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Architecture in the Age of Divided Representation: The Question of Creativity in the Shadow of Production (Hardback) - Common
The central part of the book addresses the question of divided representation - the tension between the instrumental and the communicative roles of architecture - in the period of the baroque, when architectural thinking was seriously challenged by the emergence of modern science. Vesely sees the restoration of this communicative role of architecture as the key to the restoration of architecture as the topological and corporeal foundation of culture; what the book is to our literacy, he argues, architecture is to culture as a whole.
- GenresArchitecture
524 pages, Hardcover
First published May 14, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 24, 2024
How do we tend to think about architecture? What do we base our judgment on today? Functions? On aesthetics? Aren't these ways of thinking about it annoying by now? We usually don't know much about both, and they also seem like incomplete categories - even when put together.
One line of reasoning relies on the idea that this is not a coincidence. This is because both of these categories (let’s bite the bullet here) are the product of a mathematical (not reduced to just geometric) way of thinking about architecture. Thus, arguably, thinking about it as opposed to poetry. It's not that contemporary architecture lacks poetry (although maybe it does? Hhh),that’d sound cringe, arbitrary, empty etc.
The point is a poetic nature of a building has an element of representation to it and that competes with another representation now which is self-referential and mathematical (e.g. engineering oriented architecture). That is becuase it aims to be precise, logical and aims to avoid contradiction and so dialectics. If identity and a meaning can be established on a prinicples of formal logic and thus on a principle of noncontradiction we shift towards thinking about nature of architecture in terms of sufficient reason and truth. That is the self-referentiality and introvertedness Vesely has in mind. The problem is that like this architecture ceases to be a part of continuity of cultural participation. In his own words “consequence of this change has been the disintegration of communicative structure and unity of the common world.” Self-referentiality represent the author and thus is individualistic.
That architecture lacks poetry, or that its image is at least distorted, is not an empty statement, but the logical conclusion of centuries of technological and mathematical progress. What I find effective about this argument is how it illuminates the current confusion in thinking about architecture, how difficult it is to grasp the right categories. It somehow highlights the inadequacy of the categories of aesthetics and function, and how they represent only one part of a divided representation, perhaps paradoxically the mathematical one.
The meaning of architecture is complicated and confusing. What we should be doing more of, perhaps, is thinking about natural grace, the invisible charm, that unreachable - we need to focus more on the ‘Je ne sais quoi’! Which of course is Phenomenological!
A book to return to!
- I wish it would have discussed authors who aren't male, white, etc. I think the book strongly needs more divided representation really! (-1 star)
One line of reasoning relies on the idea that this is not a coincidence. This is because both of these categories (let’s bite the bullet here) are the product of a mathematical (not reduced to just geometric) way of thinking about architecture. Thus, arguably, thinking about it as opposed to poetry. It's not that contemporary architecture lacks poetry (although maybe it does? Hhh),that’d sound cringe, arbitrary, empty etc.
The point is a poetic nature of a building has an element of representation to it and that competes with another representation now which is self-referential and mathematical (e.g. engineering oriented architecture). That is becuase it aims to be precise, logical and aims to avoid contradiction and so dialectics. If identity and a meaning can be established on a prinicples of formal logic and thus on a principle of noncontradiction we shift towards thinking about nature of architecture in terms of sufficient reason and truth. That is the self-referentiality and introvertedness Vesely has in mind. The problem is that like this architecture ceases to be a part of continuity of cultural participation. In his own words “consequence of this change has been the disintegration of communicative structure and unity of the common world.” Self-referentiality represent the author and thus is individualistic.
That architecture lacks poetry, or that its image is at least distorted, is not an empty statement, but the logical conclusion of centuries of technological and mathematical progress. What I find effective about this argument is how it illuminates the current confusion in thinking about architecture, how difficult it is to grasp the right categories. It somehow highlights the inadequacy of the categories of aesthetics and function, and how they represent only one part of a divided representation, perhaps paradoxically the mathematical one.
The meaning of architecture is complicated and confusing. What we should be doing more of, perhaps, is thinking about natural grace, the invisible charm, that unreachable - we need to focus more on the ‘Je ne sais quoi’! Which of course is Phenomenological!
A book to return to!
- I wish it would have discussed authors who aren't male, white, etc. I think the book strongly needs more divided representation really! (-1 star)
January 7, 2009
Prrrrrrrobably, the most influential book on my working life. Dalibor is the best.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews