who do you want to modern -...

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ModernModern no. 20

Balfron Tower Ernő Goldfinger in 1963 for the London County Council, built 1965-67

who do you want to resemble?

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Things you might want…

• I want my building to be beautiful

• I want form to follow function

• I want my building to be stable, useful anddesirable

• I want my building to be modern [or] traditional

• I want my building to contribute to a fair society

• I want my building to contribute to a sustainableenvironment

• I want to break free (thank you Maarten…)

i want to be modern

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i don’t6

prepositions

• Pre-

• Post (1949)

• Super-

• Hyper-

• Anti-

• Pro-

Modern

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Architecture articulates itself when things become difficult, when it is used to express

critique. Foucault call this critical moment “an event”. It is the moment when a design, text or building becomes a plea about possibilities At that moment architecture is both a building of and in the world as well as a commentary upon it. At that moment the architect is confronted

with himself a man with a face, his own biography is confronted with history

Gerard van Zeijl

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De Moderne Samenleving

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Don Simpson

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Modern Klassiek? Een moderne Klassieker? De universiteit van Athene

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Klassiek Modern, Moderne Klassieker? Le Corbusier, Villa Savoye, Poissy, 1928-31, exterior with reconstructed colours

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Modern = ?

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Modern OED

Modern (mq.n) a. and sb. 1500 [- (O) Fr. Moderne, or its source late L. modernus (vi) f. L. modo just now, after L. hodiernus of today (f. hodie today).] A. adj. 1. Now existing – 1752. 2. Of or pertaining to the present and recent times; originating in the current age or period 1585. B. Geol. And Zool. Belonging to a comparatively recent period in the life history of the world 1823 c. Prefixed to the name of a language to designate that form of language that is now in use, in contrast to any earlier form. 3. Characteristic of the present and recent times; not antiquated or obsolete 1590.

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French moderne, from Old French, from Late Latin modernus, from Latin modo, in a certain manner, just now, from modo, ablative of modus, manner.

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Modern =one’s

relationship to…something.…time maybe?

so what exactly is

time? 17

space time

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Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram

Shandy Gentleman, 1761-67

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Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy Gentleman, 1761-67

The teleological ladder to the

absolute...

The circle of eternalreturn

The spiral of history repeating itself...

The rugby model of progress

The eddying streammodel of progress....

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Traditions in time & space

Future

Time/SpaceImagined

Origins/Lost

Time/SpaceDistant

Time/SpaceRecent/Close

HistoricalExotic

FashionableRegional

RationalFantastical

FuturisticUtopia

P/H

Future/NewLooked for..

Time reigns (absolute?)

P/H

But what is the past exactly and what is the

future?

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 1770 – 1831

Hegel saw philosophy as a way of bringing the concept of reason to the contemplation of History, the idea that Reason completes the world, that the history of the world somehow represents a rational progress.

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zeit-geist

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Zeitgeist : cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual, and/or political climate within a nation or even specific

groups, along with the general ambiance, morals, sociocultural direction, and mood associated with an era.

In 1769 Johann Gottfried Herder wrote a critique of the work Genius seculi by the philologist Christian Adolph Klotz and introduced the word Zeitgeist as a translation

of genius seculi (Latin: genius - "guardian spirit" and saeculi - "of the age")

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memory

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Thomas Cole, The Architect’s Dream, 1840

...where Hegel used the concept of the zeitgeist as an analytical and critical tool, it became a normative tool trying to manipulate our

image of ourselves as belonging to the modern36

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Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Founding Manifesto of Futurism, published in Le Figaro, 20 feb 1909

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The Bronze Horseman in 1906

Berman, Marshall. 1983. All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity. London

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Leo Tolstoy

Everyone tried to discover still new questions, everyone tried to resolve them; people wrote,

read, and spoke about projects; everyone wished to correct, destroy, and change things, and all Russians, as if a single person, found

themselves in an indescribable state of enthusiasm.

