University of Cincinnati: 08/19/2009 Viorica Anamaria Popescu

U
UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI
Date: 08/19/2009
I, Viorica Anamaria Popescu ,
hereby submit this original work as part of the requirements for the degree of:
Master of Science
in Architecture
It is entitled:
Beyond Modernism:
A reassessment of modern architectural metaphysics in the light of
Martin Heidegger's "The Age of the World View"
Student Signature:
Viorica A. Popescu
This work and its defense approved by:
Committee Chair:
John E. Hancock
James Bradford
Approval of the electronic document:
I have reviewed the Thesis/Dissertation in its final electronic format and certify that it is an
accurate copy of the document reviewed and approved by the committee.
Committee Chair signature: John E. Hancock

Beyond Modernism
A reassessment of modern architectural metaphysics in light of Martin
Heidegger’s “The Age of the World View”
A Thesis submitted to the

Division of Research and Advanced Studies
of the University of Cincinnati
In partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of
MASTER of SCIENCE in ARCHITECTURE
In the School of Architecture and Interior Design

of the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning
2009
by
Viorica Anamaria Popescu
Bachelor of Architecture, “Ion Mincu” University of Architecture and Urban

Planning, Bucharest, Romania, 2001
Committee Members:
John E. Hancock (Chair)
James Bradford
Abstract
The problem of Modernity and Modern architecture has been a constant focus for the scholars
of architectural theory in the last fifty years and yet, despite the critical reactions it generated,
we are neither fully aware of the philosophical ground that sustained it nor its subversive
influences on contemporary architecture. Although architectural theorists like Alberto Perez-
Gomez (1989) and Colin Rowe (1992) have had very important contributions through revealing
the connections between modern architecture and modern science from the 17th century on,
their investigation did not further acknowledged the metaphysical foundations of both these
areas.
Exemplifying with significant architectural writings, I will trace the philosophical origin of
twentieth century themes of concern, such as the moral task of the architect (the desire to solve
the problems of society through architecture), or value and the criteria for value in architecture,
to a tradition, started with Plato and refined by Descartes, that has a particular take on the
question of the nature of the existent (Being) and on the nature of truth. This analysis will be
guided by Martin Heidegger’s essay, “The Age of the World View” (1976), a critical exploration
of the nature of modern times, which concludes that modernity distinguishes itself by the
change of the essence of man in that man becomes a subject (“man becomes the center to which
the existent as such is related”) and the transformation of the world into a world view (the
existent is understood as existent “when and to the degree to which it is held at bay by the
person that represents it and establishes it”).
This investigation will demonstrate that in spite of revealing the scientific approach of
architecture, that the modern movement practiced, as problematic, its authority is still acting
Abstract iii
upon contemporary architecture through the philosophical concepts that originated it. As a
result of providing a more appropriate account for the origins of modern architecture, this
study will raise consciousness and a critical attitude concerning the presuppositions and
implications of ideas that pertain to the contemporary theoretical discourse and practice in
architecture.
Keywords
Modern Architecture, Martin Heidegger, science, aesthetics, Colin Rowe, Alberto Perez-
Gomez
Abstract iv
This page intentionally left blank
Dedication
To the memory of my father
Dedication vi
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank my thesis committee chair, Professor John E. Hancock, for his invaluable
contribution to my intellectual development, his unlimited patience and especially for his help
and support, in countless ways, during my graduate studies at the University of Cincinnati.
I am greatly indebted to James Bradford for an irreplaceable learning experience, which made
this thesis possible, and for his constant friendship.
To Aarati Kanekar, David Saile, Patrick Snadon, and Nnamdi Elleh, for their special
contribution to shaping my architectural horizon,
To Ellen Guerrettaz Buelow for all the care she put into solving the administrative problems I
encountered along the way.
Special thanks to Florentina Popescu for her help as my sister and as my colleague,
To Tudor Rebengiuc, my husband, for embarking with me onto the American journey,
To Kanchana Ganesan, Leticia Guimaraes, Elizabeth Pincus, Sanjit Roy, and Edson Cabalfin, my
other fellow colleagues, for making my graduate studies interesting and fun.
I would like to thank the three authors of the book The Craft of Research, Wayne C. Booth,
Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams. Their work has been tremendously helpful at
introducing me to the basics of research, at providing a helping hand at key moments during
the development of my thesis, and generally, by always providing sound advice in the pages of
their book, at overcoming the anxiety of it all.
To Mircea Maxim, my son, for just being there,
Acknowledgement vii
And last, but not least, I would like to thank my mother and my extended family members for
providing help whenever they could in order for me to see this thesis finished.
Acknowledgement viii
Preface
This research does not, by any means, offer something entirely new. Martin Heidegger’s
interpretation of western metaphysics has long been considered to have a bearing on
architecture. Some believe that his influence has begun to wane, that the Heidegger ‘fashion’ in
architecture is already old-fashioned. Nevertheless, this study claims that his thoughts are
indeed revolutionary, and that they haven’t been fully exploited to the bottom of what they
really mean for architecture.
This research is aimed at those who have found the information on modern architecture
overwhelming and confusing. To those that, on striving for an overall coherent understanding
of modern architecture, had to content themselves with contradictory claims and principles. All
these being said, I do not wish to go to the other extreme either and claim that you will find
here the answer to it all. That would go against the spirit of the little I might have learned
reading Heidegger, that the nature of the existent is such that something will always remain
concealed.
Preface ix
Table of Contents
Abstract ________________________________________________________ iii

Keywords ______________________________________________________ iv
Dedication _____________________________________________________ vi
Acknowledgement _____________________________________________ vii
Preface _________________________________________________________ ix
Table of Contents ________________________________________________ x
Table of Figures _________________________________________________ xi
1 Introduction ___________________________________________________ 1
Background _____________________________________________________________________ 2
Research objectives ______________________________________________________________ 4
Research strategy and methodology ________________________________________________ 5
Relevance and significance – scope and limitations __________________________________ 6
Thematic Structuring_____________________________________________________________ 7
2 Modern Architecture ___________________________________________ 8

General Ideas __________________________________________________________________ 8
2.1 Central Unifying Themes _____________________________________________________ 11
2.1.1 Aesthetics ________________________________________________________________ 11
2.1.2 Ethics ___________________________________________________________________ 30
2.1.3 Science and Technology ___________________________________________________ 35
2.2 “Modern Architecture: Death or Metamorphosis?” ______________________________ 39
3 The Crisis of Architecture ______________________________________ 45

3.1 Modern Architecture in the Light of Heidegger’s Work __________________________ 49
3.1.1 Architecture as Science-as-Research versus Architecture as Art-as-Aesthetics _____ 49
3.1.2 The Architect as a Pure Thinking Subject _____________________________________ 52
Conclusion _____________________________________________________ 56
Bibliography ___________________________________________________ 57
Table of Contents x
Table of Figures
Figure 1 - Adolf Loos, Michaelerplatz Building, House for the gentlemen’s outfitter Goldmann
and Salatsch Vienna, Austria, 1910-1912, In ARTstor [database online]. [cited 07 August
2009]. Available from ARTstor, Inc., New York, New York
Figure 2 - Otto Wagner, Postal Savings Bank, Vienna, Austria, 1904-1906 (image between 1945
and 1959), In ARTstor [database online]. [cited 07 August 2009]. Available from
ARTstor, Inc., New York, New York
Figure 3 - Josef Hoffmann, Purkersdorf Sanatorium, Purkersdorf, Austria, Sanatorium
Purkersdorf – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanatorium_Purkersdorf, 07April 2007 (accessed 07 August
2009)
Figure 4 - Adolf Loos, Tristan Tzara House, Paris, France, 1926-1927 (image between 1945 and
1980), In ARTstor [database online]. [cited 07 August 2009]. Available from ARTstor,
Inc., New York, New York
Figure 5 - Josef Hoffmann, Winarskyhof Municipal Apartment Building, rear façade, Vienna,
Austria, 1924-1925, In ARTstor [database online]. [cited 07 August 2009]. Available from
ARTstor, Inc., New York, New York
Table of Figures xi
Figure 6 - Josef Hoffmann, Palais Stoclet, overall view from the street, Brussels, Belgium, 1905-
1911, In ARTstor [database online]. [cited 07 August 2009]. Available from ARTstor, Inc.,
New York, New York
Figure 7 - Frank Lloyd Wright, Robie House interior (living room windows), Chicago, IL, 1909,
In ARTstor [database online]. [cited 07 August 2009]. Available from ARTstor, Inc., New
York, New York
Figure 8 - Frank Lloyd Wright, Aline Barnsdall House (Hollyhock House), Los Angeles, CA,
1919-1921 (image from 1954, In ARTstor [database online]. [cited 07 August 2009].
Available from ARTstor, Inc., New York, New York
Figure 9 - Le Corbusier, Villa Savoye, Poissy, France, 1929-1931 (image between 1945 and 1980),
In ARTstor [database online]. [cited 07 August 2009]. Available from ARTstor, Inc., New
York, New York
Figure 10 - Le Corbusier, Villa Schwob, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, 1916, as published in
L’Esprit Nouveau 6, after Beatrix Colomina, Privacy and Publicity (Cambridge,
Massachusetts; London, England: MIT Press, 1994), 109
Figure 11 - Le Corbusier, Wash basin in the Villa Savoye, 1928-1931, Poissy, France, In ARTstor
[database online]. [cited 07 August 2009]. Available from ARTstor, Inc., New York, New
York
Table of Figures xii

Figure 12 – Contrasted residences for the poor, drawing and etching by A.W.N. Pugin,
Contrasts. 2nd edition reprint (1st edition 1836). New York: Leicester University Press,
1969.
Figure 13 – Contrasted public conduits, drawing and etching by A.W.N. Pugin, Contrasts. 2nd
edition reprint (1st edition 1836) . New York: Leicester University Press, 1969.
Figure 14 – Walter Gropius – Entrance of the Bauhaus in Dessau, Germany, 1925-1926 (image
between 1945 and 1980), In ARTstor [database online]. [cited 07 August 2009]. Available
from ARTstor, Inc., New York, New York.
Figure 15 - South front of the Wittgenstein House, Vienna, with the garden. Original condition
(Photo 1971), from Bernhard Leitner, The Wittgenstein House ( New York: Princeton
Architectural Press, 2000), 183.
Figure 16 - Hundertwasser, Hundertwasser House, columns framing glassed Winter garden,
Vienna, In ARTstor [database online]. [cited 07 August 2009]. Available from ARTstor,
Inc., New York, New York.
Figure 17 - “Miss Jenkins, would you please bring a round object into my office?” from Mertins,
Detlef (ed.). The Presence of Mies. Princeton Architectural Press, 1994
Table of Figures xiii

