Hanno Walter Kruft

A History of Architectural Theory From Vitruvius to the Present

Zwemmer/Princeton Architectural Press, 1994

Chapter 30. Since I945

Preceding chapters on the first half of the twentieth century omitted

certain countries which should receive at least brief mention here.
In Spain Ildefonso Cerdá made a significant contribution to the
theory of urban planning in the mid-nineteenth century with his plan for
Barcelona of I85g and his two-volume theoretical work of I867. Antonio
Gaudí, on the other hand, left no formal statement of his highly original
style: From the late nineteenth century to the time of Franco the principal
subject of discussion in Spain was the creation of a sense of national
tradition and the attempt by a group of architects during the Second
Republic (I931-39) to associate themselves with international modernism
remained an isolated episode to which few were able to relate. José Luis
Sen, a disciple of Le Corbusier, spent most of his life in America, and his
theories have ill-defined relevance to the situation in Spain.
The omission of Great Britain from earlier chapters, after the point of
Geoffrey Scott's The Architecture of Humanism (I9I4) had been reached
and following Britain's dominant international role in architecture theory in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, might appear even more open to
question. Yet perhaps the omission is not as questionable as it at first seems,
for in the twentieth century architectural theory in Britain has been virtually
replaced by architectural history,' and trends such as neo-Classicism,
represented above all by Sir Edwin Lutyens, and the later revival of the
Picturesque,' stand in the shadow of historical research. After the Second
World War architects such as Alison and Peter Smithson expounded the
theories underlying their work, but in general the British contribution to
architectural theory remained reserved.
It was not until the twentieth century that Scandinavia began to make its
presence felt. The leading figure here is Alvar Aalto (I898-1970), a Finnish
architect who took his lead from landscape and natural materials but who
left only a few statements of theory.' Equally sparse is the theoretical
background of Swedish Neo-classicism, whose chief representative was
Gunnar Asplund (I885-I94o). It is not uncommon for pans of the world with
little tradition in architectural theory to contribute to architectural history
before producing a comparable body of theory. This is true not only of
Scandinavia but also of Latin America, where, for instance, Oscar Niemeyer
in Brazil and Carlos Raúl Villanueva in Venezuela joined the highest ranks
of intérnational architects but left little theoretical material that was much
more than an explanation of their own work.
The first emer ence of original ideas in Japan came after the Second
World War with attempts to combine European thought with the native
historical tradition. Kunio Maekawa (b.I9o5), who had worked with Le
Corbusier, conveyed the principles of European modernism to his colleague
Kenzo Tange (b.I9I3), who set out to combine these principles with the
Japanese tradition of wooden buildings, and who was the first to achieve an
influence in the West with a Japanese architecture that drew much of its
substance from European sources. The most imponant contribution by Japan
to contemporary architectural theory, however, is without doubt what is
known as Metabolism, a doctrine proclaimed in I96o in a manifesto
published by Kisho Kurokawa (b.I934) and others. Metabolism goes further
than European functionalism by applying biological symbols to the
evolution
of human society; it fuses the Buddhist tradition with that of European
individualism and demands an architecture in which man, machine and
space combine to form an organic body.'3 The central idea is that of the
individual capsule, a movable, prefabricated unit with a theoretical . status
similar to that of the primitive hut in the eighteenth century. The best-
known realisation of this idea is Kurokawa's Nakagin Capsule Tower in
Tokyo, in which the Iç4 units, attached to two fixed nucleaei, are intended
to be seen as expressing the personality of their occupants. The question of
the relationship between prefabrication and individuality is not raised.
Kurokawa even claimed that his high technology `meta-architecture', with
its notions of organic life-cycles, introduced an ecological system into
architecture. His large-scale structures are very similar to the `Mesa City'
which Soleri was developing in the United States at almost the same time.
