ARCHITECTURE IN THE 20TH CENTURY

G S D 4 2 2 3 : B U IL D IN G S , T E X T S , & C O N T E X T S

F a ll 2 0 1 1

Instructor: Timothy Hyde

MW 10:00-11:30
Piper Auditorium
Teaching Fellows: Jennifer Mack, Ateya Khorakiwala
C O U R S E D E S C R IP T IO N
This course will examine the discourse and practices of modern architecture in the
context of the political, economic, aesthetic, and cultural changes that occurred across
the span of the twentieth century. Organized around thematic concerns proposed and
debated by architects, the course will address the foundational dimensions of
architectural practices during the first of the century as well as the subsequent reactions
and revisions to those practices in the latter half of the century. Lectures and discussions
will incorporate different techniques of historical and theoretical investigation of several
trajectories of discourse, to produce not a chronological survey but a synthetic prehistory of the architectural present.
R E Q U IR E M E N T S & A S S IG N M E N T S
1) Attendance & Readings: Attendance at all lectures and all weekly section meetings
with the Teaching Fellows is mandatory. Assigned readings should be completed
before lectures, and reading response papers must be prepared in advance of
section meetings to facilitate your participation in discussion. Readings will be
available on the course website.
2) Site Narrative: Each student must visit one significant twentieth-century building in
the Boston/New England area and submit a descriptive narrative of its architecture. A
list of suggested buildings will be provided. Due October 3.
3) Detail Interpretation: Each student will analyze and interpret the cultural significance
of a detail from an architectural work of the twentieth-century. Due November 9.
4) Historical Manifesto: Each student will be required to write a research paper 5002000 words in length, on one selected postwar architectural project. The paper, to
be conceptualized and written in the form of a manifesto, will be based on historical
research and theoretical reflection upon the architectural concepts that the project
sustains. A list of projects from which to select will be provided. Due December 19.

Note: This course assumes prior knowledge of the major architectural movements of the
20th century. For a general review of 20th century architecture see William Curtis,
Modern Architecture Since 1900; Alan Colquhoun, Modern Architecture; or Kenneth
Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History. These books are available on
reserve in Loeb Library.

S C H E D U L E O F R E A D IN G S A N D L E C T U R E T O P IC S
Aug 31

Course Introduction

1: MODERNISM AS EXPERTISE
Sep 5

Labor Day (no class)

Sep 7, 12

Organicism and the Office Building

Sep 14 , 19

Louis Sullivan, Style (1888) in Louis Sullivan, the Public Papers.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.

Louis Sullivan, The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered (1896)

What are the Present Tendencies of Architectural Design in America

(1887) in John Wellborn Root, The Meanings of Architecture: Buildings
and Writings. New York: Horizon Press, 1967.

The Aesthetics of Corporate Modernism

Hitchcock, Henry-Russell. "The Architecture of Bureaucracy and the

Architecture of Genius." Architectural Review 101, no. 601 (1947): 3-6.

Wiener, Norbert. Progress and Entropy in The Human Use of Human

Beings: Cybernetics and Society. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950.

Adorno, Theodor W., and Max Horkheimer. The Culture Industry:

Enlightenment as Mass Deception, [1947] in Dialectic of Enlightenment,
120-131. New York: Continuum, 2000.

2: MODERNISM AS HISTORY
Sep 21 , 26

The Persistence of History

Fillippo Marinette, The Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism, in

Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso, and Gnter Berghaus, eds. Critical Writings.
1st , [New ]. ed. New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2006.

Riegl, Alois. "The Modern Cult of Monuments: Its Character and Its
Origin." Oppositions, no. 25 (1982): 21-51.

Rowe, Colin. "Neo-'Classicism' and Modern Architecture I," [1956] in The

Mathematics of the Ideal Villa, 119-38. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1976.

Sep 28 , Oct 3 Historicism and Post-historicism

Johnson, Philip. "House at New Canaan, Connecticut." Architectural

Review 108, no. 645 (1950): 152-59.

Kubler, George. The Classing of Things in The Shape of Time:

Remarks on the History of Things. New Haven: Yale University Press,
1962.