BEYOND MODERNISM
1 Introduction
“Metaphysics lays the foundation of an age by giving it the basis of its essential
form through a particular analysis of the existent and a particular conception of
truth. This basis dominates all the phenomena which distinguish the age.
Conversely, it should be possible to recognize the metaphysical basis in these
phenomena trough reflection.” 1
Martin Heidegger – “The Age of the World View”
Criticizing Modern Architecture is not a new enterprise. Ever since time has proved the
insolvency of the Modern Movement’s project, and the inadequacy of the path it put
architecture on during the first half of the 20th century, scholars have persisted in analyzing the
causes of its failures and have tried to envision new directions. But rather than attacking the
issue at its ontological foundation, they contented themselves merely with arguments on issues
like rationalization, standardization, efficiency, morality, typology, and aesthetics – all of which
are only the ultimate manifestations of more profound assessments about the nature of
existence and the nature of truth. Key late-twentieth century authors in this process, such as
1Martin Heidegger, “The Age of the World View”, translated by Marjorie Grene, in William V. Spanos
(ed.) Martin Heidegger and the Question of Literature- Toward a Postmodern Literary Hermeneutics, (Indiana
University Press: Bloomington, London, 1979), 1.
Introduction 1
BEYOND MODERNISM
Alberto Perez-Gomez and Colin Rowe, have for the most part not gone beyond pointing to the
problematic connections with modern science.
The first objective of my investigation is to make visible the connections between
modern architecture and the western metaphysical tradition (upon which modern science is
also founded). In this undertaking I will be guided by Martin Heidegger’s essay, “The Age of
the World View”( or “The Age of the World Picture” as translated by William Lovitt) 2, in which
he reconstructs the metaphysical basis of the modern age through reflecting on modern science,
seen as one of the phenomena that distinguish it. These connections will be revealed through
an examination of primary ideas that permeated significant twentieth century architectural
writings, in particular: solving social problems through architecture (the “good intentions” as
Rowe expresses it) and the problem of architectural value and its criteria as part of the ever-
present dilemma between architecture as science versus architecture as art.
Background
The period of Modern Architecture has traditionally been presented by historians of
architecture as the “natural” result of a reaction to late 19th century cultural, political and
especially social circumstances, and also as one of the most pervasive and self-evident
accomplishments of the Industrial Revolution which started in the 18th century (Françoise
Choay, The modern city; planning in the 19th century, 1970; Manfredo Tafuri, Modern architecture,
1979; among others). Although these claims are relevant to understanding the topic, the picture
2Martin Heidegger, “The Age of the World Picture”, translated by William Lovitt in The Question
Concerning Technology and Other Essays, Harper & Row: New York, 1977.
Introduction 2
BEYOND MODERNISM
remains distorted if we do not also question the metaphysical foundations of those events and
the ideas that accompanied them.
The current prominence and authority of Martin Heidegger’s thinking in architecture,
especially connected with the ideas of deconstruction and deconstructive architecture (part of a
more inclusive group of tendencies in architectural thinking and design, related to postmodern
thought), have raised awareness of the more complex background of the modernist period.
Even though many contemporary thinkers are not always willing to agree with such a radical
critique of the tradition of western metaphysics, as the one Heidegger presents, his great and
still-growing importance and influence for twentieth century studies cannot be denied.
Alberto Perez-Gomez’s Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science orients us in the
direction of Heidegger’s ideas, through a discussion of the work of architects like Claude-
Nicolas Ledoux, Etienne-Louis Boullee, and Claude Perrault, in the 18th century, and Nicolas-
Louis Durand (Boullee’s disciple), in the 19th century. Perez-Gomez emphasizes how their work
is tied to the 17th century rise of modern science and related modes of thought. Although he
does not deepen his study by discussing the link with the metaphysical concepts, and although
the book and the terms he uses are still embedded in the traditional thinking, the last phrase of
his book is significant in that respect:
“While construction as a technological process is prosaic – deriving directly from

