Summary

What is Modern Architecture? 

Mark Crinson posits that asking the question “What is modern architecture?” has all kinds of answers depending on the worldview you approach it with. He adds the context of different definitions from mostly Le Corbusier and other champions of modernism. Le Corbusier and his contemporaries wanted to shake things up, specifically to use Modernism as a means to usher in architecture’s “Return to purpose”. Crinson provides a few examples of the Modernist’s methods and actions, that “What cannot be deleted is rejected or ignored”. 

In the “Architecture’s World”, he highlights the discussion and Neurath’s lecture around representation (mostly for a map of Amsterdam) and that ultimately ended with the protested but vetted consensus of “simplifying, condensing and eliminating the unnecessary” so that even those outside of the profession could understand town plans. 

In the “Compartmentalized World”, Crinson recounts the movement of French and British architects to the colonial plane and the “Laws of modernism” they broke in these countries. The infractions of pure ornamentation were overlooked- it was “acceptable” outside of the west because it took place in an “undeveloped” african colony.

Crinson immediately illustrates how laughable and shallow this hierarchical distinction between European and African architecture is in “Everyday World”. Citing Angela Ferriera’s Venice Biennale exhibition repurposing a prefab building from the 30’s to explore the impact of thoughtless colonial building conventions, summarizing her response to “What is modern architecture?” as “does it matter?”

Non-West Modernist Past: Rethinking Modernism

Jiat-Hwee Chang describes the “Non-west” as Doubly marginalized: meaning by historians and even by specialist within the profession. The conference brought challenges to Modernism in 3 ways: 

1. Parallel universes: Reject the idea of a singular modernity and instead suggest multiple modernities existing at once- spatial and temporal expansion and diverging evolution history did not start in Europe, and then elsewhere, (“historicism”) but all of history interacting and evolving everywhere at once. There’s an  important consideration of colony-colonizer “metropole” as not a one way flow of innovation “downward”, but “an exchange of techniques and thought”.
2. Sphere of influences: Modernism, modernization, and modernity; heteronomous over autonomous; gray area of degree of influence  from socio-political conditions in its development and being “an independent aesthetic paradigm” existing outside the socio-political connotations. 
3. Exploration: Accepting nuance of modernism in contexts the world over, outside of the west but in detail: both processes and actors. 

In a framework (Multiple modernities and heterogeneous modernisms) categorizing architecture as pre-WWII, and post-WWII, the model focuses on the economic and socio-political contexts, cultural conditions and institutional structures behind production. Post WWII, new charged terms began to be applied like Colonial, Third World, and Developing World, all designators which render architects from these places as “embedded actors” and not as free creatives. “Heterogeneous modernisms” argues colonialism brought social modernity; in turn, new social organizations and  a cultural focus on technology created the foundation for the rise of technocrats, inadvertently generating new forms of politics and entire forms and theories of governance. 

Crafting Architecture Criticism

David Leatherbarrow suggests that Architecture is a craft, and shares parallels with Journalism; the difference being lively and commonly understood prose, whereas architecture harbors “wordiness and jargon in place of clarity and precision” 

“Without criticism, projects [nor society] do not progress, students fail to learn, and works do not benefit one another as they might.” These critics, architectural or otherwise, have a responsibility of Setting the Record Straight. Leatherbarrow recounts a controversial UPenn building, first regarded as “Acontextual”, simply needed to be investigated more deeply. 

He suggests that online amateur discourse on architecture is a double edged sword- it generates more buzz and brings more people into the conversation, but leaves the door open for those who may not visit a space before disparaging or praising it. 

Architectural criticism according to Leatherbarrow looks like this: 

• Reconstructing what has been constructed (an accurate record)
• Relocating (new contexts), in one case using the historical material in a new building (Wang Shu in China)
• Repositioning: presenting a new idea from the new contexts and an accurate picture to begin with

Critical Response

In reading b: Non-West Modernist Past: Rethinking Modernism, there’s a near-throwaway line stating that Modernism is a “suppression of other architectural knowledges”. I believe this is a massive understatement, as the co-opted name representing modernism of “international style” is in and of itself erasive. Such a name implies that the associated architectural style works anywhere in the world, ignoring the importance of nuances found within even the smallest of microclimates. Modernism and especially the International style moniker enforce this idea of the West as the ultimate source of the capital “t” Truth in philosophy and theory or the capital “r” Right way of design. It’s important that architects in their own countries and helping across the globe work to “re-legitimize histories… and knowledges” to expand the profession’s precedent out of a few select reductive and generalizing terminology and movements.

Application and Interpretation

In 1950’s Senegal, the Universite Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD) in Dakar is a massive near-modern building overlaid with bright colored patterns of blue and white, crowned by a red center block with a U shaped blue roof. I think there is some merit to these countries at the time wanting to integrate with the rest of the world on their own terms after gaining independence, and modern architecture was a tangible way to show that readiness. To quote Gropius via Crinson, “The will to the development of a unified view of the world, which characterizes our times, presupposes the longing to free spiritual values of their individual limitations and raise them to objective validity. Then the unity of the external forms, which generates culture, follows as a matter of course.” 

Takeaways

• Modernism is an essential part of the conversation in the historiography of architecture, for better or for worse
• Architecture across the globe is influenced by forces stronger than general design conventions for function or aesthetic trends