02 Split Cultures/New Dialogues: Research in Architectural History and Theory
Session Chairs:
Brigitte Sölch, Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart
Carsten Ruhl, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt/Main
It is obvious that research in architectural history and theory is currently split into different academic cultures, namely art history and architectural theory. Of course, this was not always the case. Up to the second half of the 20th century art historians had a great impact on contemporary architectural debates and substantially contributed to theoretical issues. Simultaneously, authors trained both as architects and art historians guaranteed a constant flow between historical narratives and design practice, or even advocated the autonomy of architecture. In late 20th century these productive intersections between art history, architectural history and architectural theory came to an end. Art history widely withdrew from contemporary debates on architecture and theoretical production, whereas architectural theory claimed the status of an autonomous non-historic discipline. We argue that this led to a paradox situation.
In the 60s, in a time of political turmoil, theory substantially contributed to a critical discussion on widely accepted historical narratives hereby uncovering their political ideologies. Historical consciousness was fundamental to institutional critique and to debates on architecture as art, politics and theory. Since the 90s this totally changed. Philosophy remained part of both disciplines. But whereas the iconic turn came to play a vital role in art history, which began to understand itself also as ‘Bildwissenschaften’, architectural theory became part of post-critical debates and was defined as projective thinking. Furthermore, great parts of theoretical thinking turned into a legitimation strategy for architectural positions, aesthetic preferences and architectural design practice. On the other hand architectural history no longer played an important role within art history. While theory was increasingly regarded as mere speculation, not seeing that some of art history’s most important contributions were exactly this, speculation. By consequence, the many attempts that had been made to differentiate between history and theory caused a great number of contradictions and misunderstandings rather than clarifying disciplinary boundaries.
Departing from this situation our round table is conceived as a twofold dialogue: it will reflect on the historical, institutional and political reasons of the above-mentioned split and open a new dialogue between architectural history, theory and practice. It will address questions such as: What role do institutions and different genres of ‘writing’ play for the intensity and diversity but also the reinforced interruption of the dialogue? To what extend is critique already part of the ‘economy of attention’ and what does it mean to be critical? How far can history be understood (again) as critical practice?
Paper Abstracts:
Theory in Disguise: A Trans-Tasman Perspective on Critical versus Documentary HistoryProductive intersections between art history and architectural history and theory may have come to an end in the late twentieth century in Europe and the United States, but not in the Antipodes. Almost since its inception in 1984, the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand (SAHANZ) experienced tensions between empiricist historians and those with a commitment to theory, as Julia Gatley pointed out in her historical account of its first twenty years. The name of the Society’s journal, Fabrications, reflected the theoretical interests of its first editors, Desley Luscombe and Stanislaus Fung, who were also responsible for the original editorial policy. Their first editorial caused controversy among members who defended the need of history to be understood, not obfuscated by theory. The Society, through its journal and annual conferences, encouraged exchange and debate between empirical historians and theorists, as evidenced by the 1997 SAHANZ conference’s “theoretical turn.” This attitude was mirrored by the inclusion of a greater emphasis on critical and cultural theory in the teaching of history and theory at Australian and New Zealand architecture schools. In addition, the proliferation of journals published by architectural schools in Australia and New Zealand, for example Interstices: A Journal of Architecture and Related Arts and Architectural Theory Review, also maintained the tension between history and theory.
Through interviews with preeminent architectural historians in Australia and New Zealand, first-hand witnesses of these tensions between theory and history, between a critical or a documentary approach to history, this paper aims to bring forth the richness of the lesser-known scholarly Trans-Tasman context of the late twentieth century. SAHANZ, as an institution, helped to bridge the alleged split between architectural history and theory, if there was ever one, fostering the dialogue and encouraging different approaches that informed both research and education –still does today.
The growing criticism against post-war modernism during the 1960s, of its edifices, its protagonists as much of its reasoning, did not only result in the phenomenon of postmodernism in the decades to follow, but also caused a crisis of architectural education based primarily on modern doctrines. One answer to this crisis – and that is a working hypothesis – was the internalization of critique into institutions of higher education. It is more than a coincidence that the founding of the gta (Institut Geschichte und Theorie der Architektur) at the ETH Zurich by Adolf Max Vogt and Paul Hofer in 1967 runs parallel to the efforts of Jürgen Joedicke and the IGMA (Institut für Grundlagen Moderner Architektur) at the Technische Hochschule Stuttgart (today University of Stuttgart) and echoes the HTC program (History Theory Criticism of Art and Architecture) at MIT by Stanford Anderson and “Hank” Millon between 1964–74, while O.M. Ungers failed with a similar attempt at the TU Berlin in 1968. In all these incidents, there is more at stake than just a rapprochement to the history of architecture after the modernist ban against eclectic historicism from architectural design; they speak rather of a fundamental revision of the modern project within architectural education. Indicators are the institutional changes of PhD programs, which were traditionally offered by art history departments, and were now integrated into schools of architecture, paralleled by the change of debate in architectural education and new formats for research and teaching.