a mathematical equation, a functional diagram, or a rule of formal combinations
– architecture is poetic, necessarily an abstract order but in itself a metaphor
emerging from a vision of the world and Being.”
Thus Perez-Gomez ends on the note where new studies have to begin: how architectural
conceptions root themselves in these deeper questions of the world, and of Being.
Introduction 3
BEYOND MODERNISM
Colin Rowe’s book, The Architecture of Good Intentions, is a complex mixture of criticism
and the high regard of the author for modern architecture, manifested in spite of that
architecture’s obvious inadequacy and its unavoidable extinction. The chapters of his book
(Epistemology, Eschatology, Iconography, Mechanism, and Organism) correspond to Rowe’s
theoretical consideration of the most important themes of modern architecture: its self-assigned
moral imperative, its aesthetical consideration, and its scientific determination.
Research objectives
My overall thesis goal is to demonstrate that the critics of modern architecture, in spite of
revealing that the scientific approach, which motivated the work of modern architects, is highly
problematic, have so far missed the deeper fact that its authority is still acting upon
contemporary architecture through the philosophical concepts that originated it. While the
critical discourse of architecture is often thought to be rooted exclusively within itself, as other
disciplines are, I will show its strong reliance on a philosophical ground that influences it, even
to the point of establishing its means of expression and determining its outcomes. It will
become clear that there is no architectural practice or decision outside a prior assessment, or
assumption, either deliberate or uncritical, on the nature of being and the nature of truth.
My more particular goal is aimed specifically at testing the power of Heidegger’s
conclusions about the underlying themes of modernity within the particular case of modern
architecture. By unfolding the ramifications of these themes (the change of the essence of man
in that man becomes a subject and the transformation of the world into a world view), this
Introduction 4
BEYOND MODERNISM
project will illustrate the profound, but also immediate link between an ontological stand and
the products of architectural practice. Thus, I specifically wish to address issues like:
1. The transparent manifestation of the issue of subject and object within architectural practice,
as, for example, in assumptions about the scientific or artistic nature of architecture; and
2. The implied emergence of the issue into the complex discussion on the individual and the
collective in modern architecture, as, for example, in the architect’s understanding of his role in
society.
Research strategy and methodology
The study will involve a critical reading and thematic synthesis of key architectural writings
within the critique of Modernity, including, in particular, analyses and references to specific
architectural products (buildings). Three central unifying themes of modern architecture will
be discussed, themes that have been, openly or implicitly, at the forefront on the modernists’
agenda and that are helpful in revealing its particular genealogy of thought; these are:
• Aesthetics
• Ethics
• Science (and Technology)
Heidegger’s essay, “The Age of the World View”, will be relevant as the methodological guide
and will provide the theoretical framework and broad themes for interpreting the texts.
The research methodology adopted is a theoretical one. The enquiry focuses on the
three themes that form the core of the modern architecture’s principles: aesthetics; ethics;
Introduction 5
BEYOND MODERNISM
science and technology. The structure of the thesis, rather than pursuing a linear pattern,
attempts to follow a hermeneutical circle. It revolves around the three themes, discussing them
from different perspectives in the course of the thesis:
1. As they appear and develop on the modernists’ agenda; and
2. As they can be discussed in the light of Martin Heidegger’s critique of modernity.
Relevance and significance – scope and limitations
Modern architecture covers a vast area and, based on the focus here, exhausting all of its
aspects is beyond the scope of this thesis. My approach to this subject attempts to continue the
work of architectural theorists, like the previously mentioned Alberto Perez-Gomez and Colin
Rowe, who perceived the power of ideas underlining the apparently stylistic considerations of
the modernist project. The approach adopted in this thesis, when talking about modern
architecture as a homogenous phenomenon, in spite of its obvious wide range of manifestations
and outcomes, is not reductionist. Rather, this approach arises out of the belief that modern
architecture is, in its essence, and consequently in all its manifestations, based on the ontological
decisions that from Descartes onwards lay at the foundation of the modern age. I believe that
this is an exploration with possibly deep consequences for architectural understanding,
criticism, and teaching methodology.
Introduction 6
BEYOND MODERNISM
Thematic Structuring
The first chapter of this thesis (Introduction) is a preamble to the claims, aims and
significance of the present research. It establishes the main guidelines that channel its
development and tries to anticipate its conclusions.
The second chapter (Defining Modern Architecture) aims to establish where we stand
today on the subject of modern architecture. Introducing modern architecture as it is generally
presented is accompanied by a look at how it was envisioned by its most prominent exponents.
This literature review will follow three major themes that seem to hover over the critical
appraisal of modern architecture: aesthetics, ethics, and science.
The third chapter (The Crisis of Architecture) begins with the discussion of Martin
Heidegger’s essay “The Age of the World View” and, taking Heidegger’s understanding of the
metaphysical basis of modernity as a starting point, goes on to deconstruct, hermeneutically
speaking, the body of principles voiced by the modernist architects.
Introduction 7
BEYOND MODERNISM
2 Modern Architecture
“Modern architecture… may be half extinct but it still remains insidiously
potent – indeed, far more potent than its recently assembled detractors.” 3
Colin Rowe – The Architecture of Good Intentions
General Ideas
For many decades, dealing with modern architecture has been, more or less, every
architect’s duty and challenge. One shouldn’t find this uncommon as, clearly, some of its ideas
(and ideals) continue to charm us even today. Ever since my architectural education was at its
beginning, I have myself been looking with great interest upon the simplicity exhibited by
minimalist designs of the late 1990’s. Highly influenced by Japanese traditional design and
architecture, they also owe a great deal to the work of early twentieth-century De Stijl artists
and later modernist architects like Mies van der Rohe and Louis Kahn, to name only a few.
And having set this as a model for my potential architectural career, I found myself compelled
to put effort into bringing some light, for myself and hopefully for others, onto modern
architecture. But despite this easy-to-spot motivation, the basis of this compulsive interest is to
be understood on a much more profound level.
3 Colin Rowe, The Architecture of Good Intentions, Academy Editions, 1994.
Modern Architecture 8
BEYOND MODERNISM
But what is “modern architecture”? Any inquiry into it will unavoidably start from here.
And all studies to consider the subject, or any aspect of it, have either asked this question from
the very beginning or assumed an answer to it. Many times the answer came in a formalistic
package. What is generally recognized as modern architecture? Flat roofs, pillars, open floor
plan… and, thus, a question about the nature of things took a descriptive turn. This is not
unusual though, for, according to Martin Heidegger, this has been a common approach
throughout the history of thought. The ontological questions about the nature of Being or the
nature of things (the “What” question) have been persistently mistaken for the “How” question.
But let us, for now, go beyond this initial difficulty and continue by considering the term
“modern architecture.”
In an era of intense artistic, economic and social turmoil, at the onset of the twentieth
century, the terms “Modernism” and “Modern Architecture” were widely used to convey the
idea that times were changing dramatically. And a long series of well-respected commentators
have since used them and raced into pointing out each aspect of this change. But whether they
have captured its nature remains to this day highly debatable. And there is no wonder, for the
transformation has been dramatic and complex. Nevertheless, there seems to be a wide
consensus today regarding the ambiguity that surrounds the term ‘modern architecture’. No
doubt, also, because as Colin Rowe suggests, “the words ‘modern architecture’ may have
acquired a certain neutrality through usage. They frame a fairly specific landscape of the mind;
they are generally accepted as designating an unquestionable revision of architectural physique
with some corresponding revision of architectural morale; and even though they have lately
BEYOND MODERNISM
acquired ill fame, their approximate reference is not in question.” 4 The way in which this
ambiguity is dealt with can differ greatly among commentators. Some define modern
architecture by circumscribing it within certain temporal boundaries and others see it to refer to
the buildings with a certain ideological basis. It is to this latter possibility that most of the critics
adhere, and it is this direction that, as a starting point, my thesis pursues as well.
Today, critics generally agree that “architecture cannot be separated from the ideological
context in which it was produced” (Bernard Tschumi). 5 With regard to modern architecture
this context is lately thought of most often, explicitly or implicitly, in terms of the Hegelian
Zeitgeist. According to Alan Colquhoun, “One of the main ideas motivating the protagonists of
the Modern Movement was the Hegelian notion that the study of history made it possible to
predict its future course. But it is scarcely possible any longer to believe – as the Modernists
architects appear to have believed – that the architect is a kind of seer, uniquely gifted with the
power of discerning the spirit of the age and its symbolic forms.” 6 Inquiring into the term
‘modern architecture’ Colin Rowe reaches similar conclusions. He, too, believes that the driving
force behind modernists’ statements and actions was their desire to express the spirit of the age. 7
But is the idea of a Zeitgeist an adequate ideological context for understanding modern
architecture?
4 Rowe, 15.
5 Joan Ockman (Ed.), Architecture Culture 1943-1968- A Documentary Anthology, Columbia University/
Rizzoli, New York, 1993, 11.
6 Alan Colquhoun, Modern Architecture, Oxford University Press, 2002, 10.
7 Rowe, 26-29.
BEYOND MODERNISM
2.1 Central Unifying Themes
Modern architecture is by no means a homogenous movement. A few common themes can be
identified, however, among those architects that claimed an association with the modernist
movement. All modern architects worked within the aesthetic paradigm in architecture, a
paradigm already well established in the nineteenth century. Within this paradigm, a
separation is introduced between the structure and ornament of a building, paving the way for
the disposal of ornament as a superfluous addition to a structural core. Most of the modern
architects have accordingly shunned ornamentation from their buildings, opting instead for a
functional aesthetics, anchored in the technological condition of their age. Also continuing a
nineteenth century tradition, modernist architects envisaged a messianic role for architecture,
depending on architecture as a cure to all social evils, this time with the aid of the latest
scientific developments.
2.1.1 Aesthetics
The aesthetic approach 8 to architecture is perhaps most directly asserted in Nikolaus Pevsner’s
(1943) Introduction to An Outline of European Architecture. In his very opening statement,
Pevsner proclaims: “A bicycle shed is a building. Lincoln Cathedral is a piece of architecture.
(…) the term architecture applies only to buildings designed with a view to aesthetic (italics
added) appeal.” 9 Pevsner goes on to explain in his book the kind of sensations that European
8 The expression belongs to Karsten Harries, The Ethical Function of Architecture (MIT Press, 1997), 4.
9 Nikolaus Pevsner, An Outline of European Architecture (Penguin Books, 1943), 15, quoted by Harries, 48.
BEYOND MODERNISM
architecture generated throughout the centuries. For our purposes, however, it is enough to
retain the logic behind the aesthetic conception of architecture. In this view, a piece of
architecture is a functional building to which something is added, in order to constitute it as an
object of art. The added component is usually understood to be decoration, or ornament, but it
is not necessarily so. According to Karsten Harries (1997), who offers this quote from Pevsner,
even when the addition is a specific proportion, we reside within the aesthetic paradigm of
architecture. 10
Dalibor Vesely (2004) situates the aesthetic paradigm in architecture within the larger
split between science and the real world that characterizes modernity. After it became obvious
that art cannot bear truth in the scientific sense of the term, art was relegated to pleasing the
senses, that is, to aesthetics. As a result, architecture became twice inferior. On one side, it was
no longer the bearer of any transcendental truth, which was the case before the divorce of art
and science, 11 and on the other side, it ended up at the bottom of the art echelon, for being an
impure, utilitarian art, far from the art for art’s sake aesthetic ideal. 12 Ornament, meanwhile,
took on a life of its own as an independent aesthetic object, this time devoid of any social
function or cultural connection. The emancipation of ornament from the bounds of utility
paved the way for the modern abstract art. 13
Vesely (2004) points out that the aesthetic approach to art became so ubiquitous that it is
sometimes considered synonymous with art itself, instead of being thought as the modern
10 Harries, 48.
11 Dalibor Vesely, Architecture in the Age of Divided Representation (Cambridge, MA; London, England: MIT
Press, 2004), 256-257.
12 Harries, 28.
13 Harries, 45.
BEYOND MODERNISM
conception about art. Also, art as aesthetics is often thought of in opposition to science. This
way of thinking is not just erroneous, according to Vesely, but almost “contradictory,” since
aesthetics and modern science are just two sides of the same transformation in the way the
world is experienced in the modern age, and as such they belong together. 14
2.1.1.1 Ornament
The rejection of ornament is programmatic in modernist architecture. Earlier on in the
modernist movement, the shunning of ornamental façades and preference for geometrical
sobriety became the main identifier of the new architecture. The lack of ornamentation was
generalized to all building types, from public buildings (Fig.1& 2) to private residences (Fig.4),
apartment complexes (Fig.5) and palaces (Fig.5), or places dedicated to (medical) science (Fig.3).
The most vocal of the early modernist architects advocating a rejecting of ornament, was
probably Adolf Loos. His 1908 manifesto, Ornament and Crime, remains to this day the hallmark
of the anti-ornament movement. Loos was part of the Viennese avant-garde, and was disputing
the right to lead the modernist movement with an elderly Otto Wagner, then a Professor of
Architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Josef Hoffmann, a student of the latter, and
Josef Maria Olbrich. These three were all members of the Viennese Secession, a group of avant
garde artists which also included Gustave Klimt and Koloman Moser. Loos often conflicted
with the Secession group. 15 The rebuff of ornament was so complete that even architects on
opposite sides of the new architecture movement, like Loos and the architects of the Secession
14Vesely, 249.
15Leslie Topp, Architecture and Truth in Fin-de-siècle Vienna (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2004), 136.
BEYOND MODERNISM
group, came to pride themselves on rejecting the historicist adornment that had been the rule
for Viennese architecture at the turn-of-the-century. 16
Figure 1 - Adolf Loos, Michaelerplatz Building, House for the gentlemen’s outfitter Goldmann and Salatsch
Vienna, Austria, 1910-1912
Loos’s Michaelerplatz building design (Fig.1) was hailed as a beacon of truth by its admirers,
for the simplicity of its upper stories’ window design and the absence of traditional window
16 Topp, 2.
BEYOND MODERNISM
moldings, which was probably shocking to some of his more traditionally minded
contemporaries. Otto Wagner wrote about his own Postal Savings Bank design (Fig.2):
“Nowhere is even the smallest sacrifice made to any sort of traditional form… [The design is]
flowing naturally out the nature and purpose of the building.”
Figure 2 – Otto Wagner, Postal Savings Bank, Vienna, Austria, 1904-1906 (image between 1945 and 1959)
BEYOND MODERNISM
Finally, Hermann Bohr, literary critic and supporter of the Viennese Secession described Josef
Hoffmann’s Purkersdorf Sanatorium (Fig.3) as a “logical organism, unencumbered by false
ornament and completely suited to its scientific purpose”. 17
Figure 3 - Josef Hoffmann, Purkersdorf Sanatorium, Purkersdorf, Austria, 1904-1905
In Ornament and Crime, Loos (1971) draws a parallel between the practice of ornamenting a
building and that of tattooing one’s body. According to Loos, body tattoos are not a crime or
17 Topp, 3.
BEYOND MODERNISM
sign of degeneration when used by primitive people; the same way smears on the wall are
permissible among small children. Body tattoos, however, and smears on the wall, are the mark
of criminals and social degenerates in our modern society. Analogously, building
ornamentation is acceptable among primitive people, but not acceptable in a society that prides
itself on its progressive attitude. 18
Figure 4 - Adolf Loos, Tristan Tzara House, Paris, France, 1926-1927 (image between 1945 and 1980)
Adolf Loos, "Ornament and Crime," in Programs and manifestoes in 20th-century architecture, ed. Ulrich
18
Conrads (Cambridge, MA: MITT Press, 1971), 19-24.
BEYOND MODERNISM
The persistence of ornament is not only a crime against the cultural evolution of a
society, but also against the national economy: “if two men live side by side with the same
needs, same demands on life and the same income but belonging to different cultures,
economically speaking the following process can be observed: the twentieth-century man will
get richer and richer and the eighteenth-century man will get poorer and poorer.”
Figure 5 - Josef Hoffmann, Winarskyhof Municipal Apartment Building, rear façade, Vienna, Austria, 1924-1925
The producer of ornament is also affected. Ornament, not being a “natural product of [a]
culture,” has its demand for it subsiding and with it the earnings of those who manufacture it.
According to Loos (1971), lower quality ornaments are to be preferred to higher quality ones,
BEYOND MODERNISM
since, while equally meaningless, the lower quality ornaments do not take painful work to
create them. 19
Figure 6 - Josef Hoffmann, Palais Stoclet, overall view from the street, Brussels, Belgium, 1905-1911
Harries (1997) notes that Loos’s crusade against ornament is motivated by beauty, and
not by utility, or even by economics. If moderns do not need ornament, it is not because they
19 Loos, 23.
BEYOND MODERNISM
reject any source of enjoyment, but because they have something better. 20 Indeed, Loos pleads
for simplicity as a finer and more subtle source of enjoyment. Ornament can be a source of
enjoyment to people who have not attained the spiritual strength that freedom from ornament
produces, but not to the modern man. 21
Recent commentators challenged the idea that modernist architects were completely
disengaged with ornament, pointing out that modernist ornament does exist, and it is based on
materials and colors, rather than sculptural forms. Loos himself, according to James Trilling,
“loved to juxtapose the simplest forms with the most luxurious materials, especially rare woods
and colored marble.” 22 Thus, modernism did not part with ornament entirely, but only
transformed ornament into something suited to the new social and technological conditions.
The disappearance of crafts and democratization of society made traditional ornament
unsustainable, if not redundant. 23
What modernists cast off, Trilling claims, was not ornament, but artifice, artifice being
“something contrived and possibly deceptive.” A fear of artifice, affirms Trilling, runs deep
into the Western culture, both on the Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman filiations. Although
artifice is a broader term than ornament, it is to be expected that a mistrust of artifice should
reflect upon ornament as well. 24
20 Harries, 43.
21 Loos, 24.
22 James Trilling, Ornament. A Modern Perspective (University of Washington Press, 2003), 111.
23 Trilling, 136.
24 Trilling, 148.
BEYOND MODERNISM
Figure 7 - Frank Lloyd Wright, Robie House interior (living room windows), Chicago, IL, 1909
Trilling’s natural-artificial dichotomy is reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright’s “organic”
architecture. Wright emphasizes moderation in the use of ornament, and describes the proper
relationship between ornament and structure as an “organic”, or “emphasizing” relationship, as
opposed to a “prettifying” one (Fig. 7). 25 In his 1943 Autobiography, he mentions “integral”
ornament as one of five resources of modern architecture. Integral ornament, according to
Wright, confers a “natural pattern” to a structure, much like what rhythm does for music
(Fig.8). Integral ornament belongs to the domain of poetry. Poetry is not within everybody‘s
25 Frank Lloyd Wright, Truth Against the World (John Wiley & Sons, 1987), 67.
BEYOND MODERNISM
reach, however. “Very many write good prose who cannot write poetry at all,” warns Wright.
Poetry is dangerous, and we would better err on the side of Ornaphobia, according to Wright,
than take part in the suicidal attempts of building any more merely ornamented buildings. 26
Figure 8 - Frank Lloyd Wright, Aline Barnsdall House (Hollyhock House), Los Angeles, CA, 1919-1921 (image
