1st Edition
Architecture History and Theory in Reverse From an Information Age to Eras of Meaning
This book looks at architecture history in reverse, in order to follow chains of precedents back through time to see how ideas alter the course of civilization in general and the discipline of architecture in particular. Part I begins with present-day attitudes about architecture and traces them back to seminal ideas from the beginning of the twentieth century. Part II examines how pre-twentieth-century societies designed and understood architecture, how they strove to create communal physical languages, and how their disagreements set the stage for our information age practices. Architecture History and Theory in Reverse includes 45 black-and-white images and will be useful to students of architecture and literature.
Preface Introduction Epilogue: Today in the Beginning… Part 1: Architecture in an Information Age 1. 21st Century Trajectories 2. Modernity’s Legacy in a New Millennium 3. A Postmodern Profession, circa 1991 4. Formal or Phenomenological: a feud between forms of information 5. Deconstruction, Irony, the Pompidou, and the São Pedro 6. Mies van der Rohe in Chicago 7. Language Games 8. Loos and the Ascension of Space in the Marketplace Interlude: The Information Reformation, or This Killed That … Part 2: Architecture in Eras of Meaning 9. 16 June 1904: Ulysses and the Uncanny 10. Marx, Meaning, and Matter 11. Exchange and Evolution 12. In What Style: epistemes and monsters 13. The Précis and the Paternity of Perception 14. De Sade versus Descartes: competing conceptions of language 15. The Tense of Abstract Nouns 16. Vitruvian Cycles 1: representations against space 17. Vitruvian Cycles 2: physical language and shared experience Prologue: Babel… Further Reading Image Credits Index
Biography
Jassen Callender is an Associate Professor of Architecture and the Director of Mississippi State University’s Jackson Center, in Jackson, Mississippi, USA.
"In an uneasy age, where holding the ‘centre’ seems frighteningly unlikely, this carefully reasoned book argues that our most salient architectural problem is the estrangement of modern buildings from those who see and occupy them. A challenging read, it both sprawls out over and mines deep into difficult writings. Yet it remains accessible due to lucid prose, the construction of chapters to both cogently stand alone and operate serially, and its convincing intertwining of architectural examples with philosophical arguments." - Michael Fazio, Emeritus Professor of Architecture, Mississippi State University, USA