The (re)birth of architectural theory as curricular subject introduced at MIT, Stuttgart and ETH stands out amongst these new formats. This is not to say that “theory” has been absent from architectural education, but its institutionalization allowed for steady (often mandatory) classes in the curriculum, for a clarification of the methods and goals, and for a scientific ennoblement of the subject by its own faculty, journals, conferences, publications, exhibitions and the aforementioned doctoral programs. Significantly, ETH and MIT chose to separate theory from design, that is, they produced a new type of academic: the architectural theoretician. Previously, “theory” often meant the poetics of a master architect, or a speculative mode of writing, while the new format operated with various “critical” theories form heterogeneous sources, and aimed for teaching teachers (rather than architects) – an assumption that might be up for critical interrogation today? This position paper argues that the “split” between history and theory of architecture is not only a product of “theory’s success” in the 1980s, and its rapid fall following 2001, but has already been latently present in their institutionalization in the late 1960s. And that the perceived “split” between theory and history today is not the only ‘schiz’, but that their separation from studio (design pedagogy) and from technology (both digital representation as well as environmental performance) runs even deeper. The position paper itself practices an alternative by looking into the sources of these multiple “splits” (historically) and by speculating about a different form of research, teaching, and practice (theoretically).
This roundtable contribution proposes the advent of the architectural museum as a productive interface to approach the split between art history and architectural theory identified in the call. As a latecomer to the institutions of collection and display - most architecture museum were not founded until the late 1970s and 1980s - the architecture museum was established in a period when the traditional museum as a place of collection and display was under negotiation. The institutional critique of the 1960s that aimed to liberate art from the confinement of the museum and open up institutional boundaries finds its counterpart in the emerging interest in placing architecture within the walls of the museum.
This somewhat contradictory situation was met in the young institutions by a combination of the traditional methods of art history and the institutional critique of contemporary theory. The architecture museums started collections that contributed to the historicizing of architecture while at the same time engaging critically with the contemporary built environment, often employing counter-cultural or activist methods. However, the architecture museum also indicates a preoccupation with the representations of architecture as an end in itself. The turn away from architecture as built form firmly associated with the event of architectural postmodernism is inextricably interwoven with the architectural institutions. Evidently, the museums have their share in making architectural theory and criticism harmless to the politics of architecture as it retreated from wider socio-political concerns to an increased degree of discursive autonomy.
A captivating circumstance is that the late blooming of the architectural museum in the 1980s was soon followed by the first signs of decay that threw a considerable number of the young institutions into predominantly disciplinary crises already a few years into the 2000s.
This contribution would bring this ‘rise and fall’ of the museum institutions of architecture to the roundtable. It discusses the agency of the institution and how the putting of architecture in the museum and the resulting expansion of the discourse contributed to the split between art history and architectural theory.
This paper departs from the idea that the gaps that have become established between historical and theoretical research are themselves a way out of the increasingly rigid categorization between the two domains.
While the sharply delineated boundaries of the late 20th century between ‘theory’ and ‘history’ helped establish clear research approaches, they also excluded the implicit insights embedded within design practice, favouring explicit and analytical arguments. The current cultures of research funding and publications solidify these boundary conditions, asking researchers to identify quite specifically their methods, their peers and their research domains.
In The Mushroom at the End of the World (2015), Anna Tsing demonstrates how science itself develops more erratically than commonly presented in scientific discourse; that it is determined not only by objective methods and logical argumentation, but equally by coincidence, context and unforeseen connections. “Cosmopolitan science is made in emerging patches of research, which grow into or reject each other in varied encounters.” (Tsing, 223)
These ‘varied encounters’ are both necessary to the vitality of the disciplines, and prevented by the fine-grained delineation of disciplinary boundaries and methodologies. Together, the variety of methodologies within the history, theory and practice of architecture may foster a more explorative mode of thought, including unexpected detours or seeing miscommunications as fruitful insights into other perspectives.
This paper explores these ‘emerging patches’ of research that sit within the gap between history and theory. It seeks to aid in ‘unsplitting’ the two approaches through a verbal, visual and material presentation, demonstrating how the analytic and historical capacities of historians and theorists alike are potentially enriched by the drawing and design skills of practitioners. In so doing, this paper proposes that the field of architecture sits at the heart of what Tsing identifies as ‘cosmopolitan science’: its varied skill set of observation and analysis, drawing and building, projecting and historicizing has the potential to develop a synthesis of visual and material epistemologies that can develop a more diverse ecology of scientific exploration.
