Modern architecture and urbanism, 1907-1968
Proposed to be offered next in 1996
C Hamann
8 points * 3 hours per week * Second semester * Clayton * Prerequisites: Two visual arts subjects at first-year level
An investigation of the modern movement in architecture and planning, up to the challenges made to its assumptions and programs in the mid 1960s. The first part of the course examines the convergence of several movements in European architecture before and after World War I. These include the expressionist architecture of Mendelsohn, Scharoun and their contemporaries in Germany and Holland, constructivist and other new architecture of the early Soviet Union, and developments from futurism in Italian architecture of c. 1938. The Bauhaus, and radical urban housing of Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, conclude the early phase of this study. At various points the powerful role of `traditional' architects (Lutyens, Goodhue, Asplund, Hood) will be considered. The second part considers the spread of modern architecture in Britain, Scandinavia and the Americas. This includes the use that European dictatorships made of new architecture, such as the classicising `alternatives' of the Nazi and Stalinist periods after 1932. The course concludes with later work by Mies, Aalto, Saarinen, Rudolph and Kahn.
Assessment
Written (4500 words): 75% * Visual test (1 hour): 25%
Prescribed texts
Banham R Theory and design in the first machine age Architectural Press, 1975
Frampton K Modern architecture: a critical history rev. edn, Thames and Hudson, 1985
Norberg-Schulz C Meaning in western architecture Rizzoli, 1983
Recommended texts
Conrads U Programs and manifestos in twentieth century architecture Lund Humphries, 1985
Curtis W Modern architecture since 1900 Phaidon, 1982
Giedion S Space, time and architecture 5th edn, Harvard, 1967
Hitchcock H R Architecture: nineteenth and twentieth centuries Penguin, 1985
Jencks C Modern movements in architecture Penguin, 1985
Lane B M Architecture and politics in Germany, 1918-1945 Harvard, 1968