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THEORETICAL

PARADIGM/ISSUES

ADDRESSED

ARCHITECTURAL/

URBAN THEORY

CHARACTERISTICS/

IMPLICATIONS ON

ARCHITECTURE

ARCHITECTURAL/

URBAN OUTCOMES

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MODERN THEORY

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Situating Modernism in its context

Contribution

Generally the modern architecture has started with these 3 important

events in the Western History

- Cultural transformation; Neoclassical architecture (1750 1900)

- Territorial transformation; urban developments (1800 1909)

- Technical transformation; structural engineering (1775 1939)

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Characteristics

Modern architecture is usually characterized by:

a rejection of historical styles as a source of architectural form

an adoption of the principle that the materials and functional requirementsdetermine the result

an adoption of the machine aesthetic

a rejection ofornament

a simplification of form and elimination of "unnecessary detail"

an adoption ofexpressed structure

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The issues of the Modern Society

- Fit for purpose

- Mass production & machine

- Society & self

- Issue of Hygiene

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The issues of the Modern Society (Some theoreticalpositions

- Baudelaire and Paris by Walter Benjamin struggle of a poet with the forces of

urban commodity capitalism in Paris around 1850 forced to commodify his

literature product

- City Planning According to Artistic Principles by Camillo Sitte original

intention guide for locating monuments in public space, turned out as

criticism of modern city planning that valued logic and mathematical solutions

over artistic considerations lost the natural beauty

- Towards a New Architecture by Le Corbusier- Mass production: Architecture

would be as efficient as a factory assembly line. The building industry should

adopt the methods of the mass production automobile industry - Plan as agenerator of form

- The Metropolis and Mental Life by Georg Simmelthe stranger as a figure

within the crowd

Dont the all talk about human stru le a ainst a s stem?

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POST-MODERN THEORY

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Issues emerged due to Modernism in architecture

Displacement, loss of place

Loss of identity

Loss of sense of community

Celebration of technology

User-hostility

Sterility, loss of human scale

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Ideals and ideas of Postmodernism

What do these essays have to say?

Complexity and Contradiction in

Architecture by Robert Venturi

Learning from Las Vegas by Robert

Venturi and Denise Scott Brown

Collage City by Colin Rowe and Fred

Koetter

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Complexity and contradiction in architecture, 1966

Robert Venturi has re-assessed architecture to stress the importance ofmultiplemeanings in appreciating design.

Less is more was parodied with Less is bore

Complexity not simply by sticking on more ornamental details. Rather, Venturi wasin favour ofa tension bred by perceptual ambiguity which affect the overallcharacter of a design.

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Learning from Las Vegas, 1972

The sign is moreimportant than thearchitecture: Signs andmeanings over physicalmakeup of space.

"In the past, signage andstorefronts weredesigned to be seen andread by people walking orriding on horses," he said."Today those forms ofcommunication would beblurred and unread bydrivers and passengers."Messages today must beread from vehiclestravelling at high speeds.

"A roadway could become a city. A building could become a sign. In

no place at all, someplace could be created. That is Las Vegas'

genius."

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Collage City, Rowe & Koetter

a critical reappraisal of contemporarytheories of urban planning and designand of the role of the architect-plannerin an urban context.

rejects the grand utopian visions of"total planning" and "total design,"

Rowe reintroduced the complexities andpossibilities of art into urban design

propose a "collage city" which canaccommodate a whole range of utopiasin miniature.

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PHENOMENOLOGY OF

MEANING AND PLACES

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Issues emerged due to Modernism in architecture

Displacement, loss of place

Loss of identity

Loss of sense of community

Celebration of technology

User-hostility

Sterility, loss of human scale

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Architecture, more fully than other art forms, engages the immediacy of oursensory perceptions. The passage of time; light, shadow and transparency;color phenomena, texture, material and detail all participate in the

complete experience of architecture. [O]nly architecture cansimultaneously awaken all the sensesall the complexities of perception.

(Holl 1991, p. 41)

Sensory experience become integrated through the body The precept ofthe body and the image of the world turn into one single continuousexistential experience.