Immediately after I945, when attention in Europe was focused on
rebuilding the cities destroyed in the war, there was little published by way
of architectural theory. For the German rebuilding programme the theories
of functionalism, particularly of the New Architecture, were considered
adequate, especially as it was felt that these architects were entitled to some
patronage after the Neo-classicism of the Nazi period, with the ideological
overtones that had so often been laid upon it. From their vantage-point in
the United States the main representatives of the New Architecture
determined
to a large extent the nature of the buildings erected in the I95os and I96os
but they offered no fresh theory. Their view received support from Sigfried
Giedion's historical work Space, T'ime and Arrhitecture, which from the
moment of its publication defined for a generation or more what constituted
`modern architecture'. Rival interpretations such as that given by Bruno
Zevi in Towards an Organic Architecture (I95o) made a much lesser
impact.
In Germany, where the primary need was to get rid of the
ideological ballast that had burdened the subject since the I9zos, it was
believed that a new starting-point could be found in the expression of the
country's new political consciousness. Such a view was expressed by Adolf
Arndt in his address Demokratie als Bauherr in I96I, which however gives
the feeling that attention is somehow being diverted from the realities of the
situation of architecture. Compared with the developments in the rest of the
world, German architecture of the first post-war decade, together with
theoretical
works on the subject, seems provincial" - a judgement that is not invalidated
by the work of a few outstanding figures such as Hans Scharoun. The
VersHrh einer Standortsbs stimmung der Gegenwartsarchitektur (I956) by
the Swiss architect Justus Dahinden is not concerned with coming to terms
with past ideologies but presents a survey of theoretical and historical
material from Vitruvius to Wölfflin, and culminates in speculations on the
cycles of history. Dahinden gives pride of place to the problem of form, for
which he adduces criteria such as the relationship between support and load,
simplicity, and the purity of primitive crystalline forms, combining motifs
from aesthetics and the psychology of perception to prodúce a schema at the
centre of which is the concept of the creative will. There is no place here for
the functional and technological aspects of architecture.
The lack of conceptual clarity in Dahinden's work is typical of most
theoretical writing in German after the Second World War. In Germany
itself the discussion of theoretical issues had all but dried up during the Nazi
years, so that the sense of historical continuity was under threat. The
writings of Egon Eiermann (19o4-7o), for example, an important figure in
post-war development, are honest and down-to-earth in their practical intent
but they hardly amount to a theoretical system.'9 Only with the decline in
building activity in the I97os did interest in theory begin to grow again, ani
with it the realisation that contemporary architectural theory was in fact
lacking,
a lack that had to be made good by improvised statements and reactions.
And since contact had been lost with the values and concepts of the past,
these statements could hardly conceal their inadequacy. This sense of
insecurity in theoretical matters, coupled with the absence of a practical
sense of direction, emerged clearly from a series of interviews with German
architects edited by Heinrich K otz and published in I977 under the title
Architektur in der Bundesrepublik.
Of particular note is the work of Frei Otto (b.I925), who aimed at a
new conception of architecture in the commentary with which he
accompanied his pneumatic and tent constructions and his experiments with
lightweight structures. The keywords in his vocabulary are `natural' and
`biological'. His essays show him to be a critical observer of architectural
trends, while in his books he deals with technical problems, but without
losing sight of his overall conception." In his `bionic theory' he goes beyond
earlier biologistic speculations, like those of Neutra, by translating the laws
of Nature into immediate construction. For lightweight construction he
coined the term `Big', defined as `the ratio of the mass of an object to the
product of the force transmitted and the distance over which it is
transmitted. The principle of lightweight construction is more important
than the question of functionalism, since it provides the link to the aesthetic
dimension. Otto does not, however, hold the view of the constructive
functionalists `that objects which are functional or lightweight are
automatically aesthetic', but, striving to accommodate the historically
determined concepts of structural honesty, type and individuality, arrives at
his own definition of the aesthetics of lightweight structures: “They become
aesthetic at the moment when, without becoming any more unfunctional,
they reveal their ideal, `perfect , `true' countenance to the receptive,
unprejudiced observer, and when they reflect not only the typical form of
all fully perfect, economically functional structures of the same kind but
also their common and individual quality, including the variations, i.e.
imperfections, typical of individuals.
According to Otto's theory of biological architecture, as applied to
lightweight constructions, it is not that an architectural design seeks a
technical solution but that the `form-finding processes' are governed by the
laws of lightweight construction. As he writes in his critique (I958) of Hugh
Stubbins' Kongresshalle in Berlin: “One cannot design such buildings - one
can only help them to acquire their ultimate form by constant searching.”
