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Anthologies on Architectural Theory - the German

contributions

von Hans Frei

Again a new anthology on architectural theory: after Joan Ockman

(1993), Kate Nesbitt (1996), Neil Leach (1997), Michael Hays (1998),
Fritz Neumeyer (2002), Gerd de Bruyn / Stephan Trüby (2003), Bernd
Evers / Christoph Thoenes (2003) and Ákos Moravánszky (2003) now
also Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani together with Ruth Hanisch, Ulrich
Maximilian Schumann and Wolfgang Sonne (2004).

Why are so many of the recent publications about architectural theory

taking on the form of a collection of texts? It has not only to do
with an all too human inclination to imitation. The editors are
employees of academic institutions. Here they are involved in a form
of theory which is according to them of a much higher quality than the
spontaneous free-form-theory produced by architects. Their anthologies
are the revenge for having nothing to say in the immense but
contaminated realm of architectural thinking.

Hence the academics are forced to run after architectural theories

produced elsewhere. They are publishing anthology after anthology.
None of them gives us a sober view over the multiplicity of
architectural theories. Often the history of architectural theory is
turned into a ‘message’, into a guideline for correct thinking, that
is constructed by “retroactive operations”. The personal viewpoint of
the editor becomes the vanishing point of the whole history of
architectural thinking.

Pole position for the E.T.H.

Like always when the rear-guard is concerned the architectural

department of the Swiss Institute of Technology (E.T.H.) is top. Two
of the new German anthologies are coming from here. Vittorio Magnago
Lampugnani and his crew are presenting in Architekturtheorie 20.
Jahrhundert - Positionen, Programme, Manifeste a broad selection of
131 texts, introduced either by apologetic or critical comments.
Although the subtitle alludes to Ulrich Conrad’s Positionen,
Programme, Manifeste (1964), Lampugnain’s undertaking is a correction
of the rather martial picture Conrad has given form modern avant-
gardism.

But this doesn’t mean that there is something like thaw in

Lampugnani’s anthology. The modern avant-guardists and all those, how
are in fact antagonistic towoards modernism, but in spite of that
don’t believe in eternal values of architecture, are banished to the
side-chambers of horror. In the central hall of Fame of 20th century

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architectural theory now one finds traditionalists and all those, who
can be attributed to traditionalism and avant-gardism simultanously.

Towards the end of the century there are fewer and fewer theorists
presiding over the conflicting sides. Moneo, Siza, Vacchini and
Zumthor might be the last ones. Finally in the end all terminates in
an irreconcilable conflict between the two sides. The contributions by
Paolo Portoghesi, Quinlan Terry, Demetri Porphyrios, Robert A.M.
Stern, Hans Kollhoff and Leon Krier are treated most kindely while
those of Tschumi, Eisenman, Ito, van Berkel and Koolhaas are only
presented with distortions. The message is clear: what stands out for
Lampugnani and his crew is a renewed Rescue of the Western World –
this time in desperate perfection.

In Architekturtheorie im 20. Jahrhundert. Eine kritische Anthologie

Ákos Moravánsky is dealing with the same matter as Lampugnani but in a
totally different manner. His collection of texts is open also to not-
architects and is broken down into five chapters: „From Stylus to
Branding“, „The Perception of Space“, „Constructions of Nature”,
„Monumentality“ and „The Place of Architecture“.

There is no teleological alignment of history at work here as in

Lampugnani’s book, but one feels the actuality of a determined
starting-point. According to Moravánsky it is always the 19th century
that gave the most important impulses to the architectural theory of
the 20th century. To Gottfried Semper (1803-1879) an unique position is
conceded like to no theorist of the 20th century. In three of the five
chapters Moravánsky’s explanations are starting with Semper;
furthermore Semper is present in the anthology with two contributions.

So Moravánsky’s anthology has some significance as a report of

Semper’s influence in the 20th century. But his attempts to develop
specific topics of the 19th century are loosing impetus already at the
beginning of the 20th century. Finally the layering out of an anthology
as archaeology is completely contra-productive, because it destroys
exactly the variety of the field which should be presented by the
anthology.

