproduce material in this book. Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders for their permission. The publishers would be grateful to hear from any copyright holder who is not acknowledged here and will undertake to rectify any errors or omissions in future editions of the book. Centre Culturel Tjibaou – ADCK/Renzo Piano Building Workshop Archietectes and Nathaniel Coleman 13.20, 13.21–31.29 Nathaniel Coleman and FLC/ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2004 0.1, 6.1, 6.3–6.5, 6.7, 6.8, 7.10–7.19, 7.23, 7.24, 13.11 FLC/ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2004 1.2, 5.3, 5.7, 6.2, 7.3, 7.5–7.9 Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale (National Library) 3.2 Hannie van Eyck 5.8, 10.3, 11.3, 11.4, 11.9 Louis I. Kahn Collection. The Architectural Archives of the University of Pennsylvania 5.4, 5.5, 8.1–8.3, 9.1, 9.2, 13.30 Metropolitan Museum of Art, Robert Lehman Collection 3.1 Philadelphia Museum of Art 9.4–9.6 Photo SCALA, Florence – Courtesy of the Ministero Beni e Att. Culturali, 1990 3.2, 3.3 The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations 1.1, 2.1, 4.1, 4.2, 5.1, 5.2, 12.1 Venice, Accademia, Photo SCALA, Florence – Courtesy of the Minestero Beni e Att. Culturali, 1990 5.6 Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, Inc. 5.9 All other photographs are copyright of the current author. viii Acknowledgments My sincere appreciation goes to the individuals who shared their buildings with me. In particular, Antoine Lion at La Tourette, who introduced me to his home and his Order and who shared his interest in Le Corbusier, Thomas More and utopia with me; Bob Lizarraga at the Salk for sharing his long experience with the day-to-day operations of the Institute. Thanks go as well to Yuki Imai for making my visit to the Neurosciences Institute so smooth, and to Einar Gall and Gerald Edelman for helping me to understand their unique research centre, especially its correspondences with and divergences from the Salk. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Alban Bensa who generously met with me at his office in Paris to discuss some nagging questions I had about the Tjibaou Cultural Centre. Acknowledgment is also due to staff at the Amsterdam Orphanage, Jewish Museum Berlin and Tjibaou Cultural Centre for giving me access to their places of work and for permitting me to take photographs. Thanks are due also to Hannie van Eyck, Studio Libeskind, Renzo Piano Building Workshop and Tod Williams Billie Tsien Associates for their expressions of support for the aims of this project when approached for permission to use certain illustrative materials, some of which are included herein. Substantial early, and unwavering, encouragement for this project came from Joseph Rykwert and David Leatherbarrow. I owe them both a great debt that I hope this book, in some small way, honours. I am also grateful to Caroline Mallinder at Routledge for h er ongoing faith in this project. Gratitude is also due to the many students in the US and UK who provided me with innumerable opportunities (in studios, seminars and lectures) to explore the ideas and conclusions developed in this book. Alex Burry, who undertook a careful reading of the entire manuscript, is owed a very special debt of gratitude for his generous effort and thoughtful com- ments. My wife, Elizabeth, for her patience, love, support, generosity and faith that I would actually complete this book, which of course I could not have done without her. For all these reasons and more, especially her ongoing critical reading of the text as it developed, I owe her the most. A book of this sort could not have come to fruition without generous institutional support. It is for this that I would like to call special attention to the British Academy, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and the Research Committee of the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, University of Newcastle, who have each offered partial support for this book. ix

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tectural theory and history, utopian literature, utopian studies, philosophy, . alternative include the later buildings of Le Corbusier (1887–1965), the post- 1950s.
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