from 1954)
26Frank Lloyd Wright, “In the Nature of Materials: A Philosophy,” in Architecture Culture 1943-1968, ed.
Joan Ockman (New York: Rizzoli International Publications Inc., 1993), 39.
BEYOND MODERNISM
2.1.1.2 Functional Aesthetics
The English term “functional” serves as a translation of three German language terms:
“sachlich,” “zweckmässig,” and “funktionell.” These three terms, while interchangeable, carry
slightly different meanings which are, of course, impossible to convey in the translation. 27
According to Adrian Forty (2000), Sachlichkeit means literally “thingness,” and has no
equivalent in English. The term was first used in architecture in the context of a debate about
“realism.” Forty cites Otto Wagner debating in the Preface to his Sketches, Projects and Executed
Buildings, 1890, on the degree of realism that was appropriate for the Viennese architecture of
the day, compared to what Wagner considered to be the extreme realism of the Eiffel Tower in
Paris or Kursaal Palace in Ostend. Other connotations of Sacklichkeit are “anti-ornamental, non-
aristocratic, pertaining to everyday objects, rational, scientific, sober, practical, genuine, and
modern.” 28
Zweckmässigkeit is related to Zweck, or purpose. It is used both to signify the fulfillment
of immediate material needs, as utility, but also to signify organic purpose or destiny. Its first
occurrence in the context of architecture was in Paul Frankl’s Principles of Architectural History,
1914, as Zweckgessinung, or “purposive intention.” Here it refers to the aspect of a building that
escapes historical research, the use for which the space was intended. 29 Zweckmässigkeit is the
term that Mies van der Rohe used when he distanced himself from his previous endorsement of
function as the source of meaning for a building. Adrian Forty points out that it is easy to
27 Adrian Forty, Words and Buildings. A Vocabulary of Modern Architecture (New York: Thames & Hudson,
2000).
28 Forty, 180-181.
29 Forty, 181.
BEYOND MODERNISM
misunderstand Mies’s renunciation if we don’t grasp the distinction between Zweckmässigkeit, as
purpose, and Sachlichkeit, as rational construction.
The different nuances concentrated in the term function become important not only in
order to appreciate the heterogeneity of the modernist attitudes towards function, but also to
evaluate attempts by historians of architecture to stretch functionalism back into the nineteenth
century, and even earlier into seventeenth and eighteenth century rationalism. Nikolaus
Pevsner (1975) quotes A.W.N. Pugin’s (1841) opening paragraphs of the True Principles of
Pointed or Christian Architecture, as an example of a pre-functionalist mindset. Pevsner begins:
Where lie the sources of the twentieth century? (…) The first of our sources is
functionalism. Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, born in 1812, the English son
of a French father, wrote on the first page of his most important book: “There
should be no features about a building which are not necessary for convenience,
construction, or propriety…The smallest detail should … serve a purpose, and
construction itself should vary with the material employed.” That was written in
1841, but it was not new then. It is the direct continuation of the principle of
French seventeenth and eighteenth century rationalism (…). 30
The absence of the term function from Pugin’s vocabulary is readily noticeable, as is the
presence of such terms as “purpose,” “convenience,” or “propriety,” which can be easily found
in any classical vocabulary. Forty(2000) reckons not only that historical narratives tracing
functionalism back into nineteenth century and further are inaccurate, but that there is no
doctrine of functionalism that can be identified at all among modernist architects. It is only in
the 1960s that such a theory emerged, according to Forty, and it was then authored by architects
and critics who were reacting against modernism. 31
30 Nikolaus Pevsner, The Sources of Modern Architecture and Design, Penguin Books, 1968.
31 Forty, 192.
BEYOND MODERNISM
2.1.1.3 Form
While “form follows function” is perhaps the most famous dictum associated with modernist
architecture, it might not be the most accurate representation of the relationship between
function and form that the modernists themselves entertained. Walter Gropius (1965), director
of the Bauhaus between 1919 and 1927, denounced “catch phrases” like “functionalism” and
“fitness for purpose = beauty” as misconceptions meant to relegate architecture to one side of
the design process, ignoring its mission as “a bridge uniting opposite poles of thought.” 32
While modernist architects might not have simplistically believed in a strictly utilitarian
aesthetics, they did entertain the idea that things have an exact, logical form that we ought to
learn to recognize, by practicing rational thinking and cultivating artistic sensibility. This is the
idea that Henri van de Velde, from whom Walter Gropius took over as the director of the
Bauhaus, had expressed in his 1903 Programme 33 and that he reiterated in his 1907 Credo: 34
“Thou shalt comprehend the form and construction of all objects only in the
sense of their strictest, elementary logic and justification for their existence. Thou
shalt adapt and subordinate these forms and constructions to the essential use of
the material which thou employest. And if you wish to beautify those forms and
constructions (…) [do it] only so far as thou canst respect and retain the rights
and the essential appearance of these forms and constructions.”
Van de Velde defends himself in yet another excerpt in Forms, from 1949, against those who
accused him of embracing the unsophisticated view that utilitarian forms are necessary
beautiful. Van de Velde explains that the products of “the generative intelligence” (that is,
32 Walter Gropius, The New Architecture and the Bauhaus (Cambridge, MA: MITT Press, 1965), 23.
33 Henri Van de Velde, “Programme,” in Programs and manifestoes on 20th-century architecture, ed. Ulrich
Conrads (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971), 13.
34 Henri Van de Velde, “Credo,” in Programs and manifestoes on 20th-century architecture, ed. Ulrich
BEYOND MODERNISM
products spontaneously created by the primitive tool makers, as well as by contemporary
engineers and machine builders) are just “initial data” (author’s italics). This initial data create
the possibility for purity of form when the right social and moral conditions are met. Beauty
cannot be the result of following function in a slave like manner, but the result of achieving
pure forms, by the use of creative reason, and combining them with perfection of execution and
quality of material. 35
The struggle to reconcile a striving for formal purity with utilitarian aesthetics has also
shaped Le Corbusier’s architecture. Le Corbusier’s fascination with pure geometrical forms,
sometimes verging on Neo-Platonism, is well documented, especially in the so-called Purist
period of his career: “Pure forms are beautiful, he glosses in 1924, “because they can be clearly
appreciated. Working by calculation, engineers employ geometrical forms, satisfying our eyes
by their geometry and our understanding by their mathematics; their work is on the direct line
of good art.” 36 Charles Jenks remarks, with reference to two of Le Corbusier’s villas, The Villa
at Garches and Villa Savoye, that they are composed of freely disposed geometrical elements,
following a rectangular grid, a Cartesian coordinate system which functions as an ideal order
throughout the building(Fig.9). 37
35 Henri Van de Velde, “Forms,” in Programs and manifestoes on 20th-century architecture, ed. Ulrich
36 Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture (New York: Dover Publications, 1986), 24.
37 Charles Jencks, Le Corbusier and the Tragic View of Architecture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1973), 85.
BEYOND MODERNISM
Figure 9 - Le Corbusier, Villa Savoye, Poissy, France, 1929-1931 (image between 1945 and 1980)
Not only has Le Corbusier been striving for formal simplicity and perfection in his later
work, but, according to Beatrix Colomina (1994), he went as far as to airbrush pictures of his
earlier work, “in order to adapt them to a more ‘purist’ aesthetics.” 38 Colomina documents such
a process in a photograph of Villa Schwob published in L’Esprit Nouveau 6 (Fig.10).
38 Beatrix Colomina, Privacy and Publicity (Cambridge, MA; London, England: MITT Press, 1994), 107.
BEYOND MODERNISM
Figure 10 - Le Corbusier, Villa Schwob, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, 1916, as published in L’Esprit Nouveau
6, after Beatrix Colomina, Privacy and Publicity, 109.
The photograph has been noticeably purged of every trace of organic growth or objects that
could distract the view. But what is even more striking, notices Colomina, is the absence of any
reference to the actual site, which involved a steep terrain, making architecture an object
independent of place. 39
While his buildings were emphatically geometrical in shape, Le Corbusier made
allowance for other forms, especially for objects of everyday use. He considered the forms of
39 Colomina, 109.
BEYOND MODERNISM
these objects to be the result of a long process of evolution attesting to their viability. He
incorporated some of these objects of everyday use in his paintings, as well as in his interior
architecture (Fig.11). 40
Figure 11 - Le Corbusier, Wash basin in the Villa Savoye, 1928-1931, Poissy, France
In the “Introduction” to Le Corbusier’s Towards a New Architecture, Frederick Etchells recognizes
that the forms produced by modern mechanical engineering might sometimes be strange and
disagreeable, at least in the short run. Some of these forms will disappear, he reckons, while
others might become “good” in the long run and part of our “general equipment.” The
40 Charles Jeanneret and Amedee Ozenfant, Après le Cubisme (Paris, 1918), 24, from Jencks, 52.
BEYOND MODERNISM
guarantee that the forms produced by utility, without any preoccupation for external
appearance might be good forms, is a sense for order (italics added) that people are entrusted
with, which makes them able to unconsciously generate forms that are “well planned and
cleanly disposed.” 41
2.1.2 Ethics
Ethics has been a part of the modernist architecture philosophy on two different levels. On one
level, architecture was held as a moralizing factor in society and a panacea for social evil; on the
other hand architecture itself was subjected to ethical requirements, most notably a demand for
structural honesty and truth of materials, but also for expressive and historical truth, that is, the
demand that the building must be an expression of its creator and an expression of the spirit of
the age in which it was built (Zeitgeist).
The idea that architects can improve the living conditions in the cities started to gain
ground in the nineteenth century, when the cities began to accommodate an influx of people
from the rural areas, attracted by the industrial revolution. 42 The crowding of European cities in
the nineteenth century was certainly helped by the fact that the cities were still confined within
the medieval walls and expansion was difficult to achieve. The consequent plunge in the living
conditions started to be an object of concern for local authorities, in the midst of the cholera
41 Frederick Etchells, Introduction to Towards a New Architecture, by Le Corbusier (New York: Dover
Publications, 1986), vi.
42 Jurgen Habermas, "Modern and Postmodern Architecture," in Architecture Theory Since 1968, ed. K.
Michael Hays (MIT Press, 1989), 420.
BEYOND MODERNISM
epidemics that plagued Europe around the middle of the nineteenth century. 43 According to
Habermas (1998), nineteenth century architecture was ill-equipped to deal with these new
conditions and this constituted the impulse out of which the modernist movement was born. 44
The modernist prescription for improving the living conditions of the poor was most of
the time the clearing of the slums and the building of social housing for the former slum
dwellers. Two slum clearance acts were passed in Britain, in 1868 and 1875. In 1890, the
“Housing of the Working Classes Act” gave local authorities in Britain the power to initiate
building of social housing, while reinforcing existing powers for clearing slum housing. The
practice of the government of building subsidized housing, and corresponding slum clearing,
gained even more momentum with the housing shortage which followed the first and second
world wars. 45
Fig. 12, from A.W.N. Pugin’s Contrasts, conveys how it was believed that architecture
could make a difference in the well being of the poorest members of the society. Pugin (1812-
1852), besides being an early promoter of the idea of architecture as an instrument of social
reform, was also an early proponent of Gothic revival architecture. He famously considered
that the return to Gothic design in Britain could bring about a return to faith, and especially to
the Catholic faith, of the “corrupt” British society. 46 In Fig. 13, also from Contrasts, architecture
is shown as making a positive impact on public morality.
43 Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History (Thames & Hudson, 1992), 21.
44 Habermas, 420.
45 Frampton, 22.
46 A.W.N. Pugin, An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture in England (London: J.Weale, 1843).
BEYOND MODERNISM
Figure 12 – Drawing and etching by A.W.N. Pugin, Contrasted residences for the poor, in Contrasts, 1969.
BEYOND MODERNISM
Figure 13 – Drawing and etching by A.W.N. Pugin, Contrasted public conduits, in Contrasts, 1969
Confidence in the healing power of architecture only increased in the twentieth century.
Architecture could now offer an “exact prescription” for the ills of the society or, as Le
Corbusier put it, it is only (italics added) architecture that can offer an exact prescription: “On
the day that contemporary society, at present so sick, has become properly aware that only
architecture… can provide the exact prescription for its ills, then the time will have come for the
great machine to be put in motion.” 47
47 Topp, 64.
BEYOND MODERNISM
Leslie Topp, who offers this excerpt from Le Corbusier’s The Radiant City: Elements of a
Doctrine of Urbanism to be used as the Basis of our Machine Age, 1933, notes that the role of
architecture as a healer is associated here with the role of architecture as a machine, pointing
out that the intended healing of the society was to be accomplished with the scientific precision
of machine technology. 48
The other level on which ethics and architecture intersect is that of honesty in
construction. Architecture that is intended as a moralizing factor in society needs to be honest
about itself and its own making. “Nothing can be more execrable than making a church appear
rich and beautiful in the eyes of men,” proclaims A.W.N. Pugin, “but full of trick and falsehood,
which cannot escape the all-searching eye of God.” 49 John Ruskin, another great architectural
theorist of the nineteenth century, added his voice to the crusade against architectural
deception: “We might not be able to command good, or beautiful, or inventive architecture, but
we can command an honest architecture. The meagerness of the poverty may be pardoned, the
sternness of utility respected, but what is there but scorn for the meanness of deception (…).” 50
Ruskin identifies three types of “falsehoods” that are practiced by architects: architects
can deceive with regard to the structure of the construction, as when a vaulted structured is
disguised as a Greek temple, with regard to the nature of the materials, as when a brick wall is
covered with marble-like painting, or with regard to the amount of work that was put into the
48 Topp, 64.
49 A.W.N. Pugin, The True Principles of Christian or Pointed Architecture (Reprint of the 1st edition, John
Weale, 1841. London: Academy Editions, 1973), 53.
50 John Ruskin, Seven Lamps of Architecture (J.M. Dent & Sons; E.P. Dutton & Co., 1956), 34.
BEYOND MODERNISM
construction, as when use is made of mass produced ornaments. Ornamentation can also be
deceptive, when it is used to obscure the structure, instead of enriching the structure.
Earlier criticisms of the modernist engagement with structural honesty pleaded for an
unmediated experience of architecture, instead of experiencing or explaining architecture as a
consequence of something else: religion, politics, sociology, philosophy, rationalism,
technology, or the spirit of the age. 51 In his Morality and Architecture, David Watkin (1984) has
been particularly critical of the Zeitgeist mindset of modern architects and historians of
architecture, who considered modern architecture as best representing the needs of the society,
and thus being truthful and moral, and condemned traditional architecture as immoral or anti-
social. 52
2.1.3 Science and Technology
The fate of the modernist movement in architecture is closely intertwined with the fate of the
logical positivism movement in philosophy. Adolf Loos, the precursor of modernist
architecture, lived and created in turn-of-the-century Vienna along Ludwig Wittgenstein, the
precursor of logical positivism. Herbert Fiegl, Philip Frank, Hans Reichenbach, Rudolf Carnap,
and Otto Neurath, all prominent members of The Vienna Circle, the logical positivist
association founded by Moritz Schlick in 1922, paid visits and lectured at the Bauhaus in
51 David Watkin, Morality and Architecture, (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1984),
3.
52 Watkin, 1984.
BEYOND MODERNISM
Dessau. 53 Indeed, according to Peter Galison, the logical positivists frequented the Bauhaus
more than any other group outside of art and architecture. 54
Figure 14 – Walter Gropius – Entrance of the Bauhaus in Dessau, Germany, 1925-1926 (image between 1945 and
1980)
In a 1929 lecture at the Bauhaus, entitled “Science and Life, “Rudolf Carnap mentions a
technically grounded "modern form of life" that logical positivism and the Bauhaus share.
Finally, the old Vienna Circle and the old Bauhaus reassembled as a joint enterprise at the
53 Peter Galison, "Aufbau/Bauhaus: Logical Positivism and Architectural Modernism." Critical Inquiry
(1990): 749.
54 Galison, 749.
BEYOND MODERNISM
University of Chicago, with some of their members that immigrated to America when the
political situation in Germany took a turn for the worse. 55
Logical positivism was the proponent of a scientific world conception, in which all
knowledge is based on experience and the only recognized methodology is logical analysis. 56
Logical positivism was markedly anti-metaphysical, going as far as to declare meaningless any
propositions that are not rooted in experience 57, which paradoxically includes many of the
philosophical propositions as well. Positivism was also committed to building out of
elementary forms basic observational propositions, much like modernist architecture was
committed to building out of elemental geometrical shapes and colors, following a logical
process that guarantees that the more complex propositions would retain the authority granted
by the empirical foundation. All this was to be done “to the exclusion of the decorative,
mystical or metaphysical.” 58 The reduction to basic experiential propositions would also
guarantee the unity of science, and presumably that of science and art. In the 1937 “Prospectus
for the New Bauhaus”, Charles Morris, a philosopher at the University of Chicago, recalls a
remark of László Moholy-Nagy, an instructor at the Bauhaus, who declared himself interested
in the “unity of life,” the same way Morris and Carnap were interested in the unity of science. 59
Some of the logical positivists, like Ludwig Wittgenstein and Otto Neurath, had been directly
pursuing architectural concerns. The house that Wittgenstein built for his sister, Hermine, in
55 Galison, 711.
56 H. Hahn, R. Carnap, O. Neurath, “The Scientific Conception of the World: The Vienna Circle”
57 Carnap, Rudolph. "The Elimination of Metaphysics through the Logical Analysis of Language." In
Logical empiricism at its peak : Schlick, Carnap, and Neurath, by Sahotra Sarkar ed., 10-29. New York: Garland
Publications, 1996.
58 Galison, 710.
59 Galison, 747.
BEYOND MODERNISM
Vienna (Fig.15), was famously characterized by the latter as hausgewordene Logik (logic becomes
house), testifying to the connection between Wittgenstein’s philosophical pursuits and his
architectural vision. 60
Figure 15 – South front of the Wittgenstein House, Vienna, with the garden. Original condition (Photo 1971), from
Bernhard Leitner, The Wittgenstein House, 183
The simple geometrical shapes of the house echo the logical atomism that Wittgenstein
proposed in his Tractatus Logicus Philosophicus:
“Mechanics determines one form of description of the world by saying that all
propositions used in the description of the world must be obtained in a given
60 Galison, 727.
BEYOND MODERNISM
way from a given set of propositions – the axioms of mechanics. It thus supplies
the bricks for building the edifice of science, and it says, ‘Any building that you
want to erect, whatever it may be, must somehow be constructed with these
bricks, and with these alone.’” 61
Logical positivism started to lose ground in philosophy at about the same time that modernist
architecture came under attack from various postmodern strands of thought. Positivism was
criticized for its reliance on observational statements, by philosophers like Thomas Kuhn,
Norwood Hanson, and Paul Feyerabend, who were among the first to point out that
observational statements, the building blocks of the positivistic edifice, are not completely
independent of theory, i.e. they are theory-laden. 62 The implication of the theory-ladenness of
observations, in its most extreme form, is the impossibility to decide among alternative theories
(or paradigms in the case of Kuhn) by reference to empirical observation, or experiment. More
recently, science came to be considered a set of social practices, without a privileged empirical
or theoretical foundation. 63
2.2 “Modern Architecture: Death or Metamorphosis?”
Karsten Harries (1997) points out that modernism started with the dream “to heal the breach
that had opened between beauty and reason, art and technology, freedom and necessity,” but
that the (humanist) dream soon turned into an (anti-humanist) nightmare. 64 The modernist
ambition to put the problem of habitation on a scientific basis failed at the same time that the
61 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, quoted in Galison, 726.

