VSA2310

Modern architecture and urbanism: 1907- 1968

Conrad Hamann

8 points
* 3 hours per week
* First semester
* Clayton
* Prerequisites: Normally two visual arts subjects at first-year level

Objectives Students should be familiar with the major currents of European and American architecture in the first half of the twentieth century, seeing the relationship between past architecture and the Modern Movement in building and in urban consciousness. Students should develop a sense of how these developments underpin contemporary architecture and urban surroundings; they should be able to discuss individual buildings in depth and understand the physical, social and built contexts in which they occur.

Synopsis 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 subject examines the convergence of several movements in European architecture before and after World War One. 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 to 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 subject concludes with later work by Mies, Aalto, Saarinen, Rudolph and Kahn.

Assessment Written (5000 words): 75%
* Visual test (1 hour): 25%

Prescribed texts

Banham R Theory and design in the first machine age Architectural P, 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