Heretics and Believers

The two professors of E.T.H. are not alone in constructing guidelines

for architectural theory. They are only more discreet in giving
reasons for their retro-active operations.

Gerd de Bruyn and Stephan Trüby (University of Stuttgart) have

composed their book on architektur_theorie.doc. texte seit 1960 in
quite a similar manner as Moravánsky. They too have opened
architectural theory to not-architects and they too have organised the
texts - including a few projects - according topics by chapters. Each
chapter is defined by a constellation of three concepts, opening a
wide range of different operations to each topic.

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Openness therefore is the keynote of the introduction titled “Plead

for heretics and pioneers / Theory of a heterogeneous architecture”.
De Bruyn is pleading here for an open theory in the sense of André
Corboz. The most important proposition of such a theory would be to
cross the borders of architecture, not to defend them against enemies
from without, de Bruyn writes. He mentions as architectural theorists
such undisciplined outsiders of the architectural history as Prainesi,
Finsterlin, Schwitters, Constant, Kiesler , Fuller and Hejduk.

But the texts of the anthology are coined by a very different form of
openness. Here architectural theory is handled as the business of
philosophers and human scientists which make up more than half of the
contributors. In addition to Adorno, Habermas and Welsch a few
younger American thinkers like Michael Hays, Jeffrey Kipnis, Sanford
Kwinter and John Rajchman also come to word.

Are these the new heretics of architecture? These lovers of words

might be heretic as philosophers. As architectural theorists they are
just philosophically educated midwifes like de Bruyn himself, whose
job it is to help to deliver undisciplined thoughts. Instead of having
undisciplined thoughts on their own they are processing the
undisciplined thoughts of others.

Only projects like the Dominus Winery by Herzog & de Meuron or the
Embriological House by Greg Lynn, presented as appendices to a
chapter, gives hints that presenting an open theory of architecture is
above all a matter of ‘built’ and not of written texts.

In his book Quellentexte zur Architekturtheorie Fritz Neumeyer (TU

Berlin) deals with the whole history from antiquity to the 20th
century, thereby relying on Hanno-Walter Krufts “truly heroic
attempt” entitled Geschichte der Architekturtheorie von der Antike
bis zur Gegenwart.

The most important difference to Kruft is that Neumeyer gives a more

precise definition of architectural theory so that it can better be
distinguished from critique. He introduces his collection of texts by
an essay beginning with the fatal phrase: “All theory is in essence a
form of believe in systems and is based, as all beliefs are, on
metaphysics.” There of springs Neumeyers eagerness in interpreting the
selected texts of his anthology as joyful tidings of the mental
autonomy of architecture and its symbolic content.

But the belief in systems – the belief that architecture is based on a

higher spiritual level – wasn’t relevant to architecture from the
beginning. The first humans building a house as well as Vitruv, the
first known architectural theorist, were thinking in much too
practical terms about architecture to be concerned with an imaginary
system of architecture. Even Leon Battista Alberti, the most
influential theorist since the Renaissance, has felt his time marked
by the fall of large metaphysical systems. In Momus – a novel he has
written in exactly the same time as the Ten Books on Architecture –
the Olympic Gods have withdraw from earth and left the humans to their

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own. What ever Alberti/Momus was proposing as an architect therefore

has more to do with pragmatic hypothesis for a better world than with
any belief in spiritual systems.

Before Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768), the belief in systems

wasn’t introduced into architecture and it didn’t quite disappear from
there on thanks to theorists like Neumeyer.

Furthermore the belief in systems doesn’t correspond to architectural

theory any better than any belief in machine-aesthetic, chaos-theory,
light-hygiene or what so ever, which was at times identified
incorrectly with architecture. After all it might be that the belief
in systems is just the worst form of belief, as Wilhelm Heinrich
Wackenroder has written in his essay Effusions from the Heart of an
Art-Loving (1799). Because it is a question of intolerance of the
mind, that is intent and directed, and not only a question of
emotional affectation. When Neumeyer is praising the New Berlin as a
New Jerusalem doubts about the belief in systems become an obligation.

Sexy Theory

At last one has to mention the book Architekturtheorie von der

Renaissance bis zur Gegenwart (2003) published by Bernd Evers und
Christof Thoenes. The selection of texts here doesn’t relate a
particular message. The editors were even more satisfied than Neumeyer
with just the presentation of highlights out of Kruft’s Geschichte der
Architekturtheorie.