His demand for the primacy of his `scientific form-finding process' is
expressed with great vigour in an article on the roof for the Olympic
stadium in Munich (for which he himself supplied calculations), designed
by the firm of Günter Behnisch and Partners, whom he accuses of artistic
manipulation, concluding: `The desire for a prominent design contradicts
the search for the underlying form, a form as yet unknown, but subject to
the laws of Nature. If logically enough, this led Otto to investigate the
whole question of ecological building. Otto's statement of his position is an
exception in the post-war German context while the urge felt by architects
who have become successful draughtsmen to express themselves in print
has led to little more than semi-critical descriptions of the contemporary
scene, satisfying the need to justify their own work. Die Verantwortung des
Architekten (I982) by Meinhard von Gerkan is one such work.
A particular contribution to the subject of housing came from
Holland in the post-war years. J.H. Van den Broek and Jaap B. Bakema,
architects who broke away from the tradition of functionalism,
recommended an architecture that found its starting-point in landscape and
in basic conce ts such as Space, Nature and Energy, and acknowled ed the
rimar importance of aesthetic form. This led to “Structuralism” related to
but not reduceable to Structuralism in the literary/anthropological sense)
and the Nieuwes Bowen movement, in which Aldo van Eyck and Herman
Hertzberger (b.I932) have played leading roles. Taking his lead from Gerrit
Rietveld, Van. Eyck worked towards a new relationships between interior
and exterior in architecture and a formal wealth of interior structuring,
quoting Alberti's formula of the house as a town and the town as a house.
Working with the structural categories of Cubism, he advocated the use of
bold colours, especially as found in the spectrum of the rainbow. His ideas
have been put into practice both in new housing estates and in historical
quarters in Holland, and have attracted international attention.
The most important influences since I945 have come from the
United States where architectural theory has generally been discussed in a
more pragmatic and liberal spirit than that which prevailed in Europe during
the first half of the century which provided the subject-matter for American
post-war debate. Much of the development in America, following the lines
of discussion in pre-war Europe, has consisted of a formal assessment of,
followed by a gradual movement away from, the positions adopted by the
great figures who emigrated from Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, but the
theoretical substance has generally been of subsidiary importance compared
with actual buildings erected. Indeed, the most successful American
architeetural firms, which have constructed buildings combining technology
and form in the manner of Gropius and Mies van der Rohe, have paid scant
attention to theory. Such is the case, for example with Skidmore, Owings &
Merill, a firm which continues to attach prime importance to functionalism
and technology, cautiously adapting the aesthetic appearance of their
buildings to the trend of the moment. The only poetic content to be found is
in the designs and occasional essays of Gordon Bunshaft. Eero Saarinen
(I9Io-6I), following in his father Eliel's footsteps, has produced expressive
formal solutions using concrete but without developing any new theory.
Published collections of interviews with architects offer a wealth of
material on the complex spectrum of architectural discussion in the United
States since I945. One of the most instructive cases is that of Philip Johnson
(b. I9o6), who came to architecture by way of art history. He was one of the
organisers of the exhibition Modern Architecture in New York in I932 and
a co-editor of the book The International Style, published the same year ; he
then fell under the spell of Mies van der Rohe, on whom he wrote a
monograph in I940, and from whose influence he gradually freed himself in
the I95os.33 His swing from one extreme to another, on which he has
himself wittily and materials, led to isolated realisations of an `alternative
architecture' as a counterweight to official trends, but such works are only
on the fringes of our subject.
