Jorge Otero-Pailos
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816666034
- eISBN:
- 9781452948386
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816666034.003.0004
- Subject:
- Architecture, Architectural History
This chapter focuses on Christian Norberg-Schulz, one of the most influential architecture theorists of the 1960s and 1970s. He was a key interpreter of phenomenology in general and of Martin ...
More
This chapter focuses on Christian Norberg-Schulz, one of the most influential architecture theorists of the 1960s and 1970s. He was a key interpreter of phenomenology in general and of Martin Heidegger in particular for architectural audiences. Through his carefully staged photo-essays, Norberg-Schulz theorized the history of architecture as the recurrence of visual patterns. The chapter argues that his photo[historio]graphy was fundamentally antihistorical; it attempted to ward off critical reflection by concealing its own historical construction. Norberg-Schulz passed off his photographs as universally valid visions of a timeless natural order that modern architects were invited to return to, in order to escape history.Less
This chapter focuses on Christian Norberg-Schulz, one of the most influential architecture theorists of the 1960s and 1970s. He was a key interpreter of phenomenology in general and of Martin Heidegger in particular for architectural audiences. Through his carefully staged photo-essays, Norberg-Schulz theorized the history of architecture as the recurrence of visual patterns. The chapter argues that his photo[historio]graphy was fundamentally antihistorical; it attempted to ward off critical reflection by concealing its own historical construction. Norberg-Schulz passed off his photographs as universally valid visions of a timeless natural order that modern architects were invited to return to, in order to escape history.
Jorge Otero-Pailos
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816666034
- eISBN:
- 9781452948386
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816666034.001.0001
- Subject:
- Architecture, Architectural History
Architecture’s Historical Turn traces the hidden history of architectural phenomenology, a movement that reflected a key turning point in the early phases of postmodernism and a legitimating source ...
More
Architecture’s Historical Turn traces the hidden history of architectural phenomenology, a movement that reflected a key turning point in the early phases of postmodernism and a legitimating source for those architects who first dared to confront history as an intellectual problem and not merely as a stylistic question. This book shows how architectural phenomenology radically transformed how architects engaged, theorized, and produced history. The book discusses the contributions of leading members, including Jean Labatut, Charles Moore, Christian Norberg-Schulz, and Kenneth Frampton. For architects maturing after World War II, the book contends, architectural history was a problem rather than a given. Paradoxically, their awareness of modernism’s historicity led some of them to search for an ahistorical experiential constant that might underpin all architectural expression. They drew from phenomenology, exploring the work of Bachelard, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, and Ricoeur, which they translated for architectural audiences. Initially, the concept that experience could be a timeless architectural language provided a unifying intellectual basis for the stylistic pluralism that characterized postmodernism. It helped give theory—especially the theory of architectural history—a new importance over practice. However, as this text makes clear, architectural phenomenologists could not accept the idea of theory as an end in itself. In the mid-1980s they were caught in the contradictory and untenable position of having to formulate their own demotion of theory.Less
Architecture’s Historical Turn traces the hidden history of architectural phenomenology, a movement that reflected a key turning point in the early phases of postmodernism and a legitimating source for those architects who first dared to confront history as an intellectual problem and not merely as a stylistic question. This book shows how architectural phenomenology radically transformed how architects engaged, theorized, and produced history. The book discusses the contributions of leading members, including Jean Labatut, Charles Moore, Christian Norberg-Schulz, and Kenneth Frampton. For architects maturing after World War II, the book contends, architectural history was a problem rather than a given. Paradoxically, their awareness of modernism’s historicity led some of them to search for an ahistorical experiential constant that might underpin all architectural expression. They drew from phenomenology, exploring the work of Bachelard, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, and Ricoeur, which they translated for architectural audiences. Initially, the concept that experience could be a timeless architectural language provided a unifying intellectual basis for the stylistic pluralism that characterized postmodernism. It helped give theory—especially the theory of architectural history—a new importance over practice. However, as this text makes clear, architectural phenomenologists could not accept the idea of theory as an end in itself. In the mid-1980s they were caught in the contradictory and untenable position of having to formulate their own demotion of theory.