In spite or because of that the book is a sensation. According to

Evers and Thoenes the architectural form is the main issue of all
architectural theory. Written texts are only serving towards a better
understanding of form. They are footprints of a work on form.
Therefore the editors are presenting a splendidly illustrated “picture
atlas about architectural theory” instead of the usual literary
wastelands.

Theory by law

But leave it to historians to dispute about the adequate selection of

texts in anthologies. Each theorist might publish his own anthology.
Let us focus instead of that on how anthologies are injuring
architectural theory in general.

Opinions about architecture theory diverge greatly. But there is a

consensus that theory is an abstract tool for practising architects.
Without theory no architecture. For that reason Lampugnani has
selected texts only from educated architects. Ever and Thoenes are
going even further by treating form as the main issue of theory.

If that is correct, is it possible at all to deal with architectural

theory without showing architecture? It is. Illustrations in
anthologies are usually handled in a very careless way. Even when they
are integral parts of the original publication they are left out. In

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each particular case this is a blatant manipulation not fitting for

the character of an anthology. In general there is even more at play:
when a text gets lost of its explicative function, because the work
being explained is missing, its meaning becomes absolute. A simple
explication turns into a rule. Architectural theory then is placed in
a totally new constellation in regards to practice. It is no longer an
instrument in the hands of an architect, it is now the decree from a
would be headquarter of architecture informing how architects should
using their hands in the right way.

Therefore all those anthologies and all those literary wastelands!

Academic theorists are using anthologies for the lack of anything
better to control theory from their lofty philosophical or historical
standpoint, to lay down ethical principles of architecture and
seemingly to protect the architectural discipline against invasions
from without.

Theory as History

There is a further consensus that in our day and age a great variety
of architectural theories co-exist without the slightest probability
to grasp a single one as the only true one. Each architect develops
his own theory – if possible a new one every Monday morning.

Such a variety makes critical enquiries into architectural theories

inevitable. Each theoretical approach is somehow going to be taken
over by history - either by assimilating it in a larger historical
context, or by creating a basis for a new system or simply by ignoring
it. It is hardly possible or necessary to stop the historical
processing of architectural theory.

Reconsidering the American anthologies of architectural theory,

published before the Germans, Sylvia was expecting a revolution in the
history of architecture by introducing history to architectural
theory. Now the German anthologies have introduced still more history
into theory. But in spite of that Lavin’s expectations haven’t been
realized. On the contrary: with more history, architectural theory has
become all the more a scientific way of reading coffee-grounds.

Just as the processing of theory by history is inevitable, so is the

breaking of history by theory. Theorists are understanding
architecture in a way like it couldn’t be understood before. They are
making explicit what till now existed only implicitly.

To detach theory form history doesn’t mean to uncritically accept each

spontaneous form of theory. The intention here is more to accept
architectural theory as a permanent, unreasonable demand on
architectural history. The history of architecture is far more
conquested by heretics than de Bruyn is suggesting. One hasn’t to fish
in troubled waters to find theorists. The Palazzo Rucellai (Alberti),
Sant’Ivo (Borromini), the ETH-Building (Semper), the New Museum
(Schinkel), the Guaranty-Building (Sullivan), the Barcelona-Pavillon
(Mies van der Rohe), the Schaulager (Herzog & de Meuron) are at once

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great buildings as well as very important contributions to

architectural theory. In fact they are great buildings just because
they have in time radically challenged the conventional thinking about
architecture. Often the most important principles of architecture were
deduced form such buildings. But academic theorists want to see that
no one takes over the very rights, which the great rule-makers have
once taken out for themselves.

Anthologies are important for the historical processing of

architectural theory. But in the strict sense they have nothing to do
with the production of architecture and architectural theories.
Whoever is working through one or another anthology therefore will
without doubt augement his knowledge, he will however not find any
inspiration for developing new aspects of architecture. Therefore:
Buy! Buy! (With each cent you are supporting the maintenance of a
cemetery of ideas.)

(First published in: Hochparterre, Mai 2005)

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