A profound criticism of the functionalist position was put forward
by the German philosopher Ernst Bloch (I885-Ig77) in his work Das Prinzip
Hoffnung, written between I938 and I947 during his exile in the United
States.fo Bloch writes from the standpoint of an independent, `dissident'
Marxist ; his book contains a devastating attack on functionalist
architecture, which he calls the product of the `ice-cold world of robots,
created by the consumer society' (`die eiskalte Automatenwelt der
Warengesellschaft'). Emphasising how functionalism spelt death for
symbolism, he concluded: “For over a generation this steel-furniture,
concrete-cube, tlat-roof creature has stood there, bereft of history, the
ultimate in modernity, boring, apparently daring but in reality trivial,
claiming to be full of hatred for the cliché in every ornament yet more
trapped in stereotypes than any stylistic copy ever was in the bad old
nineteenth century.' Bloch demanded a return to `organic ornament', derived
not from historical models but from the conditions that govern a new
society. Central to his position was the need to overcome functionalism,
which he interpreted as the product of capitalism, and a new view of
architecture as `an attempt at production in the real human environment,'
with room for `organic ornament'. This is not to say that Bloch can be
credited with having initiated the anti-functionalist discussion in the United
States. He did, however, provide a remarkably far-sighted panorama of the
twentieth-century scene, of which later architectural theory seems to be
little more than variation and appendix. This applies, for instance, to the
writings of Robert Venturi (b.I925), some of them produced in
collaboration with his wife Denise Scott Brown (b.I93I), which have
received extraordinary acclaim. His ·book Complexity and Contradiction in
Architecture (1966) was described by Vincent Scully as `probably the most
important writing on the making of architecture since Le Corbusier's Vers
une Architecture of 1923.' This is a considerable overestimation yet in its
return to the values of the past and to the essential symbolic nature of
architecture, it is a work that has had a signal influence.
The target of Venturi's attack is Mies van der Rohe's formula `less is
more', a phrase coined to denote a form of aestheticised functionalism.
Venturi's response, illustrated by historical examples, is `More is not less',
or, in a particularly aggressive formulation, `Less is a bore.' Venturi sets out
to put his experience of Mannerism and Baroque to the service of a new
concept of architecture by returning to the complexity, in form and
substance, of these two styles ; at the same time his experience of
contemporary Pop Art turns his thoughts to the everyday world of the
consumer society, whose simple commercial and symbolic language he
seeks to employ in architecture and urban planning.' `Main Street is almost
all right,' meaning that the business districts of modern cities, with their
automobiles, their stores and their places of entertainment, give us optical
signals which are comparable in their significance to those we receive from
the architecture of the past. He has been led to concentrate on the
`commercial strip', which he analyses in Learning from Las Vegas (I972),fs
significantly subtitled in its revised version `The Forgotten Symbolism of
Architectural Form'. Venturi's theories are considerably more clearly
expressed here than in his earlier book, with its subjective, bombastic style
and superficial use of historical material.
Learning from Las Vegas contains many flashes of insight and
brilliant aperçus, but its conclusions are highly questionable. On the one
hand it contains striking observations such as the following : `Recent
Modern architecture has achieved formalism while rejecting form,
promoted expressionism while ignoring ornament, and deified space while
rejecting symbols.' But Venturi's own quest for a new architectural
symbolism takes the form of an affirmation and aesthetic overvaluation of
the everyday world around us, the banal symbols of which he equates with
the symbolism of past ages, seriously comparing the night-lit Strip in Las
Vegas with the mosaic interior of the Norman church of La Martorana in
Palermo and the Amalienburg Palace in Munich,concluding: “The Strip
shows the value of symbolism and allusion in an architecture of vast space
and speed and proves that people, even architects, have fun with
architecture that reminds them of something else, perhaps of harems or the
Wild West in Las Vegas, perhaps of the nation's New England forbears in
New Jersey. Allusion and comment, on the past ar present or our great
commonplaces or old clichés, and inclusion of the everyday in the
environment, sacred and profane - these are what is lacking in present-day
Modern architecture.”
`Fun' is here a more or less sérious architectural criterion, and
Venturi gives an analysis of the fair bound eclecticism of Caesar's Palace in
Las Vegas to justify his position His critique of functionalism leads to a
plea for any kind of eclecticism, formal or historical, which returns to
ornament. Architecture becomes a `decorated shed', and ornament is `ugly
and ordinary' but at the same time aesthetically assured, as he illustrates by
comparing Paul Rudolph's Crawford Manor in New Haven with the Venturi
and Rauch Guild House in Philadelphia. From behind a mask of wit and
irony he provides a theoretical justification for making totally free use of
historical forms such as the `primitive vernacular'. This is the only way in
which it is possible to understand how he can decorate the surface of a
coffee service tray with the pattern of the paving-stones of the Capitol in
Rome. When the high quality of Venturi's own buildings is considered, it
can only be assumed that he did not really want his theory to be applied so
rigidly. However, this is the meaning he conveys, and his book has the
status of a kind of manifesto that ushers in the era of so-called Post-
Modernism.