62 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2009.
63 Taylor Charles Alan. Defining Science. University of Wisconsin Press, 1996).
64 Harries, 53.
BEYOND MODERNISM
ambition of science itself to provide an authoritative interpretation of human life dwindled.
Modernist housing was compared with alien, box-like constructions that people were confined
in, much like domestic animals are kept in cages that they have no say or control over. 65
In his 1958 “Mould Manifesto Against Rationalism in Architecture,” the Viennese
painter and architect Hundertwasser (1971) turns to vernacular, aka “slum architecture,” when
looking for architecture that is usable, functional, and habitable, and denounces modernist
architecture as the opposite of this:
“The material uninhabitability of the slums is preferable to the moral

uninhabitability of functional, utilitarian architecture. In the so-called slums, only
man’s body can perish, but in the architecture ostensibly built for man, his soul
perishes (…). Functional architecture has proved to be a wrong road, just like
painting with a ruler. With giant strides we are approaching impractical,
unusable, and finally uninhabitable architecture.” 66
Hundertwasser also rebels against the existing separation between the architect and the
occupant of a building and the denial of the individual’s desire to build and of the right of the
tenant to modify his or her surroundings in a way that suits his or her human needs.
Finally, he denounces the abuse of straight lines and the destructive desire to raze
traditional architecture and replace it with “rectilinear monster constructions.” 67 What
Hundertwasser proposes, in order to “save functional architecture from ruin,” is the production
of “creative mould” and “critical weathering.” “Only after everything has been covered in
mould,” says Hundertwasser, “will a new and wonderful architecture come into being.” 68
65 Hundertwasser, "Mould Manifesto Against Rationalism in Architecture," in Programs and manifestoes on

