ABOUT THE AUTHOR-NEIL LEACH

INTRODUCTION

It encompasses a series of well-known essays on architecture by key thinkers of the 20th century
together with a number of lesser known pieces, helping to provide an effective means of rethinking
architectural theories.

The twentieth century architecture opened with an optimistic sense of moving forward like ‘Towards
a new architecture’, etc. but ends with a sense of rethinking and reflection.

This has been associated with a notion put forward by Fredrick Jameson which is as he describes as
‘inverted millenarianism’
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/jameson.htm

The whole concept of the ‘soulless container architecture’ has been called into question.

According to Hal Foster there are two different strains relating to this- ‘postmodernism of reaction’
and ‘postmodernism of resistance’.

One notion put forward in the realm of music by Theodor Adorno, which can be adopted into
architecture is that ‘the ageing of modern architecture must not drive architects back to the
obsolete forms of the past, but should lead them to an insistent self-imposed criticism.

Architectural theories lack self-criticism, which would will help architects and their theories to evolve
on a much broader classification and be analysed under different disciplines.

Generally discussions have been grounded around questions of style and rarely do we see socio-
political factors being taken into account. The extracts taken here enables us to perceive
architectural theories on a deeper and on different levels.

‘Spatial images are the dreams of society. Wherever the hieroglyphics of any spatial image are
deciphered, there the basis of social reality presents itself.’ Says Siegfried Kracauer.

The contents in the book has been divided into parts, Modernism, Phenomenology, Structuralism,
Post-modernism and post-structuralism. It helps us understand the conditions under which the
forms have been generated on a much deeper social construct.

The essays taken into account have been done by people who are outside of architectural
profession. This in turn creates a certain tension between the way of thinking that belongs to the
world of architects and to those of the outside.

This will help to rethink, analyse and find out weaknesses in the mainstream arguments of these
theories.

The notion of transgression is discussed. It says that the works discussed are transgressive. The
question of tradition and conventionalism lies in the heart of the problem. The premise of this
volume is that to rethink architecture it should break from all constraints of tradition. The whole
notion of boundaries set for architecture must be readdressed so that its relation with other
disciplines is redefined.
Part-1 MODERNISM

Modernism is the aesthetic practice of modernity. Modernism lacks proper definition. Here it has
been adopted to group together the works of certain thinkers who have a broadly modernist outlook
and who focuses on the social problems and the aesthetic practices of modernity.

These writings marks a moment of reflection amidst the shock of the new.

George Simmel’s essay says that, ‘intensification of emotional life’ resulting from the overstimulation
of senses produces a blasé individual’, can be seen as the result of and a resistance against the
modernist condition.

THEODOR W. ADORNO

German philosopher and musicologist Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) was a leading member of the
Frankfurt Institute for Social Research. He was appointed its director in 1959.

Adorno’s thought is informed by a range of German thinkers, and his work could be described as a
heterodox Marxism with a strong Freudian influence.

In Sigmund  Freud's psychoanalytic  theory of personality, the  unconscious  mind is defined as a

reservoir of feelings, thoughts, urges, and memories that outside of conscious awareness.
Freud  believed that the  unconscious  continues to influence behaviour even though people are
unaware of these underlying influences

He opposed the Hegelian notion of identity thinking and instead sought to describe an object
negatively for what it could not be.

In his aesthetic theory he found the potential of art to give the viewers, freedom, through its
autonomy. Autonomous art negated reified consciousness and rejected the dominant order.
Therefore he distinguished art from other products of culture.

In the essay Adorno addresses the question of architecture and exposes the paradoxes within the
treatment of functionalism and ornamentation. Purposive and purpose free arts cannot be
absolutely separated. Functionalism in architecture can never be pure functionalism as the absolute
rejection of style is also a style in itself.

Adorno calls for an architecture of sustained aesthetic reflection, one which is innervated by the
imagination.