The ideas of Charles Moore have often been compared with those of
Venturi, but to Moore himself the parallels are very limited. They both
share a belief that architecture works in the first instance symbolically,
although the basis for its symbolic quality is seen entirely differently by
each. Moore states his position in Body, Memory and Architecture written in
collaboration with the sculptor Kent C. Bloomer and based on a series of
introductory university lectures on basic problems in architecture. Moore
develops a consistent anthropological conception of architecture
architecture is measured by the way it is expérienced by the human body in
space.
Starting from the basic elements as objects of human perception -
space, site, walls, roof, etc., with the significant reintroduction of the Orders
- he comes very close to Renaissance theory.ó In a historical digression on
functionalist theory `The Mechanization of Architecture' he presents the
eighteenth century's `scientific' conception of architecture as leading away
from fundamentals, and bases his own approach on empathy and the
principles of Gestalt psychology. For Moore architecture is physical and
psychological taking possession of a place by a building's inhabitant who
finds confirmation of his own identity in the symbols of individual and
historical memory. “We require a measure of possession and surrounding to
feel the impact and the beauty of the building. The feeling of buildings and
our sense of dwelling within them are more fundamental to our architectural
experience than the information they give us.” This is a long way from
Venturi. Moore sees architecture as the projection of human experience, as
valid for the city as for the house The basic task of architecture is the
reproduction of `the inner landscape of human beings', as realised in such
buildings as the Acropolis in Athens, the Wieskirche in Bavaria, Frank
Lloyd Wright's Winslow House, and Moore's own works. Moore's
incorporation of the everyday world and of models from the past proceeds,
so to speak, from within, whereas Venturi starts from the external symbolic
form.
Moore's attitude to the past has varied in the course of time. The
Place of Houses (I974, with Gerald Allen and Donlyn Lyndon) is a model-
book in the nineteenth-century tradition and puts his own house designs into
a historical context. His human-based programme is expressed in the
formulation : `Rooms to live in, machines that serve life, and the
inhabitants' dreams made manifest.''o A more whimsical attitude towards
historical models emerges from his Dimensions. Space, Shape and Scale in
Architecture (I976 ; with Gerald Allen), in which the basic elements of
architecture are interpreted in a manner similar to that in Body, Memory
and Architecture;" a section here on the Villa Hadriana reads like a
preliminary description of his Piazza d'Italia in New Orleans of 1977-78.
In the last analysis Moore's use of historical models is as arbitrary as
Venturi's. Since it forms part of man's memory and man's identity, the
architecture of the past can be made to serve the needs of the present. But
instead of replicating a particular historical style, Moore makes ironical,
discordant references to it in a new, changed context. For the realisation of
his Piazza d'Italia, for instance, he employs the techniques of Pop Art : he
introduces the five Classical orders and a fanciful `American' order, which
creates an effect of alienation by using modern materials and attaching neon
strip-lights to the columns. Yet he takes it for granted that the associative
power of the picture-postcard world he has created in his Piazza d'Italia,
with Sicily at its centre, will provide a place with which the Italo-Sicilian
community of New Orleans can identify. This seems to question Moore's
considerable achievements, in the fields of housing and campus buildings.
The human-centred aims he sets out in his books cannot be achieved
through exercises in historical irony. His Piazza d'Italia is a piece of three-
dimensional Pop Art masqerading as architecture. Each in his own way,
Moore and Venturi set out to use the architecture of the past as a set of
visual signs as seen through the eyes of the twentieth century. The inner
meaning of that architecture, however, cannot be transported in this way.
The result is a façade architecture laid round a functional shell, laying claim
to durability but having an air of impermanence about it. Such fair-booth
architecture cannot be a true alternative to functionalism, however justified
the opposition to functionalism may be. History and the models of the past
are here treated casually and superficially, which is one of the fundamental
objections to so-called Post-Modernist architecture, with its use of ironical,
eclectic gestures in place of substance and symbol.
The mid-1970s saw an increasing number of works devoted to
analysing the reasons for the failure of Modern. Peter Blake, once a disciple
of modern architecture becomes in Form Follows Fiasco its most violent
critic, calling up the fallacies in Geoffrey Scott's The Architecture of
Humanism and setting alongside them what he calls the fantasies' of modern
architecture, thereby putting into question such of its basic rinciples as
function, open plan, purity, technology, high-rise buildings and so on. The
weakness of these two works is that they offer no suggestions as to where
alternatives might be found. Likewise Wolfgang Pehnt, surveying what he
took to be the demise of Post-Modernism in his Das Ende der Zuversicht
(I983), was unable to reach any firm conclusion.
The idea of a `Post-Modern' architecture (variously dubbed Post-
Functionalist, Symbolic, Anthropological, etc.) is présent in the work of
architects otherwise as different from each other as Philip Johnson, Moore
and Venturi, though without the term as such being used. It established
itself as a stylistic concept with Charles Jencks's The Language of Post-
Modern Architecture, which appeared in the same year (I977) as Blake's
Form Follows Fiasco and was followed by a series of works in which
Jencks' ideas became more and more frivolous. The term `Post-Modern' has
since become a catchword for anything and everything genuinely or
allegedly anti-functionalist, embracing the most heterogeneous of trends,
and is applied indiscriminately to Neo-Rationalists such as Aldo Rossi as
well as to others like the `New York Five'.
Christopher Alexander (b.I936), who came to California from
Vienna made a passionate plea in his first book, Notes on the Synthesis of
Form (I964), for `an entirely new attitude to architecture and planning, an
alternative which will, we hope, gradually replace current ideas and
practices. Alexander postulates a design process which shall take account of
a mass of independent factors, substantiating his demand with numerous
diagrams and mathematical formulae. In fact his approach is not so far from
the comprehensive concept of functionalism characteristic of the tradition of
Louis Sullivan. Alexander's The Timeless Way of Building (I97y), rhetorical
in style, opens with a set of maxims in a manner that recalls Le Corbusier's
Vers une architecture, and roceeds with formulaic repetitions and such
techniques as the use of a different typeface for the expression of eternal
verieties, all of which creates an atmosphere of religiosity to which one can
either submit or turn away from in scepticism. Alexander develops an
associative theory of “Pattern languages' in architecture - which he sees as
`part of nature - and `patterns of events ' which leads to `the quality without
a name' in which his timeless way of building' achieves fulfilment. With a
dazzling display of conceptual and linguistic virtuosity he produces
statements on architecture which by virtue of their very generality, have a
certain validity to practical account, but which can scarcely be of any use in
practice
In contrast to the high-flown nature of his theories, Alexander's own
designs, such as his wooden Linz Café (i98i), are unassuming, though by no
means devoid of charm. Conceived merely as a temporary structure, this
`alternative design', which was published in the manner of a manifesto,
shows a broad discrepancy between idea and reality. However, it is quite
conceivable that Alexander's ideas will turn out to be a vital stimulus to the
emergence of a new conception of architecture, though they are far from
typical of the arguments at present heard in the United States.
No clear line of development can be detected in America, although
the ideas of Johnson, Venturi and Moore have had such a widespread effect
that hardly a building is constructed today that avoids eclecticism or
historical associations of one kind or another. The different paths taken by
the individual members of the `New York Five' (Peter Eisenman, Michael
Graves, Richard Gwathmey, John Hejduk and Richard Meier), who all
staned from the formalism of Le Corbusier, are revealing. Graves (b.1934),
whose buildings have a highly pictorial quality, shows particularly clearly
the move towards an eclecticism of quotations, as in his Public Service
Building for Portland, Oregon, which deliberately harks back to American
Art Deco; he himself has also made clear his indebtedness to historical,
nthropomorphic theories of architecture. Meier (b.I934), on the other hand,
has kept to a form of aestheticsed functionalism which he sees as belonging
to a great historical tradition, and he rejects the use of ornament in the basis
of arguments almost identical to those heard in the I92os.