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El Lissitsky, Project for Lenin Tribune, 1920-4

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El Lissitsky, Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge, 1920

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El Lissitsky, Skyscraper for Moscow, 1923

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43Mart Stam, Ideas for Moscow Skyscrapers, variations on El Lissitsky, 1924 44

Vesnin Brothers, Competition Project for Pravda Tower, 1924

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A & V Wesnin, Palast der Arbeit, Moskau, 1922

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Tatlin, Vladimir Jevgrafovich 1885-1953

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Vladimir Tatlin, Monument to the third international, 1920 computer rendering by team unbuilt

50Vladimir Tatlin, Monument to the third international, petrograd, 1919, 1998

computer graphic by Takehiko Nagakura, Team Unbuilt

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Vladimir Tatlin

Monument to the third international,

petrograd

1919, 1998

computer graphic by Takehiko

Nagakura & Team Unbuilt,

The foundationswere later used for

swimming pool

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Vladimir Tatlin

Monument to the third international

Petrograd,

1919, 1998

computer graphic by Takehiko Nagakura, Team Unbuilt,

total height 400 m

53Konstantin Melnikov, Arbeidersclub Rusakov, Moskou, 1928

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Chinese Propaganda Poster

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Ghana, Asafo Vlag 02

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Camaroon, Yaounde, Hotel de Ville

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Camaroon, Yaounde, Prime Minister's Office

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Ghanese Coffin, jumbo jet

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Ghanese Coffin, Mercedes Benz during funeral

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Hakring Bank, Suriname

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Greetings from Suriname, The Suriname Cigaret Factory

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Greetings from Suriname

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Istanbul Hilton, Gordon Bunshaft SOM & Sedad H Eldem, 1951-1955 by night

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Istanbul Hilton, Gordon Bunshaft SOM & Sedad H

Eldem, 1951-1955

Oscar Niemeyer, in 1993

Oscar Niemeyer, National Congress Complex, Brasilia, 1958-60, view of axis ramp

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Oscar Niemeyer, Chamber of Deputies & Senate, Brasilia,

1958-60

Oscar Niemeyer, Plaza of the Three Powers, Brasilia, 1959-60, Planalto Building and National Congress Building

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Hubert Robert, Imaginary view of the Grand Gallery in Ruins, 1796

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Hubert Robert, Project for the disposition of the Grande Gallerie, 1796

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Sigrfried Giedion, Space, TIme and Architecture

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tra·´di·tie (de ~ (v.))

1 het van generatie op generatie overdragen van cultuurgoederen en gewoonten => overlevering

2 wat als gebruik, als verhaal enz. overgedragen is

3 [jur.] bezitsoverdracht, leveringtra·di·tie·ge·´trouw (bn.)

1 trouw aan, volgens de traditie

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Tradition (tr�di-�n)

sb. Late M.E. [-(O)FR. Tradicion, (also mod.) –tion, or L. traditio, -�n, f. tradere hand over, deliver, f. trans TRANS- + dare give,; 1. The action of handing over (something material) to another (1540) 2. A giving up, surrender; betrayal –1653 B Surrender of sacred books in times of religious persecution 1840 3. Delivery, esp. oral delivery, of information or instruction now rare 4. The act of transmitting or handing down or fact of being handed down, from one to another, or from generation to generation; transmission of statements, beliefs rules, customs or the like, esp. by word of mouth or by the practice of writing. 1591. 5. More vaguely: A long established and generally accepted custom, or method of pocedure, having almost the force of a law; an immemorial usage, 1593 6. Spec. (Theol. And Eccl.) a. Among the Jews, Any one, or the whole, of an unwritten code of regulations, etc. held top have been received from Moses, and handed down orally from generation to generation and embodied in the Mishnah. Late ME b. In the Christian Church, Any one, or the whole, of a body of teachings transmitted orally from generation to generation since early times; held by Roman Catholics to comprise teaching derived from Christ and the apostles, together with that subsequently communicated to the church by the Holy Spirit, and to be of equal authority with Scripture c. Among Moslems, An account of sayings and doings of Mohammed transmitted at first orally, and afterwards recorded; esp. = SUNNA 1718

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Traditionalism

1860. [-Fr. Traditionalisme, or f. prec. + -ism.] 1 A system of philosophy which arose in the Roman Church c. 1840, according to which all human knowledge is derived by traditonal instruction from an original divine revelation 1885. 2. Adherence to drational doctrine or theory; maintenance of, or submission to, the authority of tradition; excessive reverence for tradtion: esp. in matters of religion 1860.