FUNCTIONALISM TODAY

In a lecture delivered to a group of architecture practitioners on the topic of post-war German

reconstruction architecture, Theodor Adorno uses the opportunity to consider the significance of its
formal antecedent: Functionalist architecture. For him, Functionalism, in all its radicalism,
necessarily failed to transcend its own limitations as a function of a stagnating society.

It lies in the nature of artworks to inquire after the essential and necessary in them and to react
against all superfluous elements. The critical tradition declined to offer the arts a canon of right and
wrong, the responsibility to take such considerations into account was placed on each individual
work; each had to test itself against its own immanent logic, regardless of whether or not it was
motivated by some external purpose.

A statement by Kant, ‘purposiveness without a purpose’ is being discussed. The formula reflects an
essential impulse in the judgment of taste. What was functional yesterday can therefore become the
opposite tomorrow. Even representative, luxurious, pompous and, in a certain sense, burlesque
elements may appear in certain forms of art as necessary, and not at all burlesque.

“Ornament is wasted work energy and thereby wasted health.  It has always been so. But today it
also means wasted material, and both mean wasted capital.”

For Loos it takes the form of the realization that the widely lamented impotency to create ornament
and the so-called extinction of stylizing energy (which he exposed as an invention of art historians)
imply an advance in the arts.

The poles of the contradiction are revealed in two concepts, which seem mutually exclusive:
handicraft and imagination. Handicraft means a past means of production whereas imagination
requires the energy to compose. Handicrafts are stereotypical formulas, practices, which spares the
energies of the composer.

Imagination is the image of something that is not yet present. In architecture, the sense of space is
not a pure abstract essence as it is only conceivable as a concrete space within specific dimensions.
It is closely connected to the purposes for which it was built for. Architecture inquires: through
which forms and materials can a certain purpose become spaces. Architectonic imagination is the
ability to articulate space purposefully. Space and the sense of space can become more than
impoverished purpose only when imagination impregnates them with purposefulness.

There are certain concrete social norm which restrict architecture to becoming great. Functional
architecture represents the rational character as opposed to the supressed instincts of empirical
subjects. It calls upon a human potential which is grasped in principle and also suppressed in our
advanced consciousness. Great architects like Loos and Le Corbusier were only able to materialise
only a small portion of their works due to reactions of unreasonable contractors and administrators
as well as a social antagonism over which even the greatest architecture has no power.

For architecture to become truly great it should be autonomous.

GEORGES BATAILLE (1897-1962)

French writer and critic. A controversial figure within French intellectual life.

Even though the images of horror and obscenity in Bataille’s writing has led many to question his
sanity, it plays a crucial role as strategies of transgression within a world dominated by social norms
and established hierarchies.

Example is his ‘solar-anus’. Bataille presents an image of the sun excreting light. The sun and light
stands for creation and creativity. Too much sun only blinds the viewers.
Architecture enters Bataille’s interest at both a metaphoric and a literal level, such as the pyramid
and the labyrinth are employed as metaphors for social structuration.

The slaughterhouse and the museum are the first two entries by Bataille. Although they are
contradictions in itself, for Bataille they are related.

ARCHITECTURE

Architecture is the expression of the very being of societies. The ideal being of society, one that
orders and prohibits with authority, expresses itself in what are architectural compositions.
Architectural monuments inspire socially acceptable behaviour and often a very real fear. The
storming of the Bastille is symbolic of this state of affairs.

On 14 July 1789, a state prison on the east side of Paris, known as the   Bastille, was attacked by an
angry and aggressive mob. The prison had become a symbol of the monarchy's dictatorial rule, and
the event became one of the defining moments in the Revolution that followed.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE

It emerges from religion in which temples of the past were used for both worship and slaughter.
Meanwhile today, the slaughterhouse is cursed and quarantined.
MUSEUM

The museum is the colossal mirror in which man finally contemplates himself in every aspect, finds
himself literally admirable, and abandons himself to the ecstasy expressed in all the art reviews. The
museum is referred to as the lungs of the city. Every Sunday, the crowd flows through the museum
like blood coming out purified and enriched.