How Architecture Got Its Hump

by Roger Connah

Fables of content and undoing on the current state of architecture. In How Architecture Got Its Hump , Roger Connah explores the "interference" of other disciplines with and within contemporary architecture. He asks whether photography, film, drawing, philosophy, and language are merely fashionable props for architectural hallucinations or alibis for revisions of history. Or, are they a means for widening the site of architecture? Connah shows how these disciplines have not only contributed to new developments in architectural theory and practice, but have begun to insinuate new possibilities of space. Sometimes seamless, sometimes awkward like the hump acquired by the camel in one of Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories, these disciplines have had their own responsibilities and excesses grafted onto architecture, just as architecture has tried to shake off their limitations. Taking interference a step further, Connah also considers the implications of philosophical incongruity and architectural unrest. He asks how architecture loses its head, transcends the dead language it now entraps, and houses meanings it wants to contest. Hardly bleak questions, suggests Connah, for they point to ways for architecture to rescue itself.

Genres: Architecture

184 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2001

Reviews

[Linda · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book started with a really interesting premise – how other disciplines have interfered with architecture - however, his sardonic tone was exhausting, as were his frequent use of exclamation marks, the words ‘hijack’, ‘redundancy’ and ‘dazzling’, the ever-present but ill-defined concept of ‘bull’, his inconsistent use of references and the vast number of rhetorical questions, including; “Are we born ambiguously but desire to build lucidly?” (For which he offers no further insight or enquiry, nor leaves you hanging with your thoughts, but rather goes off uncomfortably on a new tangent). His approach is also frustrating when he starts chapter one with the intention of talking about the relationship between film and architecture and then talks at length instead about language and philosophy. Sadly, there were almost no architectural examples included to validate his ideas.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Only the last chapter warrants the third star; it could very well stand on its own. Most of the rest is a bit of a rambling history of architecture; more or less loosely related to photography, film and other media techniques; a somewhat funny (but as much artificial) projection of subsets of the 20th century's architecture onto Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy doodles; a lot of 'bull' and 'bardo' references; Saint-Exupéry's Little Prince; and an altogether laboured and hyperbolic, overly ornate dictum throughout. Name dropping galore.