20th century architecture, ed. Ulrich Conrads (MITT Press, 1971), 158.
66 Hundertwasser, 157.
67 Hundertwasser, 158-160.
68 Hundertwasser, 160.
BEYOND MODERNISM
Figure 16 - Hundertwasser, Hundertwasser House (apartment building), columns framing glassed Winter garden,
Vienna
BEYOND MODERNISM
Figure 17 - “Miss Jenkins, would you please bring a round object into my office!” from Detlef Mertins (ed.), The
Presence of Mies, 226.
Denise Scott-Brown and Robert Venturi (1993) also challenged the modernist pretense of
creating architecture that is practical and democratic. Scott-Brown and Venturi (1993)
concluded that while modernism prohibited ornament on buildings, it built buildings that are
ornament. They famously called ornamented buildings decorated sheds (hinting at Nikolaus
Pevsner’s famous statement: “A bicycle shed is a building. Lincoln Cathedral is a piece of
architecture.”), and buildings that are ornament ducks (after the Long Island Duckling, in New
BEYOND MODERNISM
York, considered an early example of literalism in advertising 69). According to their arguments,
entire buildings of early modern architecture resemble constructivist sculpture or cubist
paintings. By building ducks, modernism not only substituted one kind of symbolism for
another, but also substituted buildings that are cheap and allow for a more practical use of the
space, i.e. the decorated sheds, with buildings that greatly interfere with function and are more
expensive to build, i.e. the ducks. 70 Scott-Brown and Venturi’s conception of “the duck” was
prompted by their observation of commercial architecture, in which there are two kinds of
advertisement: one that is the building, and one that is affixed to the front of the building. It is
obvious, they argue, that the advertisement that is affixed to the building is easier to install, and
at the same time, allows for a nice eating space inside the building, while the advertisement that
is the building itself is more expensive to achieve and also constitutes an imposition on those
occupying the building. 71
Postmodernist criticisms of modernist architecture have gone in several directions: a
rejection, by critical theory, of truth and rationality in general, starting with literary criticism; a
linguistic or structuralist criticism of the modernist hunt for rational forms; and a
phenomenological counterattack on the separation of beauty and utility that runs to the core of
the aesthetic paradigm of architecture that modernism is based on.
An example of the linguistic criticism comes from Umberto Eco, who, as cited in Harries
(1997), explains how even the most functional architecture is a system of signs. The relationship
between function and form is not as rational as the modernists intended it to be, but is based on
69 The National Register of Historic Places, http://www.nps.gov

70 Scott Brown and Venturi, 448.
71 Scott Brown and Venturi, 447.
BEYOND MODERNISM
shared expectations. Eco illustrates this point with an anecdote about some housing provided
for rural populations in Italy by the “Development Fund for the South”:
“With modern dwellings complete with bathrooms and toilets at their disposals, the
local people, who were accustomed to taking care of their bodily functions in the fields
and unprepared for the mysterious sanitary fixtures that arrived, took to using the
bowls as cleaning tanks for their olives: they put the olives on some net they had
suspended inside, then flushed and proceeded with washing. So while we can all see
that the form of the standard toilet bowl is “made for” the function it normally suggests
and permits, and might be tempted to recognize a profound aesthetic and the logical tie
between that form and that function, in fact the form denotes that function only on the basis
of a system of established habits and expectations, and thus on the basis of a code. And when
another code (adventitious but not illegitimate) is superimposed on the object, the bowl
denotes another function.” 72
Harries (1997) summarizes the phenomenological critique. Architecture has been lost in
its way ever since the “changing world view ushered in by Galilean science and Newtonian
natural philosophy” brought about, according to Alberto Perez Gomez (1983), a
functionalization and rationalization of architecture 73. The result was an architecture alienated
from the reality of human habitation, devoid of any mythical reference that can help make sense
of the true ends of human actions, seeking instead to solve the problems of humanity through
science and unprejudiced reason. 74 Postmodernist architects did nothing to break the spell of
rationalization, even when they seemed to adopt a more playful approach to decoration or
engaged in deconstructive exercises. According to Harries, postmodernist architecture equally
allowed itself to be interpreted as an aesthetic object, its “interestingness” being the added
component in a new function-ornament dichotomy. 75
72 Harries, 90.
73 Gomez, Alberto Perez, Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science (MITT Press, 1983), 3.
74 Harries, 2.
75 Harries, 5-6.
BEYOND MODERNISM
3 The Crisis of Architecture
“Reflection is the courage to question as deeply as possible the truth of our
own presuppositions and the exact place of our own aims.” 76
Martin Heidegger – “The Age of the World View”
Anyone who had the interest or opportunity to survey the incredibly broad spectrum of texts
written by the modernist architects cannot doubt the ideological turn that architecture took in
its modern age. Under these circumstances, the question of the metaphysical origins of their
beliefs, claims, aims, and principles, comes at the forefront of any serious investigation of
modern architecture. As mentioned in the introduction of this thesis, key late-twentieth century
writers like Alberto Perez-Gomez and Colin Rowe have pointed out the problematic connection
of modern architecture to modern science. But more needs to be done to expose the more
fundamental concepts embraced by modern architects that made them believe that architecture
is, among other things, scientific.
To this purpose, I will bring into the discussion Martin Heidegger’s essay, “The Age of
the World View”, which might prove to be instrumental in uncovering the metaphysical
foundation of modern architecture. One of its fundamental points is that modern thought has
misunderstood the concept of the “thing”, that is, the entities of various kinds that we live
amongst. These entities have been rendered accessible (by way of the mathematical project) to
76 Heidegger, 1.
The Crisis of Architecture 45

BEYOND MODERNISM
mathematical physics that sets itself as a basis for explanation. But this leaves us with an
impoverished understanding of the existent (all that is) as mere quanta in homogeneous space
and time, in contrast with what beings are, when understood phenomenologically. With
Heidegger’s help, I will first expand on this constricted view of reality, which is what the
modernist architects had inherited and were in effect forced to work with, and which caused
them, having felt the deficiency in this understanding of “beings,” to turn to aesthetics, utility,
and so on (i.e. value) to try and re-connect with the world in some way.
Through reflection on modern science, as a phenomenon of modern times, Heidegger observes
that research is its fundamental characteristic. And scientific research is first of all guided by
what Heidegger calls a fundamental projection, or a fundamental way of grasping beings and
binding them to further investigation. This fundamental grasp is much like a blueprint or
ground plan by which beings are grasped ahead of time, a priori, as having a certain
quantitative character which can be further disclosed in a mathematical treatment of them. For
that reason, the methodology of science is established as mathematical in character which in
turn makes room for explanations whereby, on the basis of what is known (the fundamental
project), the unknown (what is to be explained), becomes founded; and conversely, our
fundamental project becomes verified through the now explained unknown.
This, in turn, makes room for the research experiment (essentially different from
Aristotle’s empeiria as the observation of the things themselves) which taking a law as its
starting point, has the characteristic of an “in advance calculation.” That is, it is possible to
envision the conditions under which the necessary steps of the research experiment can be
observed in their succession and controlled in advance by calculation. Experiment is that
methodology which is guided in its planning and execution by the fundamental law it starts

BEYOND MODERNISM
with in the first place, with the purpose of inferring the facts that can either verify and validate
the law or deny its confirmation, all within the framework of the fundamental projection or
ground plan. Similar to the role that the experiment is having in the case of the natural sciences,
the critique of sources is the instrument of objectification in the case of the humanistic
disciplines. Heidegger concludes that the existent (nature and history) “becomes the object of
expository representation and truth becomes the certainty of such representation.” This
conception of the existent and of truth was initiated by Descartes and it has prevailed into the
whole of modern metaphysics.
He further infers that, in modern times, “the essence of man as such changes in that man
becomes a subject” (subjectum understood as the translation of the Greek hypokeimenon; “that
which gathers everything to itself to become its basis”), but it is the indispensable relationship
between the man as subject and the existent as object that it is significant for the modern age:
“The being of the existent… consists in the fact that is brought before man as that which is
objective, is present and alone existent within the area susceptible of his skills and at his
disposal.” 77
This transformation of the essence of man was possible only because the understanding
of the existent as a whole changed to become a view. This conception of the world as view,
explains Heidegger, differs from the conception of the existent in the Middle Ages or for the
Greeks, but is anticipated by Plato when he portrays the existent as determined by eidos
(appearance, view). Heidegger again: “Where the world becomes a view, the existent as a
Martin Heidegger, “The Age of the World View”, in William V. Spanos (ed.) Martin Heidegger and the
77
Question of Literature- Toward a Postmodern Literary Hermeneutic, Indiana University Press: Bloomington,
London, 1979, 11.