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Tradition

tra·di·tion (tre-dîsh¹en) noun1.The passing down of elements of a culture from generation to

generation, especially by oral communication.2.a. A mode of thought or behavior followed by a people continuously

from generation to generation; a custom or usage. b. A set of such customs and usages viewed as a coherent body of precedents influencing the present: followed family tradition in dress and manners. See synonyms at heritage.

3.A body of unwritten religious precepts.4.A time-honored practice or set of such practices.5.Law. Transfer of property to another.

[Middle English tradicion, from Old French, from Latin trâditio, trâdition-, from trâditus, past participle of trâdere, to hand over, deliver, entrust : trâ-, trâns-, trans- + dare, to give.]

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Roget's Thesaurus of English Words

tradition, lore, folklore, mythologyinveteracy, custom, prescription, immemorial usage, habitcommon law, Sunna, Hadithancient wisdom, the way of our forefathersword of mouth, speech

Other Formspermanence: tradition, custom, practice, habitinformation: chain of authorities, tradition, hearsay, word of mouthnarrative: tradition, legend, legendry, mythology, myth, saga, soap opera, serial, epic, eposhabit: tradition, law, precedenttheology: tradition, deposit of faith

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T.S. Eliot. "Tradition and the individual talent“ After Strange Gods, 1919

Tradition involves the historical sense, which we may call nearly

indispensable to anyone who would continue to be a poet

beyond his twenty-fifth year.

T. S. Eliot 1888 – 1965)78


the historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its

presence

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the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones,

but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within

it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and

composes a simultaneous order

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This historical sense which is a sense of the timeless and of the temporal and of the

timeless and the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional. And it is at the

same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his own

contemporaneity.

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No poet no artist has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the

appreciation of his relation to the dead

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what happens when when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art

which preceded it. The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction

of the new (…) The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervention of

novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered and so the relations, proportions, values of each work

of art toward the whole are readjusted

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T.S. Eliot

The past is altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past

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Art never improves, but […] the material of art is never quite the same

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What I mean by tradition involves all those habitual actions, habits, and customs, from

the most significant religious rite to our conventional way of greeting a stranger which

represent the blood kinship of 'the same people living in the same place'

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We are always in danger, in clinging to an old tradition, or attempting to re-establish one, of

confusing the vital and the unessential, the real and the sentimental.

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Our (…) danger is to associate tradition with the immovable; to think of it as something

hostile to all change; to aim to return to some previous condition which we imagine as having been capable of preservation in

perpetuity, instead of aiming to stimulate the life which produced that condition in its time

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It is not of advantage to us to indulge a sentimental attitude towards the past. For one

thing, in even the very best living tradition there is always a mixture of good and bad, and much that deserves criticism; and for another,

traditon is not a matter of feeling alone

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tradition without intelligence is not worth having

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What we can do is to use our minds (…) to discover what is the best life for us not as a

political abstraction, but as a particular people in a particular place; what in the past

is worth preserving and what should be rejected; and what conditions, within our

power to bring about, would foster the society that we desire

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Giedion, Sigfried, Space, Time and Architecture; The Growth of a New Tradition, London, 1949 (1959)

Space time and architecture is intended for those who are alarmed by the present state of our culture and anxious to find a way out of

the apparent chaos of its contradictory tendencies.

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My interest has been particularly concentrated on the growth of the new tradition in

architecture for the purpose of showing its interrelations with other human activities and the similarity of methods that are in use today

in architecture, construction, painting, city planning and science.

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History is not a compilation of facts, but an insight into a moving process of life.