In December of the eventful year 1967, O. M. Ungers hosted an international congress for architectural theory at the Technical University of Berlin. The issue at stake was the usefulness of architectural theory at all. After the societal turbulences and rapid changes in the urban environment at the end of the 1960s, what architectural theory was – and what it should refer to – had become quite unclear. Ungers therefore offered social phenomena, technical conditions, historical experience, and immanent laws of form as its possible subjects. Only three years before, the AIA-ACSA Teachers’ Seminar in 1964, which is known as the starting point for Ph.D. programs in History, Theory, and Criticism at American architecture schools, had discussed quite the same issues. At the centre of these debates was the question whether architectural theory should refer to its own history or embrace the emerging social sciences, which tried to explain and manage the present. One outcome was the construction of an architectural theory that understood architecture – and itself – as an autonomous force. However, as John Harwood has shown, at the same time a multifaceted research agenda emerged at American architecture schools, including an architectural history open to all kind of social and human sciences. Following these hints, the paper wants to point out that the same was true in German-speaking countries: The papers of Ungers’ congress as well as, for example, the Bauwelt Fundamente series, reveal a broad spectrum of approaches. The field was open around 1970, and that included a very open conception of architecture. In fact, it was not so much “architecture” which architectural history and theory were interested in, but the perception and use of the “built environment” in general. And it was this openness which made it relevant for the politicized education in architectural design at that time.
Christa Kamleithner, BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg The Death and Life of ‘Operative’ History: Dialogues between the Historiography and Theory of Architecture and Urbanism in Contemporary ItalyManfredo Tafuri’s call for ‘operative criticism’ as a progressive solution to the lack of political efficacy and of scholarly rigour in the militant architectural history of the mid-twentieth century had, in his time, little following. Architectural historians sought greater professional specialisation not ‘operativeness,’ whereas architectural theorists, by the late 1970s, were beginning to embrace the ‘linguistic turn’ and its nihilistic view of historical knowledge.
In spite of this and of the ever-widening split that has characterised the global scholarship of architecture ever since, Italy gave rise to several methods of typo-morphological studies founded upon both rigorous historiography and a coherent theory underpinning the operative use of this historical knowledge in architectural design. This paper argues that the Italian ‘school’—for want of a better word—is perhaps unique insofar as it defines a clear scope of objects and methods pertaining to the disciplinary field of architecture as a whole, thus providing a unified framework for both historiography and design.
Yet, this Italian ‘school’ of typo-morphological history and theory is diverse, exposing rifts between traditionalists and modernists. The former are tributary of Aldo Rossi’s postmodernist formal relationships derived from a concept of ‘collective memory,’ whereas the latter adopt Saverio Muratori’s ‘procedural typology’ as a tool for generating abstract spatial relationships. This paper will focus on recent historical studies in nineteenth century architecture as well as new projects in the cities of the river Po plains—Alessandria, Parma, Bologna—that clarify these theoretical conflicts, yet show the way forward for an ‘operative’ dialogue between historiography and typological design theory. These recent contributions have displaced, ever so slightly but significantly, the long-standing Italian emphasis on Medieval and Renaissance historiography and on the iconic post-war building campaigns in Rome, Milan, and Venice.
Despite featuring in the reading list of almost every first-year architecture student, Vitruvius is barely readable for a twenty-first-century architect. His message remains bound up with the principles of order, proportion and composition, the qualities of sites and the broad superhuman knowledge an architect must possess, all of which topics are enunciated on the first pages of the first book. Nonetheless, Vitruvius is still the author most quoted in architectural lectures, from Álvaro Siza to Rem Koolhaas, from first-year students to structural engineers. The triad of Vitruvian architectural qualities—firmitas, utilitas, venustas—has conquered the heart and the reason of every architectural discourse. Ironically, the formulation owes much to Alberti, who, in his own treatise, wrestling with Vitruvius’ cumbersome syntax, updated a marginal remark to establish one of architectural history’s most powerful aphorisms. This encapsulation of the unreadable treatise in a few words turned out to be a highly effective ingredient in maintaining Vitruvius’ authoritative status. The treatise’s circulation as a book allowed its owners the illusion of possessing an idea along with the physical object.
By surveying the forms of its various editions from the late 15th century until today, instead of becoming trapped in the subtleties of the text, one can access a complex network of usages, traffics and fluctuations. To analyse multiple print editions of Vitruvius is to unfold a historical panorama of architectural theory that fuses the immaterial realm of ideas with the material forms of books and buildings. The intricate nature of the Latin text inculcated Vitruvian authority with an aura capable of serving every purpose, with each new edition representing an occasion to establish an architectural discourse that did not necessarily follow its source. This contribution seeks to reflect on the condition of architectural theory when confronted with the printed book. Vitruvius seems the most appropriate patron to ignite a discussion on the light-hearted relationship between architectural theory, history and practice.