BEYOND MODERNISM
whole is posited as that with respect to which a man orients himself, which therefore he wishes
to bring and have before himself and thus in a decisive sense re-present to himself.” 78
The existent is recognized as existent only to the extent that it was first experienced by
the subject and thus becomes experience. Heidegger concludes that “man fights for the position
in which he is the existent that sets the standard for all existence.” Because this position is
secure, and organized and expressed as world view, the modern relation to the existent becomes
a battle between world views (with it the modern age enters the definitive stage of its history),
in which man brings into play the unlimited power of calculation, planning and cultivation of
all things (that science as research, and technology, permit). 79
A sign of this process is the appearance of the gigantic, in the form of the ever-smaller as
well, which does not stand for continuous extension of the quantitative, nor does it derive from
the blind desire to surpass, but through it the quantitative it becomes a peculiar quality. The
gigantic, as that which can be continuously calculated, becomes the incalculable. This seems to
be a pitfall when man becomes a subject, and the world becomes a view, but it can, in turn,
point to a position of authenticity (as Heidegger calls it in Being and Time), “withdrawn from
representation”, that the man cannot attain by either blindly embracing the structure of the
world as it already is (man as subject and existent as object) or trying to flee from it and waste
one’s time “in the mere negation of his age.” According to Heidegger, this narrow space of
authenticity can be occupied by acknowledging and accepting the reality of the incalculable
through exercising “creative questioning” and “the power of true reflection”.
78 Heidegger, 10.
79 Heidegger, 13.

BEYOND MODERNISM
Modern Architecture in the Light of Heidegger’s Work
Having reviewed some of the writings of and on modern architecture I have to agree with the
caution that Colin Rowe voices in his book, The Architecture of Good Intentions, on the
consistency of these writings: “The pronouncements of Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe,
Walter Gropius and some others articulate rather less than a consistent doctrine but distinctly
more than a body of principles. Persuasive and usually highly condensed, they are not so much
the specifications of a dogma as the indices of a large tendency of thought.” 80 But, becoming
aware, through Heidegger’s reflection on modern science, of the metaphysical foundation of the
modern age, we feel more prepared to recognize behind modern architecture’s claims and
principles the fundamental conceptual ground that is producing this “tendency of thought.”
Consequently, although the attempted deconstruction, in the hermeneutical sense, of modern
architecture’s principles will follow a thematic structure, it will in the end provide for a
comprehensible picture.
3.1 Architecture as Science-as-Research versus Architecture
as Art-as-Aesthetics
As I mentioned in the second chapter of the thesis, architecture has long been disputed by the
domains of the scientific and humanistic disciplines. The modern architects have been mostly
divided over attributing architecture to science or to the arts, but there have also been countless
voices, with Le Corbusier among the most prominent, that have seen this as the dual nature of
80 Rowe, 20.

BEYOND MODERNISM
architecture itself. Because of the basic physical requirements that a work of architecture is
supposed to fulfill, combined with the constricted view of reality that the modern age initiated,
architecture becomes understood as a process “governed by mathematical calculation” (tasks
usually attributed to the engineer), in addition to which the architect has to provide for the
optimal “arrangement of forms” in order to incite into its audience the requisite aesthetic
emotions. According to Le Corbusier:
“The Engineer, inspired by the law of economy and governed by mathematical

calculation puts us in accord with universal law. He achieves harmony. The
Architect, by his arrangement of forms, realizes an order which is a pure creation
of his spirit; by forms and shapes he affects our senses to an acute degree and
provokes plastic emotions; by the relationship that he creates he wakes profound
echoes in us, he gives us the measure of an order which we feel to be in
accordance with that of our world, he determines the various movements of our
heart and of our understanding; it is then that we experience the sense of
beauty.” 81
But Heidegger’s consideration of the human existence as “being-always-already-within-
a-world-of-relations”, as opposed to the modern understanding of it as subjects projecting the
content of their minds onto objects, leaves this dichotomy behind. According to Heidegger, in
the modern age, the natural sciences and humanistic disciplines walked a similar path. Science
came into the horizon of research through the objectification of the existent, and art came into
the horizon of aesthetics through the objectification of the work of art.
As far as science is concerned, the concept of research seems to be fundamental in
distinguishing modern science from the doctrina and scientia of the Middle Ages, or the Greek
episteme. But the concept can be applied to history as well, in the form of “historical research.”
What is central to research is circumscribing its area of operation within the sphere of being
Le Corbusier, “Towards a new architecture: guiding principles”, in Ulrich Conrads, Programs and
81
Manifestoes on 20th-century Architecture, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1971, 59.

BEYOND MODERNISM
(whether nature or history), according to the knowledge of the existent that is sought after,
defining the way in which the existent needs to be understood and taking that “blueprint of
nature, that is assumed to be already known” as the starting point. Furthermore, the
investigation into this discipline is conducted by means of the research experiment, which starts
with a law based on what is considered to be already known. Any scientific discipline becomes
thus self-referential. The equivalent to the research experiment in the historical disciplines,
Heidegger continues, is the “critique of sources” and “it is because history as research projects
and objectifies the past in the sense of a nexus of events which can be explained and surveyed
that it requires the critiques of sources as the instrument of objectification.” 82
Besides science, another important phenomenon of modern times, Heidegger tells us,
“consists in the process by which art comes within the horizon of aesthetics: the work of art
becomes the object of an experience; as a result, art is viewed as an expression of the life of
man.” It is through aesthetics that art enters the domain of the humanistic disciplines. As with
the critique of sources in the case of historical research, in the case of aesthetics the work of art is
objectified on the basis of the intentions of the artist, the symbolic meaning projected onto it
whether by its author or its audience, or the emotions the work is believed to induce that would
legitimate it as art.
But, as emphasized earlier, Heidegger rejects the idea that we are primarily subjects,
detached from the world, contemplating objects. Instead, he comprehends human existence as
a “being in the world” amidst of traditions that continually shape us and activities that are so
“transparent” that they don’t even pass into consciousness. The nature of the works created
from within such a world is completely different from the status of the work of art within the
82 Heidegger, 6.

BEYOND MODERNISM
horizon of aesthetics. His idea of the work-of-art, that he details in another of his essays ”The
Origin of the Work of Art”, is that it facilitates the disclosure of the world, of the society, from
within which the work of art has arisen. The irony is that despite the fearsome criticism that the
modernist architects and modern architecture have been subjected to, some of their works
might do precisely that: bring into “unconcealment” by uncovering for “the one who opens
himself to what is present by perceiving it,” the world of modern society. For despite the
aspirations and the expectations the architect had for his work, the building detaches from its
maker and takes on a being of its own.
The division between science and art is subversively still present in architecture and
architectural education today. We only need to remember that architectural education is, in
Europe, still divided between technical colleges (in Germany and the German influenced
countries) and art schools (in France and countries with a French tradition through the influence
of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts). But this dichotomy of the architectural field goes far deeper into
education than the mere administrative grouping of disciplines into colleges. It is embedded in
the architectural curriculum as a whole as well as in the employment of design methodologies.
3.2 The Architect as a Pure Thinking Subject
“Objectivity demands homogeneity of place. Both have their foundation in a
self-displacement which transforms man from an embodied self into a pure
thinking subject.” 83
Karsten Harries, “The Ethical Function of Architecture”, JAE, Vol. 29, No. 1, Humanist Issues in
83
Architecture, (Sep., 1975), 14.

BEYOND MODERNISM
Karsten Harries – “The Ethical Function of Architecture”
As previously stated during the development of this thesis, from Descartes onwards
philosophers have thought of human beings as subjects relating to objects, and the central
philosophical problem was seen to be the way in which we, as subjects, have knowledge of
objects. In a powerful contrast to the traditional approach in philosophy, Heidegger does not
consider this to be the essential nature of human being. Hubert Dreyfus, in an interview by
Bryan Magee in the film, “Husserl, Heidegger and Modern Existentialism,” explains how
Heidegger distinguishes between three levels of the human being’s “being-in-the-world:”
First and foremost we are, from the beginning, involved in the world, amongst things
and beings, carrying out our everyday “activities that are not characteristically determined by
conscious choices and aware states of mind.” We are “coping beings” moving in a world that is
“ready-to-hand.” The second level is that of the “unready-to-hand,” as Heidegger calls it,
which appears when, in this world of unreflective activities, something goes wrong or breaks
down and the human being transforms into a “problem solver.” Finally, it is the level of the
“present-at-hand,” a level of subjects contemplating objects. From this third level we get
science and theory. “But in order to get the predicates and laws of science we have to leave out
the whole level of everyday practical coping in the world. Scientific theory that can explain

BEYOND MODERNISM
causal things very well cannot explain the everyday meaningful world of experience that
Heidegger talks about.” 84
It is this third level that the architect, as conceived by Le Corbusier, is occupying. It was
a common idea throughout the modern period that the architect is able and obliged to create
through his work an order that corresponds to the order of the world. To quote Le Corbusier
again, “the Architect, by his arrangement of forms, realizes an order which is a pure creation of
his spirit…” Antonio Sant’Elia and Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s earlier, 1914 “Manifesto for
Futurist Architecture” presages Corbusier’s idea: “Architecture must be understood as the
endeavor to harmonize, with freedom and great audacity, the environment with man, that is to
say, to render the world of things a direct projection of the spirit.” 85
On the other hand, Walter Gropius seems to be undermining the idea of a work of
architecture that occurs out of the content of our mind, instead describing it as almost arising
from out of the mundane world of unreflective experience that Heidegger talks about:
“Architects, sculptors, painters, we must all return to the crafts! For there is no
‘professional art’. Artists are craftsmen in the original sense of the word, and
only in rare blessed moments of revelation that lie outside the power of their will
can art blossom unconsciously from the work of their hands.” 86
But our joy of discovering a modern architect downplaying architecture as a conscious
reflective activity is soon shadowed by his return to the mental construct in the form of
84 Hubert Dreyfus, “Bryan Magee talks to Hubert Dreyfus about Husserl, Heidegger and modern
existentialism”, film devised and presented by Bryan Magee, Princeton, N.J.: Films for the Humanities &
Sciences, 1997.
85 Antonio Sant’Elia & Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, “Futurist Architecture”, 1914, in Ulrich Conrads,
Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-Century Architecture, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1971, 38.
86 Walter Gropius, “New Ideas in Architecture”, 1919, in Ulrich Conrads, Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-
Century Architecture, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1971, 46.

BEYOND MODERNISM
imagination. For as liberal as this term may seem, it means nothing less than that the mind
assembles and projects an image over onto the existent. Encouraged by the presupposed power
to manage the existent, the architect made himself believe that he can take on an even greater
task, that of attending, with his powers, to the problems of the society.
Although going even further to illustrate how the architectural field would be transformed by
these conclusions is beyond the goal of this thesis, Heidegger’s lesson teaches us that we should
have above all a hermeneutical approach, the only one that questions the structure of its own
operation and is aware of its inherited presuppositions.

