Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts

Department: Architecture

Architectural discourse and the transformation of the discipline of architecture in America, 1918-1943

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1993.Includes bibliographical references (v. 2, leaves 241-262).This dissertation is an historical inquiry into the concomitant transformations of architectural discourse and the discipline of architecture in America. It proceeds on the theoretical assumption that the documents produced and used in architecture not only reflect but constitute architecture as an institutional practice. The study begins with an outline of the academic discipline established, during the late nineteenth century, along the ideals of artistic autonomy and methods of the Ecole des Beaux Arts. It was an internalized discipline, centered on the self-referential discursive practice of the portfolio, and the integrated conceptual framework of composition, planning and the parti. During the latter half of the 1910s, with the changing conditions of architectural production, the traditional status of architecture began to be cast into doubt. In the aftermath of this crisis, what had once been an efficacious disciplinary formation was fragmented into the formal concerns of composition and the concept of functional planning as a rational intervention into social institutions. By the late twenties, ideological formations that made a fundamental break with the traditional claim to autonomy had emerged. The study examines two divergent strains of rationalist ideology: first, the new editorial policies of the architectural journals which projected in different ways, a rational discipline that would be integrated with the demands of mass production and consumer society; secondly, the Veblenian strategy of Frederick Ackerman, who attempted to isolate a domain of architectural discourse uncontaminated by the exigencies of capitalism. Two important transformations of architectural discourse that ensued during the thirties will be examined: the first was the shift in the status of the discourse of reference, constituted by the emergence of new types of reference manuals; secondly, the transformation of the architectural journal which saw the demise of the traditional status of the portfolio and its reorganization along studies of planning. At the center of these transformations was what I have called the discourse of the diagram. Through this new discursive formation, planning emerged as an integral discipline of architecture; it allowed the architect to intervene into the institutional program, while maintaining an independent method that was rational, free of formal preconceptions, and yet would produce singular results for each project. What had been a closed and tightly organized discipline was now opened and dispersed. Along with its promise of social amelioration, it carried the constant burden of formal invention.by Hyungmin Pai.Ph.D

The foreign architectural book society and architectural elitism

This study investigates the Foreign Architectural Book Society [F. A. B. S. ] and its members from its foundation in 1859 through to the 1930s. Particular attention is given to the second generation of F. A. B. S. members, active between 1890 and 1920, who shared scholarly interests apparent in the architectural values they promoted in publications and their own buildings. In this period these F. A. B. S. members also occupied positions of power within the profession and influenced their contemporaries by encoding Beaux-Arts values in a reformed architectural education system. These developments are analysed using certain aspects of elite theory: this highlights the protectionist aspects of this education system and explains the survival into the 1930s of architectural values promoted by F. A. B. S. members. The F. A. B. S. was founded with the intention of internally circulating foreign architectural books and this study examines how the society operated. The functioning of the F. A. B. S is analysed in relation to other societies its members joined, establishing their high social standing and a network of scholarly organisations through which architectural values were formed. An analysis of publications and buildings by the second generation of F. A. B. S. members reveals the fact that they promoted two architectural styles, Neo-Wrenaissance and Monumental Classicism. It is argued that Wren's influence was central to the formation of the values embodied in these styles. In the case of the Neo- Wrenaissance it is shown that this is a more appropriate term to describe works usually noted as examples of Neo-Georgian architecture. When examining Monumental Classicism it is noted that F. A. B. S. members used Beaux-Arts compositional devices, as encoded in architectural education, but promoted it as a national style by invoking the example of Wren. In conclusion it was argued that F. A. B. S. members encoded these stylistic values in the reformed architectural education system and this partially explains how the outmoded values of the Neo- Wrenaissance and Monumental Classicism managed to survive as valid stylistic options until the end of the 1930s

Architecture incorporated : authorship, anonymity, and collaboration in postwar modernism

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Architecture, 2018.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (pages 305-344).A broad transformation occurred in the scale and scope of professional architectural practice in the United States in the decades after World War II. My dissertation explores this shift, in particular the rise of the body of collaborative and team-based methods of production that would come to be labeled as corporate architectural practice. An exploration of these practices reveals a climate of speculation in the postwar period on the corporation as a social and institutional form, and a widespread interest in the potentials of anonymous and collective methods to reshape the nature and objects of architectural production. Tracing the history of these collaborative approaches from progressive project to the critique of the corporate, the dissertation challenges the historiographic methods premised on singular authorship that have governed existing interpretations of postwar modernism. While there exists a growing body of work on architecture produced for corporations in the postwar period, far less critical attention has been paid to its corollary: the corporate production of architecture itself. Despite the dominant role of large firms within mainstream architectural practice in the United States, a comprehensive account has yet to be written of the motivations for and growth of such practices after 1945, the shifting economic and political conditions which underlay their production, and the problematic reception of their work by architectural critics after the 1970s, predicated on notions of signature and authorship which remained essentially unchanged despite these radical shifts in the nature of production. The dissertation proposes a cultural and discursive history of corporate architectural practice, from its origins and international extension to its built products and their reception within the architectural field. I explore these transformations in architecture through the history of The Architects Collaborative (TAC), founded in 1945 as an experiment in team-based design methods by seven young practitioners together with German émigré Walter Gropius. Despite the extensive historiography of Gropius and his work prior to 1945, there is as yet no detailed history of TAC itself, the largest architectural firm in the U.S. by the 1970s and the collective body through which Gropius practiced for the last twenty-five years of his career. An exploration of the firm's origins and expansion, its sustained legacy of work in the Middle East and Europe in the decades after World War II, and its eventual demise in 1995 reveals the contested stakes around questions of anonymity, authorship, and expertise at the heart of the U.S. architectural corporation and its continuing global impact up to the present.by Michael Kubo.Ph. D

Making the West End modern: space, architecture and shopping in 1930s London.

This research explores the shopping cultures of the 1930s West End, arguing for the recognition of this as a significant moment within consumption history, hitherto overlooked in favour of the Victorian and Edwardian periods. The approach is interdisciplinary, combining in a new way studies of shopping routes and networks, retail architecture, spectacle, consumer types and consumption practices. The study first establishes the importance of shopping geographies in understanding the character of the 1930s West End. It positions this shopping hub within local, national and international networks. It also examines the gender and class-differentiated shopping routes within the West End, looking at how the rise of new consumer cultures during the period reconfigured this geography. In the second section, a case study of two new Modern shops, Simpson Piccadilly and Peter Jones, provides the focus for a discussion of retail buildings. Architecture is presented as an important way in which the West End was transformed and modernity articulated. Modernism was a significant arrival in the West End's retail sector: it provided a new architectural approach with a close, if often problematic, relationship with shopping. The study thus reassesses common assumptions about the fundamental irreconcilability of modernism with consumption, femininity and spectacle. The third section makes a more detailed examination of the staging of shopping cultures within the West End street, looking at window display, the application of light and decoration to facades, and participation in pageantry. The study thus revisits retail spectacle, an important strand within histories of shopping and of the urban, looking at how established strategies were adapted and developed to stage modernity, emerging consumer cultures and the West End itself during the 1930s

The Advocate - March 6, 1959

Original title (1951-1987)--The Advocate: official publication of the Archdiocese of Newark (N.J.)

The Advocate - March 6, 1959

Original title (1951-1987)--The Advocate: official publication of the Archdiocese of Newark (N.J.)