(Pallasmaa 2005, p. 40)

Theory of Phenomenology: Architecture & the senses

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Understanding Phenomenology of Place Christian Norberg-Schulz

To construct a comprehensive theory of architecture, we need to use linguistics,

perceptual psychology and phenomenology

- phenomenology as a method that urges a return to things, as opposed to abstractions

and mental construction

- Identifies phenomenologys potential in architecture as the ability to make the

environment meaningful through the creation of specific places

- Emphasizes the importance of basic architectural elements like wall, floor or ceiling

experienced as horizon, boundary and frame

- Every situation is local as well as general

- Theres distinction between natural and man-made elements natural environment

defines the geographical setting

- Categories of horizontal-vertical and inside-outside

- A place should have a particular identity or character

- Man-made elements are made up of settlements and paths which connect them

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Understanding Phenomenology of Place Christian Norberg-Schulz

- Structure of place = environmental totalities (character + space)

- Place are designated by nouns mamakstall, tree, college, home

- and spaces are denoted by prepositions over, before, after, in,

within

- and characters are denoted by adjectives gloomy, festive,

warm

- Man-made places are related to nature in three basic ways: man

make the natural structure more precise build what he see;

symbolize his understanding of nature experience translated into

another medium; man gather the experienced meanings to create

a microcosmo for them

- The purpose of architecture is to make a site become a place to

uncover the meanings potentially present in the given environment

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SEMIOTICS AND

STRUCTURALISM

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Definition of Semiotics

Based on Ferdinand de Saussure (1857 1913)

proposed a dualistic notion of signs relating

the signifier as the form of the word or phrase

uttered, to the signified as the mental concept

Sign is completely arbitrary no necessary

connection between the sign and its meaning

A word is signifier the representation of

something, need to be combined with the

signified in order to form a meaning-imbued

sign

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Symbol/material

representation of something/

the thing which givesmeaning (Saussures

signifier)(e.g. speech sounds,

words on paper etc)

The meaning/the conceptof which the signifier refers

(Saussures signified)

Semantic: Saussures concept of sign

http://sparkledental.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/tower_bridge__by_night_.jpg

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Syntax concerned with the structure of signs, such as the ways in whichwords are grouped together to form sentences

Noam Chomsky each of us possesses an innate capacity for generatingsentences.

Express ideas by means of generative rules

To make architecture of pure syntax

Aldo Rossi (Italian Rationalists)

Peter Eisenman (developed rules for generation and transformation ofarchitectural forms.

Critiqued as being a reality of 3D expression.

Syntactic: Chomskys generative rules in linguistic theory

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Structuralism: Key figures in architecture

Team 10

Herman Hertzberger active from 1953

onwards

New Brutalism (Alison and Peter Smithson)

Structuralism of the Dutch members (Aldo van

Eyck and Jacob Bakema)

Outside Team 10, other ideas developed that

furthered the Structuralist movement

influenced by the concept of (partiLouis Kahn,

Kenzo Tange & John Habrakencipation)

Utopian works of Archigram

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POST-STRUCTURALISM AND

DECONSTRUCTIVISM

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Post-structuralism refers to the theory of knowledgeassociated with the work of Jacques Derrida...This perspectivesuggests that language users do not pluck words out of thinair or thesaurus when trying to convey meaning, fitting them

to the objects or feelings being conveyed. Instead, themeanings of words are largely imbedded in language use itselfsuch that how we talk, write, and read largely determineswhat we end up saying. ... Derrida argues that meaning isforever elusive and incomplete in the sense that language can

never perfectly convey what is meant by the language user.(Agger, 1998)

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de-constructivism (translation into architecture -

design outcomes)

Deconstructivism: Architectural movement developed in the late 1980s

Characterized by ideas of

fragmentation,

an interest in manipulating ideas of a structures surface/skin,

non-rectilinear shapes which serve to distort and dislocate some of theelements of architecture such as structure,

visual appearance of stimulating unpredictability and a controlled chaos.

Key architects: Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, CoopHimmelblau, Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind, and Bernard Tschumi.

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GENDER & FEMINISM

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Gender & feminism

The issue of gender discrimination discourse was raised in the discipline of

architecture at around the 1990s. Various issue related to gender:

The women architect: Women versus the Modern Masters such as Le

Corbusier & Mies van der Rohe. Women architects as victims, whose

talents and vital contributions has been suppressed by their malecollaborators. Diana Agrest

The feminine architecture & space: Questioning of the stereotypical

characterization of Modernism as instrumental rationalism and therefore

male: redefining home & domesticity. Beatriz Colomina

Spatial experience: Sensuality & eroticism:pleasure in architecture

Bernard Tschumi