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MacIuika Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Sep., 2006), pp. 455-457 Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Society of Architectural Historians Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25068310 . Accessed: 16/11/2011 08:35
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explored.
These
inadequacies
may
have
been due to the fact that the chronology of the club occupied somuch of the book.
Aside from issues of content, this
est sense," defining his topic "simply as the history of architectural ideas, literary
or otherwise" rate the main (xv). lines Setting of modern out to "nar architec
that German
theorists
occupy
special
architects
a
throughout
huge
author's to the
publication?designed
son, John standard Hasbrouck?is one would
by
not
the
up
expect.
book will
an for of and
Although the placement of footnotes to the side of the body of text they accom
pany lengthy can be useful, notes here there are not enough to warrant appear the format. on the page discon scanned pat
giants asGottfried Semper, Otto Wagner, and Johann Joachim Winckelmann. Also adding fuel to A History ofArchitectural
Theory expert Center are the author's as editor two of decades the Getty invalu series. for for The earlier recov of service for Arts
Occasionally,
the notes
to the reference. Most subsequent are the numerous poorly certing illustrations tern on some throughout: is so strong
and Humanities'
work and
the under
lying image is scarcely discernable. With six hundred illustrations, it would have been helpful to have them indexed.
In pendium architectural interest sum, of this book is a great on com raw material Chicago's whose the era
Architectural sweeping volume^ History of has an architectural Theory (Munich, 1985) historian wresded with the presentation of such a large body of theory. Focusing on
the last few centuries, Mallgrave avoids the
essays
numerous and
architectural for
Germany?and
an ern enlarged, architecture. Thus, prises some
problems inherent in Kruft's decision to reach all the way back to Vitruvius, and
produces sion ried, a richer, more nuanced in Kruft's survey. discus often hur then was possible
evolutionary
material most
com care
strongest,
one-dimensional
in the book. As
classic works of as
The
historiography
Hartford,
Note 1.H. Allen Brooks, The Prairie School: Frank Lloyd Wright and His Midwest Contemporaries (Toronto, 1972), 39-40.
that follows. The author kicks off his enterprise in the year 1673, when Claude
Perrault, the French physician and trans
Nikolaus Pevsner's Pioneers of the Modern Movement (London, 1936) long obscured
the importance theory for of in German work nineteenth-century the laying ground develop
lator of Vitruvius
French, famous century adherence sided quarrel with to
from Latin
the liberate from "moderns" seventeenth strict,
into
in a
twentieth-century
ments.
Like
much
of
work Anyone will
his
earlier
to
thinking to the
slavish classical
the present
ismeant
"ancient"
Germany architectural
Theory
andModernity
precedent. Mallgrave calls a halt to his historical journey around the year 1968.
The architectural thought of the turbulent
about
decade of the '60s is typical for the way in which it "challenged the relevancy of the
current body of architectural injected politics, a measure theory of and, intellec into the in the process, tual fatigue,
tributing
developments
joins
nine setting
as Mitchell
ISBN 0-521-79306-8
and cynicism
surveys
theory five
discourse" (xvi). In the four hundred pages bridging his start and end dates,Mallgrave
delivers fourteen chapters and a short epi
architects to exhaustion.
historicist Mallgrave
selective,
and sophis
debates,
hundred-page,
double-columned
Modern
section titled
the Conceptual
Architectural Theory: A Historical Survey, 1613-1968, Harry Francis Mallgrave has clearly had to do a lot of selection. A
well-respected editor, announces tackle and early architectural architect, on his historian, Mallgrave intention "in its broad
the his
tations
reveal
the
advanced
scholarly no It is perhaps
architectural
theory
ers of Mallgrave's
earlier
books
455
abstraction ['die Fehler der rein radical Abstraction'], by which I conceived a specific architectural work entirely from
utilitarian purpose and construction."
From Claude
Blondel Marc-Antoine
to
treatments themes,
of
leading
figures, institu
and emerging
Presciently
and rigid"
d'Architecture Moderne
Corbusier Japan, trast, in such and Mexico. is Mallgrave's Far
(CIAM), and Le
as Brazil, by con
Schinkel admonished himself to remain mindful of "two essential elements: the historic and the poetic" (98). Given Mallgrave's depth
acknowledged mastery of German
Soufflot
such quotations
in 1744
ele
regional
architectural developments
States. accounts Christopher Occasionally of figures his as Peter
in theUnited
penetrating diverse Eisenman, as
tectural scholarship, one might logically askwhether his book is unfairly weighted
toward not the Teutonic. detailed architects The reader on need such and fear. While German sections
dogma, only to be hardened further by institutional politics and control "by an exceedingly small circle of people whose
authority by has been as established by as much circumstance accomplishment"
Alexander,
Louis Kahn, Colin Rowe, and Eero Saarinen are interrupted by individual
paragraphs listing an architect's major
leading
as David
Friedrich Schinkel,
Leo
von
explicit con
This can Mallgrave's
earlier studies, Mallgrave's connects work each German English, French, and Italian
theory.