Thomas Gordon Smith and Stanley Tigerman put forward a case for
the totally free use of historical architectural forms based on a collage of
traditional ideas that can be described, according to one's taste, as
whimsical, ironic or just silly. Tigerman's aim of destroying the Giedion-
Pevsner view of the development of twentieth-century architecture was
shown in his imaginary second competition (I98o) for the Chicago Tribune
Tower, which presented a view of the entries for the actual competition of
I922 totally different from that generally accepted Here was a strange
attempt to escape from history by inventing alternative history.
The theoretical basis of fashionable high technology architecture, be
it fanciful, bombastic or vulgar (e.g. Helmut Jahn or John C. Portman), is
sketchy, but in all cases particular regard is paid to the needs and habits of
the user. The extent to which this historicist `Romantic' tendency has made
its mark on the general public can be seen from the competition for the
Southwest Center in Houston (I983), the designs submitted - the winner was
Jahn - owing their raison d étre to the Gothic Revival or Art Deco.
Discussion of architectural theory in the United States continues to
follow a more liberal and pragmatic course than in Europe, though
European developments are closely followed. Whereas in America
architecture is treated primarily as a matter of technology and form, in most
European countries ideological and social questions predominate. In Europe
the liveliest discussion of architectural theory since the end of the Second
World War has taken place in Italy, where almost all theoretical statements
have been characterised by a keen awareness of history. Many historians of
art and architecture - Bruno Zevi, Leonardo Benevolo, Manfredo Tafuri,
Giulio Carlo Argan - have influenced the course of the debate; conversely,
architects have also been active in the historiography of their subject - Paolo
Ponoghesi, for instance. Probably the most significant architect in this
connection has been Carlo Scarpa (I9o6-78),86 who combined his
knowledge of Venice with the influence of Frank Lloyd Wright and with a
study of the historical setting, using concrete to achieve solutions that
approached the poetic. However, he left no account of the theoretical basis
of his work.
In contrast to Germany, activity in Italy resumed after I945 with
little interruption, especially in Milan, where a studio like that of the BBPR
could survive political change. This is also true, though in a different way,
of Pier Luigi Nervi, an engineer working mainly in Rome, who concerned
himself with the aesthetic questions related to his structures. Nervi came to
the conclusion that scientific calculations were inadequate to demonstrate
the functional qualities of a building and that functions and forces need to
be made explicit in the design. This realisation, coming from an engineer,
spelt the end of a merely structural functionalism, both in theory and in
practice.
Developments in Italy since the Second World War have taken
many different directions. A constant concern with historical cities has led
to a particular emphasis on town planning and local history, two subjects
that invariably go hand in hand. Two intluential works have been L
úrbanistica e l ávvenire della citt< (igs9) by Giuseppe Samona and Origine
e sviluppo della citt< moderna (I964) by Carlo Aymonino. The most
important contribution to the theory of urban planning is L árchitettura
della citt< (1966) by Aldo Rossi (b.193I),9' who strongly opposes the
application of purely functionalist criteria and argues for a return to
aesthetic and monumental categories under the banner of socialism. Rossi is
a key figure in modern Italian architecture. His early experiences of
Stalinist architecture in Moscow and East Berlin have left their marks, both
ideologically and formally, while in his numerous writings, as well as in his
designs, he has expressed his reactions to the work of theorists old and new-
the Revolutionary architects, Milizia, Loos, the Surrealists, Italian
Rationalism, Le Corbusier, etc.
The manifesto Architettura Razionale, which Rossi issued on the
occasion of the Milan Triennale in I973, gave birth to a movement that was
quickly joined by architects from all over Europe, among them Vittorio
Gregotti, Giorgio Grassi, Carlo Aymonino, Leon and Rob Krier, James
Stirling, Oswald Matthias Ungers and Josef Paul Kleihues. Their designs
are characterised by a suggestive pictorial quality or by a precision of
presentation that goes back to Durand. The influence of this architecture is
exercised more by drawings and designs than by completed buildings;
indeed, such drawings are often ends in themselves, as they were with
Boullée, whose treatise on architecture Rossi translated into Italian.
Architectural drawing becomes compensation for a reality found
inadequate, and liberties are taken which would have no méaning if the plan
were to be realised. Architects like Massimo Scolari and Rob Krier are
primarily draughtsmen who occasionally publish architectural programmes
which contain little by way of formally presented theory.
The increasing imprecision of the term `Rationalism' became clear
when attempts were made to link the European movement with America -
with Venturi, for example - where the theoretical situation was quite
different. The only common ground was the concept of a new symbolism in
architecture based on a reversion to the past. It was only logical, therefore,
that the vague concept of `Post-Modernist' should subsume the `Neo-
Rationalist' movement, even though these `Rationalists' generally object to
such a tendency. Yet the modern trend, as revealed in exhibitions and their
corresponding catalogues, has been to try and make the alliance between
Post-Modernism and Rationalism a fact, heedless of what is actually built.
This trend can be clearly seen in the activities of the Deutsches
Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt and the International Bauausstellung (IBA)
exhibitions in Berlin in Germany, together with America and Italy, is a
centre for architectural experiments in how to build within the historical
framework of pre-existing urban structures, and the outcome of the IBA in
Berlin, where, under Hardt-Waltherr Hämer and Josef Paul Kleihues, a
cautious programme of urban renewal has been carried out, shows the
feasibility of these ideas.
Mention should also be made in this connection of the often
fundamental influence on architectural theory of psychology and sociology.
The return to the symbolic quality of architecture is due on the one hand to
historical studies in architectural iconography, on the other to the semiotics
of sociologists such as Gillo Dorfles and Umberto Eco. In his book
Intentions in Architecture (1963) Christian Norberg-Schulz has incorporated
the findings of investigations in these fields into a new synthesis of criteria
for
architectural judgement. New ideas in urban planning have come from Jane
Jacobs, with her Death and Life of Great American Cities (igóI) and from
Alexander Mitscherlich's Die Unwirtlichkeit unserer Städte (ig65); a while
Rudolf Arnheim, working from the viewpoint of perceptual psychology, has
produced a logical refutation of functionalism.
There has been no dearth of attempts to bring these and other areas
of thought to bear in architectural theory. Niels Luning Prak, for example,
using a questionable, methodology in his Language of Architecture (I968),
makes architectural aesthetics dependent on social history. An attractive
plea for a pluralistic view, accompanied by gently ironical judgements on
the dogmas of the past, is contained in Bruce Allsopp's A Modern Theory of
Architecture (1977), which - in its remarks on the nature of architectural
decoration, for instance - gives a positive slant to the negative conclusions
in the books by Brolin and Blake mentioned above, and encourages the
treatmerlt of architectural theory in a cautious, undoctrinaire spirit.
In the current theoretical writings of architects there seems no way
out of the dilemma of a purely negative reaction to functionalist
Modernism. `Post-Modernism' signifies nothing more than a series of
heterogeneous attempts to break loose from the functionalist grip. Neo-
Historicism, one of the most prominent of these attempts, lacks firm
intellectual foundation and, like any primitive historicist tendency, can only
lead back to a new form of functionalism. A characteristic recent example
of this superficial, ill-considered play with a collective historical memory
would seem the monumental housing estates designed by Ricardo Bofill
(b.I939), who uses poetic allusions - to Kafka's The Castle, Walden,
Abraxas, etc. - to demonstrate his mastery of large-scale Baroque forms and
eclectic stylistic quotation, but his theory is refuted by reality.
 If architecture and its theoretical reflection are consciously to rejoin
a historical continuum, there must be a thorough, unprejudiced appraisal of
the situation. The break with the past which is alleged to have taken place in
the first half of the twentieth century has in fact severed vital links with
tradition in the late twentieth-century mind which cannot easily be restored.
An alternative to functionalism is not to be found in a return to
indigenous styles or to a formalistic Neo-classicism, or in any other forms
of historical eclecticism. The study of architectural history and theory can
only reveal what practical steps might be taken in an age whose aesthetics,
technological faith and ecology have been shaken to their foundations.