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The eternal complaint of the nineteenth century was that all the dignity had gone out of ordinary life.

And ordinary life did lose its dignity from the moment it was put on an exclusively day to day basis. People lost all sense of playing a part in history, they

were either indifferent to the period in which they lived or they hated it. When they compared

themselves with the people of other periods their activities seemed unimportant and without

significance, either good or bad.

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The problem of today is not to popularise science. What our period needs much more than this is to gain an understanding and a general view of the dominant methods in

different fields of human activity recognizing their differences and their likenesses.

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It is through their increasing similarity of method that the various activity of our times

are drawing together to form one culture. Some grasp of the way in which different

sciences resemble each other in the employment of similar methods is needed for

insight into contemporary life as a whole.

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However much a period may try to disguise itself, its real nature will show through its

architecture, whether this uses original forms of expression or attempts to copy bygone

epochs.

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..if architecture is the result of so many conditions is it either proper or possible to

examine it out of its context, as a finite organism in its own right.?

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An architecture may be called into being by all sorts of external conditions, but once it appears it constitutes an organism in itself,

with its own character and its own continuing life.

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In the arts, periods are differentiated by the "styles" which became fixed and definite in each stage of

development. And the study of the history of styles was the special work of nineteenth century

historians, a work most skilfully carried through. But it may be that the links and associations between periods -the constituent facts- are more important to

us than self-enclosed entities such as styles.

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Antonio Sant' Elia (with Ugo Nebbia) Mesaggio published in the Catalogue of the Nuove Tendenze Exhibition in May 1914

The problem of Modern architecture is not a problem of rearranging its lines; not a question of finding new mouldings, new architraves for doors and windows; nor of replacing columns, pilasters and corbels with caryatides, hornets and frogs; not a

question of leaving a facade bare brick or facing it with stone or plaster; in a word it has nothing to do with defining formalistic differences between the new buildings and old

ones. But to raise the new-built structure on a sane plan, gleaning every benefit of science and technology, settling nobly every demand of our habits and our spirits,

rejecting all that is heavy, qrotesque and unsympathetic to us (tradition, style,

aesthetics, proportion), establishing new forms, new lines, new reasons for existence, solely out of the special conditions of Modern living, and its projection as aesthetic

value in our sensibilities. Such an architecture cannot be subject to any law of historical continuity. It must be as new as our state of mind is new, and the contingencies of our

moment in history.

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The art of building has been able to evolve through time and pass from style to style while maintaining

the general character of architecture unchanged, because in history there have been numerous changes of taste brought on by shifts of religious conviction

or the successions of political regimes, but few occasioned by profound changes in our conditions of

life, changes that discard or overhaul the old conditions, as have the discovery of natural laws, the

perfection of technical methods, the rational and scientific use of materials.

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In modern life, the process of consequential stylistic development comes to a halt. Architecture, exhausted by

tradition, begins again, forcible from the beginning. Calculations of the resistance of materials, the use of

reinforced concrete and iron, exclude 'Architecture' as understood in the classical and traditional sense. Modern

structural materials and our scientific concepts absolutely do not lend themselves to the disciplines of historical styles, and

are the chief cause of the grotesque aspects of modish constructions where we see the lightness and proud slenderness

of girders, the slightness of reinforced concrete, bent to the heavy curve of the arch, aping the stolidity of marble.

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HP Berlage, Grundlagen und Entwicklung der Architectur, 1908, quoted by Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in the first machine age, 1980 (1960)

Just as nature is ever thrifty of motifs even in her endless abundance, constantly repeating her basic forms, but

modifying them a thousand different ways according to the condition of her creatures and their mode of life, stretching or curtailing some, hiding or revealing others - just as nature has

her evolutionary processes, within whose limits old motifs continually reappear in new creations, so art lies within the

scope of a few Norms or Ty[pes that derive from old tradition, each constantly reappearing in diverse forms, each with its

own history, as in Nature. Nothing, therefore is purely arbitrary, but all is governed by circumstance and

relationship.

who do you want to modern -...

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