discussed
These
effort to give due diligence to the breadth of architectural production afterWorld War II, but it does not always advance his
account of theory.
interconnections
strengthen
the book among particular individuals in England (Soane andGeorge Dance, who liked it), Germany (JohannWolfgang
von Goethe, who was less enthusiastic),
Mallgrave
recounts American
appreciation taking
parallel develop across and political Along vast the way, collection here though and not the of can it is as a
it,
and tural
the
boundaries. of the
influence.
assembled
tight
overestimated, as footnotes
only
political
change
technolog in the
twentieth shifts
century. activism,
in the
discussion, of Team
dimensions
to architec
in his van
consideration
absolute
for from
to
increasing
as a bearer the
the
developing
of Peter
world.
and Alison
The
too,
"rough
like
style
Smithson's
against
classicists;
constructions, Tafuri's "gentle" later the that of that on, put Marxism objections
disagreements occasionally
challenges. as diverse
Spengler's
of the West (Vienna, 1918) to Frederick Taylor's Principles of Scientific (New York, 1911), to say Management Decline
nothing of the communist revolution,
a "closed over
ideas remain of
theory
remarkably changing
II, or
face
constantly
is a for
West. ing in the The opening discussions of France and Britain in the seventeenth and eigh
teenth centuries typify this approach. 2006
of architec
And inasmuch to
discussions
according
to geog
456
JSAH
/ 65:3,
SEPTEMBER
tectural
culture,
they produced
responses
cation" was
University terned Journal. after the
put
together
students
by Yale
and pat Yale Law observed,
less shocking than reminiscent of earlier centuries' efforts. back on the "Looking in the 1968," he observes year epilogue, was one "if there idea that bound
architecture
Perspecta,
together the Institute for Architecture andUrban Studies, the work of theNew York Five, the populism of Venturi and
Moore, and Italian rationalism, it was the idea of revival or revisitation: the revival
from topics ranging "Michelangelo to Frank Lloyd Wright and from the new Lever Building to designs for a portable dwelling in the addressed
event ety?later ism?was of atomic This vari bombings." as hailed Perspecta's plural at least in part a response to
known
heroes,
and Paul
for "chal from
within" (158).
Plattus introduces the second ten
inspired neoclassicism"
is quick to point out
(414).Mallgrave
that such a pro
volumes
Plattus considerably was
of Perspecta (1967-83),
less a student at stake than many when
with
Stern.
nouncement
"for revivals part (414). resting
shut
of these
of modern He has
on more
department
in
1950,
responded
by
of a discussion
that concludes with the assertion that 1968 could be interpreted either as the beginning of the end of
architectural of reconsideration the theory, or and simply retrench he con more On the read as a time
"to establish the argu Perspecta founding ments that revolve the axis of around contemporary turntable, as the architecture encompassing present and and to express on a broader as well to the
modern
least half of the articles in Perspecta 12 (1969) have become "minor, and, in
some cases, major classics" (252). Those
future"
independent
ment. structs,
Within
Mallgrave than up
critical voices of its student editors (4). Fifty years later, the efforts of gen
erations rewarded ing of Yale students reduced have been with?or to, depend hefty compi
or Piranesi
Frampton,
Is Too
"Maison
Easy"; Kenneth
de Verre"; and Alan
on one's
perspective?a
of essays titled Re-Reading Perspecta: The First Fifty Years of the Yale
Architectural Journal. Stern, Its faculty Alan Plattus, editors, and Robert A. M.
lation
and Design
form the core
College
Peggy Deamer, have selected slightly less than one third of the original material and introduce each of the first thirty
issues of Perspecta. dean, presents on issues. of Stern, the school's volume from cur and the to the a fascinat years of the rent the entire articles introductions provide
Robert A. M. Stern, Alan Plattus, and Peggy Deamer, editors Re-Reading Perspecta: The First Fifty Years of the Yale Architectural
Journal Cambridge, 827 Mass.: b/w MIT Press, illus. $75, 2004, xvii +
selected His
volumes ing
1952-65 of
journal,
retelling which
interesting
pp., 900+
ISBN 0-262
19506-2
in light of his youthful role as editor of Perspecta 9/10 (1965). Although Stern's
texts are a in his joy to read, he is overly aggres sive drive discussions For to confront modernism particu notes
a focus on and issues making, In comparison realm. by the digital the earlier there are fewer sections,
On
19 August 1952, a brief article appeared at the bottom of the book review page of the New York Times
announcing that a "new magazine named
through larly
of history, example,
represented.
classicism.
he
for the
com publi
Perspecta 1 (1952)
is reprinted
in the
books
457