Journal of Architectural Education

ISSN: 1046-4883 (Print) 1531-314X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjae20

Modern Architecture, Modern Architecture: A

Critical History

Grahame Shane

To cite this article: Grahame Shane (1982) Modern Architecture, Modern

Architecture: A Critical History, Journal of Architectural Education, 35:2, 33-33, DOI:
10.1080/10464883.1982.10758289

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10464883.1982.10758289

Published online: 08 Jan 2014.

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Download by: [University of California, San Diego] Date: 25 June 2016, At: 04:39
 conventional histories and his voice becomes detailed, and difficult to read. This cacophany
more strident and polemical. Dal Co continues continues into the third part of the book, which
to provide normative chapters, on American brings themes into the post World War II era,
Books state planning in the New Deal, on Modern
Classicism, on the role of the Masters, on Ro-
and terminates with the Tafurian conclusion.
Frampton is conscious of this cacophany, which
mantic Nationalism and Totalitarian regimes, as sometimes makes his text appear like a bad
well as on planning after World War II. But translation, and he writes in the introduction of
Tafuri's voice and polemic predominate, repeat- a "mosaic" of short chapters and how his "inter-
Modern Architecture by Manfredo Tafuri and ing themes from his Architecture and Utopia, pretative stance" had varied according to the
Francesco Dal Co New York: Abrams, 1979. 448 portraying the Werkbund, the Bauhaus, expres- subject under consideration. In the structural-
pp, illus, $37.50. sionism, "rigorism," the influence of cubism, ist approach multiple voices were held within
Modern Architecture: A Critical History by purism and Dada, etc., as so many negative one coordinating, methodological framework
Kenneth Frampton. New York and Toronto: Ox- antitheses to the profession's dilemma. and ultimately constrained by the central mys-
ford University Press, 1980. 324 pp, illus, $9.95 In the search for synthesis, the modernist's tery, the "silence" of Pascale's "Hidden God."
paper. preoccupation with metropolis and mass hous- Frampton moves beyond this framework, while
ing falls into place as another attempt to reenter invoking a silence which is no longer central,
It is curious that there exists no fundamental the productive cycle of buiding. As a result of nor a constraint or obstacle. Perhaps this histo-
text for the study of the history of the modern their social-democratic orgins, the attempts of ry might be considered the first post-structural-
movement in architecture. Much could be said the architects and administrations of Lyons, ist history, a transitional piece leading to a fully
about the attitude of the modernists to history Amsterdam, Vienna and Frankfurt, as well as Post-modern history.
and the low profile of architectural historians in the avant garde in Russia, are seen as reformist, It is more probable that Frampton's ambition
professional schools and pre-professional col- false ideological syntheses. While the postwar was to write the first textbook history of mod-
leges. The modern movement has relied upon avant garde left production in the hands of ern architecture. Tafuris radical polemic might
mindless technocrats and commercial interests, appear to disqualify his work from this role.
Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 04:39 25 June 2016

the commitment of authors like Pevsner, Gie-

deon, or Banham, whose personal polemic gave to pursue the same chimerical solutions, only Frampton's encyclopaedic and panoptic ten-
the perspective necessary to make the radical Loos, Le Corbusier and Aldo Rossi emerge un- dencies clearly indicate an attempt at the com-
simplifications required to a short narrative. scathed from the debacle of modernism. In Taf- prehensive account. The problem is that the
With the advent or structuralism in the late uri's final "duet" with Dal Co, the central "si- work, with its polyphony and its multiple inter-
sixties (with its mixture of formalist linguistics, lence" of Levi-Strauss and the structuralists is pretative stances, lacks the intellectual frame-
psychology, and anthropology or sociology) a echoed in the central place reserved for the work with which to give a sense of coherence
more dispassionate manner began to emerge, Loosian "silence," as interpreted by M. Cacciari and order to the period. The hallmark of the
respecting the pluralism of the subject. It in semiological and psychological terms, and textbook is a certain concern for essentials, a
traced themes and topics, continuities and dis- reenacted by Aldo Rossi in his renunciation of calmness, a sense of proportion and heirarchy,
continuities, temporal and arernporal transfor- architecture in order to more humbly re-enter and a relatively simple chronology; not to men-
mations and variations within a broader field of the productive cycle. tion a continuous narrative form and critical
knowledge. A larger body of historical material overview. In these terms the Tafuri and Dal Co
could be accommodated within this more sys- text is perhaps the better work: it is more ex-
tematic approach, and the dismantling of the pensively produced, has more lavish illustra-
polemical voice of the narrative allowed for the tions, as well as a greater clarity. But both books
recognition of some previously neglected illustrate the difficulty of writing a history of the
themes. modern movement in architecture. We clearly
Tafuri and Dal Co's Modern Architecture, first do not yet have a critical distance on the events
published in Italian in 1976, is a product of this that formed the movement. We would also ap-
structuralist reinterpretation. The concept of pear to still share the sociological, psychologi-
type or genus was fundamental to the approach. cal and semiological conceptual basis of mod-
But the two authors do not apply typology liter- ernism. As a result, for all the announcements
ally in terms of building typologies or mor- of the death of modern architecture, a critical
phological studies. Rather they examine typical obituary still remains to be written-Grahame
responses to an assumed professional crisis Shane, Bennington, Vermont.
which was occasioned by the success of the
industrial revolution in the late nineteenth cen-
tury. Their shared nee-Marxist interpretation of
history allows for an easy collaboration, and Frampton, in his Critical History 0/ Modern
both authors are able to integrate semiological, Architecture, ends with an identical conclusion,
sociological, and psychological insights in a repeating Tafuri and Dal Co's use of Heidegger
loose, non-mechanistic way. as a critical prophet and their condemnation of
Dal Co writes with a coherence, clarity and the avant garde. Frampton acknowledges his
calmness which engages the reader's interest enormous debt to Tafuri at many points, and
and survives translation well. His task, in the the main lines of his analysis repeat and amplify
earlier chapters, is to present the power and the structuralist approach of Tafuri. There are
success of primitive, frontier capitalism at its obvious differences, however. Frampton's ac-
most productive; taming the American midwest count of the origins of the modern movement,
and west, producing the wealth of the Great the first part of the book, is far closer to that of
Plains and Prairies, which formed the basis for Gideon, Pevsner, and even Banham-giving
the rise of Chicago at the end of the nineteenth Europe a far more positive role but also tracing
century. A positive value is attributed to the themes back into the Enlightenment, as did
Loop, and to the rapid urbanization of Ameri- Tafuri. In the second part of the book, dealing
can cities, as exemplars of the modernist cult of with the modern movement, Frampton at-
machine age speed and efficiency. tempts to integrate three critical forces with his
When compared, in Tafuri's later chapters, own areas of specialization: the Russian avant
with the fevered, over-intellectual and non-pro- garde and the industrialization ofmass housing.
ductive European avant garde of the turn of the The mixture of the modernist voices of Gie-
century and later, there is a reversal in the mod- deon, Pevsner, and Banham, the antithetical
ernist values of Giedeon and Pevsner. The Eu- interpretation of Rowe, as well as Tafuri's theme
ropean pioneers are seen as a negative antith- of critical renunciation in the work of Sullivan,
esis of their American counterparts. From this Loos, and Rossi, results in a cacophany of criti-
point on, Tafuri separates himself from more cal voices which makes the text very dense,