BEYOND MODERNISM
Conclusion
“The last thing that one settles in writing a book is what one should put in it
first.” 87- Blaise Pascal – Pensees
Beyond Modernism
To directly answer the initial question “What is modern architecture?” it is now, at the
end, if not a necessity anymore, then an obligation. It is a period of the history of architecture
that, for the most part, has misunderstood its own conceptual roots. Revealing those roots is
crucial given that their authority is still acting upon contemporary architecture. Karl Jaspers’
judgment on the rational, from his Man in the Modern Age, can be very well applied to the case
of contemporary architecture which, for the most part, called itself postmodern: “The rational is
not thinkable without its other, the non-rational, and it never appears in reality without it. The
only question is in what form the other appears, how it remains in spite of all, and how it is to
be grasped.” 88
Paraphrasing Jaspers words, we can conclude that the post-modern in architecture is not
thinkable without its other, the modern, and it never appears in reality without it. The only
question is in what form the modern appears, how it remains in spite of all, and how it is to be
grasped.
Blaise Pascal, in Rowe, 8.

87
Karl Jaspers, Man in the Modern Age, Anchor Books, Garden City, New York, 1957, in Colin Rowe, The
88
Architecture of Good Intentions, Academy Editions, 1994.

BEYOND MODERNISM
Bibliography
Carnap, Rudolph. "The Elimination of Metaphysics through the Logical Analysis of Language."
In Logical empiricism at its peak : Schlick, Carnap, and Neurath, by Sahotra Sarkar ed., 10-29.
New York: Garland Publications, 1996.
Collins, Peter. Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture 1750-1950. Montreal: McGill-Queen's
University Press, 1999.
Colomina, Beatrix. Privacy and Publicity. Cambridge, Massachusetts; London, England: MIT
Press, 1994.
Colquhoun, Alan. Modern Architecture. Oxford University Press, 2002.
Conrads, Ulrich. Programs and manifestoes on 20th-century architecture. Cambridge,Massachusetts:
MIT Press, 1971.
Corbusier, Le. Towards a New Architecture. Dover Publications, 1986.
Corbusier, Le. "Towards a New Architecture: Guiding Principles." In Programs and Manifestoes
on 20th-century Architecture, edited by Ulrich Conrads, 59-62. Cambridge, Massachusetts,
Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1971.
Detlef, Mertins (ed.). The Presence of Mies. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1994.
Dreyfus, Hubert, interview by Bryan Magee. Bryan Magee talks to Hubert Dreyfus about Husserl,
Heidegger and modern existentialism Princeton, N.J. : Films for the Humanities & Sciences,
(1997).
Bibliography 57
BEYOND MODERNISM
Etchells, Frederick. "Introduction." In Towards a New Architecture, by Le Corbusier. New York:
Dover Publications, 1986.
Forty, Adrian. Words and Buildings. A Vocabulary of Modern Architecture. New York: Thames &
Hudson, 2000.
Frampton, Kenneth. Modern Architecture: A Critical History. New York: Thames & Hudson, 1992.
Galison, Peter. "Aufbau/Bauhaus: Logical Positivism and Architectural Modernism." Critical
Inquiry 16, no. 4 (1990): 709-752.
Gomez, Alberto Perez. Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science. Cambridge, Massachusetts:
MIT Press, 1983.
Gropius, Walter. "New Ideas in Architecture." In Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-Century
Architecture, by Ulrich Conrads. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1971.
—. The New Architecture and the Bauhaus. Cambridge,Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1965.
H. Hahn, R. Carnap, O. Neurath. "The Scientific Conception of the World: Vienna Circle." 1929.
Habermas. "Modern and Postmodern Architecture." In Architecture Theory Since 1968, by K.
Michael Hays, 412-427. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1998.
Harries, Karsten. "The Ethical Function of Architecture." JAE 29, no. 1 (Sept. 1975).
—. The Ethical Function of Architecture. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1997.
Bibliography 58
BEYOND MODERNISM
Heidegger, Martin. "The Age of the World View." Translated by Marjorie Grene. In Martin
Heidegger and the Question of Literature - Toward a Postmodern Literary Hermeneutics, by
William V. Spanos ed. Bloomington; London: Indiana University Press, 1979.
—. “The Age of the World Picture”. Translated by William Lovitt. In The Question Concerning
Tehnology and Other Essays. New York: Harper & Row, 1977.
Hundertwasser. "Mould Manifesto Against Rationalism in Architecture." In Programs and
manifestoes on 20th century architecture, by Ulrich Conrads, 157-160. Cambridge,
Jaspers, Karl. Man in the Modern Age. New York: Anchor Books, Garden City, 1957.
Jencks, Charles. Le Corbusier and the Tragic View of Architecture. Cambridge, Massachusetts:
Harvard University Press, 1973.
Leitner, Bernard. The Wittgenstein House. Translated by Camilla R. Nielsen and James Roderick.
New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2000.
Loos, Adolf. "Ornament and Crime." In Programs and manifestoes in 20th-century architecture, by
Ulrich (ed.) Conrads, 19-24. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1971.
Marinetti, Antonio Sant’Elia & Filippo Tommaso. "Futurist Architecture." In Programs and
Manifestoes on 20th-Century Architecture, by Ulrich Conrads, 38. Cambridge,
Bibliography 59
BEYOND MODERNISM
Ockman, Joan (ed.). Architecture-Culture 1943-1968. New York: Columbia University/Rizzoli
International Publications, Inc., 1993.
Pevsner, Nikolaus. An Outline of European Architecture. reprinted 7th edition (1st edition 1943).
Penguin Books, 1975.
—. The Sources of Modern Architecture and Design. Penguin Books, 1968.
Pugin, A.W.N. An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture in England. London: J.Weale,
1843.
—. Contrasts. 2nd edition reprint (1st edition 1836). New York: Leicester University Press, 1969.
—. The True Principles of Christian or Pointed Architecture. Reprint of the 1st edition, John Weale,
1841. London: Academy Editions, 1973.
Rowe, Colin. The Architecture of Good Intentions. Academy Editions, 1994.
Ruskin, John. Seven Lamps of Architecture. J.M. Dent & Sons; E.P. Dutton & Co., 1956.
Scott Brown, Denise and Robert Venturi. "On Ducks and Decoration." In Architecture Culture, by
Joan Ockman, 447-448. New York: Columbia University/Rizzoli International
Publications, Inc., 1993.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Theory and Observation in Science. 2009.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/science-theory-observation/ (accessed August 09, 2009).
Taylor, Charles Alan. Defining Science. University of Wisconsin Press, 1996.
Bibliography 60
BEYOND MODERNISM
Topp, Leslie. Architecture and Truth in Fin-de-siècle Vienna. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004.
Trilling, James. Ornament. A Modern Perspective. University of Washington Press, 2003.
Velde, Henri Van de. "Credo." In Programs and manifestoes on 20th-century architecture, by Ulrich
Conrads ed., 18. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1971.
Velde, Henri Van de. "Forms." In Programs and manifestoes on 20th-century architecture, by Ulrich
Conrads ed., 153. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1971.
Velde, Henri Van de. "Programme." In Programs and manifestoes on 20th-century architecture, by
Ulrich Conrads ed., 13. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1971.
Vesely, Dalibor. Architecture in the Age of Divided Representation. Cambridge, Massachusetts;
London, England: MIT Press, 2004.
Watkin, David. Morality and Architecture. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press,
1984.
Wright, Frank Lloyd. "In the Nature of Materials: A Philosophy." In Architecture Culture 1943-
1968, by Joan Ockman ed., 31-41. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1993.
—. Truth Against the World. John Wiley & Sons, 1987.
Bibliography 61

University of Cincinnati: 08/19/2009 Viorica Anamaria Popescu

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

University of Cincinnati: 08/19/2009 Viorica Anamaria Popescu

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

U

I, Viorica Anamaria Popescu ,

This work and its defense approved by:

Approval of the electronic document:

Committee Chair signature: John E. Hancock

A Thesis submitted to the

In partial fulfillment of the

MASTER of SCIENCE in ARCHITECTURE

In the School of Architecture and Interior Design

Viorica Anamaria Popescu

Bachelor of Architecture, “Ion Mincu” University of Architecture and Urban

influences on contemporary architecture. Although architectural theorists like Alberto Perez-

person that represents it and establishes it”).

To the memory of my father

this thesis possible, and for his constant friendship.

contribution to shaping my architectural horizon,

encountered along the way.

their book, at overcoming the anxiety of it all.

To Mircea Maxim, my son, for just being there,

interpretation of western metaphysics has long been considered to have a bearing on

really mean for architecture.

Abstract ________________________________________________________ iii

2 Modern Architecture ___________________________________________ 8

3 The Crisis of Architecture ______________________________________ 45

2009]. Available from ARTstor, Inc., New York, New York

ARTstor, Inc., New York, New York

Figure 3 - Josef Hoffmann, Purkersdorf Sanatorium, Purkersdorf, Austria, Sanatorium

Purkersdorf – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanatorium_Purkersdorf, 07April 2007 (accessed 07 August

Inc., New York, New York

ARTstor, Inc., New York, New York

New York, New York

York, New York

Available from ARTstor, Inc., New York, New York

York, New York

Figure 10 - Le Corbusier, Villa Schwob, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, 1916, as published in

L’Esprit Nouveau 6, after Beatrix Colomina, Privacy and Publicity (Cambridge,

Massachusetts; London, England: MIT Press, 1994), 109

Table of Figures xii

from ARTstor, Inc., New York, New York.

Architectural Press, 2000), 183.

Figure 16 - Hundertwasser, Hundertwasser House, columns framing glassed Winter garden,

Inc., New York, New York.

Detlef (ed.). The Presence of Mies. Princeton Architectural Press, 1994

Table of Figures xiii

form through a particular analysis of the existent and a particular conception of

Conversely, it should be possible to recognize the metaphysical basis in these

phenomena trough reflection.” 1

Martin Heidegger – “The Age of the World View”

problematic connections with modern science.

The first objective of my investigation is to make visible the connections between

an examination of primary ideas that permeated significant twentieth century architectural

present dilemma between architecture as science versus architecture as art.

The period of Modern Architecture has traditionally been presented by historians of

the ideas that accompanied them.

The current prominence and authority of Martin Heidegger’s thinking in architecture,

his book is significant in that respect:

“While construction as a technological process is prosaic – deriving directly from

(Epistemology, Eschatology, Iconography, Mechanism, and Organism) correspond to Rowe’s

moral imperative, its aesthetical consideration, and its scientific determination.

My more particular goal is aimed specifically at testing the power of Heidegger’s

Research strategy and methodology