Excerpts from Rossi, Aldo. The Architecture of the City. Cambridge: MIT
Press, 1982.

Paolo Portoghesi, The End of Prohibitionism

ASSIGNMENT #1 (SITE NARRATIVE) DUE OCT 3

3: MODERNISM AS NATIONALISM
Oct 5, 12

The Invention of the Vernacular

Adolf Loos, Architecture 1910, in Benton, Tim, and Charlotte Benton,

eds. Architecture and Design: 1890-1939. New York: Whitney Library of
Design, 1975.

Ernest Renan, What is a Nation?

Oct 10

Columbus Day (no class)

Oct 17, 19

Representing the Modern Nation

Fanon, Frantz. On National Culture [1959] in The Wretched of the

Earth. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991.

Belluschi, Pietro. "The Meaning of Regionalism in Architecture."

Architectural Record (December, 1955): 131-39.

Harris, Harwell Hamilton. "Regionalism and Nationalism." [1954] Student

Publication of the School of Design North Carolina State 14, no. 5
(1965): 25-33.

4: MODERNISM AS REALISM
Oct 24, 26

Nov 31 , 2

Modern Dwelling in the Modern City

Otto Wagner, The Development of a Great City [1911] in Oppositions

17 (Summer, 1979).

Le Corbusier, A Dwelling at a Human Scale, [1930] in Precisions.

Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991.

Georg Simmel, The Metropolis and Mental Life [1903] in Gary Bridge
and Sophie Watson, eds. The Blackwell City Reader. Oxford: WileyBlackwell, 2002.

Guest lecture, readings TBD

Constructing Postwar Society

"Doorn Manifesto." In Architecture Culture 1943-1968: A Documentary

Anthology, edited by Joan Ockman and Edward Eigen, 181-83. New
York: Rizzoli, 1993.

Grouping of Dwellings in Team 10 Primer, edited by Alison Smithson,

74-95. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1968.

Banham, Reyner. "The New Brutalism." Architectural Review (December,

1955): 355-62.

Williams, Raymond. Culture is Ordinary [1958] in Resources of Hope:

Culture, Democracy, Socialism. London: Verso, 1989.

ASSIGNMENT #2 (DETAIL INTERPRETATION) DUE NOV. 9

5: MODERNISM AS COMMUNICATION
Nov 7, 9

The Medium of Commodity

Hermann Muthesius, Propositions; Henry Van de Velde, CounterPropositions; and Extracts from the Werkbund Debate in Documents:
A Collection of Source Material on the Modern Movement, Charlotte
Benton, ed. (The Open University Press)

Guest lecture, readings TBD

Nov 14 , 16, 21

Language, Semiotics, and Typology

Barthes, Roland. The Rhetoric of the Image [1964] in Gray, Ann, and
Jim McGuigan, eds. Studying Culture: An Introductory Reader. London:
E. Arnold, 1993.

Venturi, Robert, and Denise Scott Brown. "A Significance for A&P
Parking Lots, or, Learning from Las Vegas." Architectural Forum 128, no.
2 (March, 1968): 36-43.

Anderson, Stanford. "Architecture and Tradition That Isn't 'Trad, Dad'." In

The History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture, edited by Marcus
Whiffen, 71-89. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1965.

Colquhoun, Alan. "Typology and Design Method." [1967] In Essays in

Architectural Criticism: Modern Architecture and Historical Change, 4350. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1981.

6: MODERNISM AS ENVIRONMENT
Nov 23

Thanksgiving (no class)

Nov 28

Revolution and Progress

Excerpt from Mosei Ginzburg, Style and Epoch

Excerpts from El Lissitzky, Russia: An Architecture for World Revolution

Nov 30, Dec 5 Architecture is a Hoax

Dec 7

McLuhan, Marshall. The Invisible Environment: The Future of an

Erosion. Perspecta 11 (1967): 163-167.

Hollein, Hans. " Everything Is Architecture." [1968] In Architecture

Culture 1943-1968: A Documentary Anthology, edited by Joan Ockman
and Edward Eigen, 459-62. New York: Rizzoli, 1993.

(no class)

ASSIGNMENT #3 [HISTORICAL MANIFESTO] DUE DEC 19