A4469-1 The History of Architectural Theory 

Mark Wigley

Wed.11:00am-1:00pm – 114 Avery

 

Architecture emerges out of passionate and unending debate. Every design involves theory. Indeed, architects talk as much as they draw. This class will explore the way that theory is produced and deployed at every level of architectural discourse from formal written arguments to the seemingly casual discussions in the design studio. A series of case studies, from Vitruvius through to social media, from ancient treatises on parchment to flickering web pages and tweets, will be used to show how the debate keeps adapting itself to new conditions while preserving some relentless obsessions. Architectural discourse will be understood as a wide array of interlocking institutions, each of which has its own multiple histories and unique effects. How and why these various institutions were put in place will be established and then their historical transformations up until the present will be traced to see which claims about architecture have been preserved and which have changed.

 

In each session, particular attention is paid to the way that architectural theory—statements about what architecture could be, should be or should not be—acts as overt or covert agents of privilege and subordination, crafting inclusions and exclusions through active racializations, genderings, class stratifications and sexual stereotyping. Architectural theory, that is, is positioned in a cauldron of fear, desire, power, pleasure, prohibition, and transgression.

 

Lecture 1

The Sound of the Architect: Between Words and Drawings

Lecture 2

The Reign of the Classical Treatise: Digesting Vitruvius

Lecture 3

Curriculum as Polemic: Disciplining Architecture from Academy to University

Lecture 4

The Invention of Architectural History: Strategic Narratives

Lecture 5

The Invention of Criticism: Buildings in Review

Lecture 6

Theory as Weapon: System versus Manifesto

Lecture 7

The Canonization of Modern Theory

Lecture 8

Domesticating Discourse: Soft Packages

Lecture 9

Theory on the Couch: Self-Analysis

Lecture 10

Postmodern Theory: Engaging the Other

Lecture 11

The Commodification of Architectural Theory

Lecture 12

Transgressive Theory: Insecurities of Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality

 

Reading List for H.O.T. (Fall 2024)

 

[This is not a list of required readings but a listing of texts that will be discussed in the lectures plus recommended background reading for students wishing to follow up on the questions that interest them]

 

1. The Sound of the Architect: Between Words and Drawings

 

2. The Reign of the Classical Treatise: Digesting Vitruvius

 

Vitruvius, The Ten Books of Architecture, edited by Ingrid D. Rowland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

Alberti, Leone Battista, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, trans. Joseph Rykwert and

Robert Travenor, (MIT Press, 1988).

Vignola, Canon of the Five Orders of Architecture, (New York: Acanthus, 1999).

 

Background Reading:

Pevsner Nikolaus, “The Term ‘Architect’ in the Middle Ages,” Speculum XVII (1942), pp.549-562.

Rykwert, Joseph, “On the Oral Transmission of Architectural Theory,” AA Files 6, May 1984, pp.1-27.

Tod Marder, “Vitruvius and the Architectural Treatise in Early Modern Europe,” in Alina Payne (ed.), The Companions to the History of Architecture: Vol.1 Renaissance and Baroque Architecture, (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017), 1-31.

Mario Carpo, Architecture in the Age of Printing: Orality, Writing, Typography and Printed Images in the History of Architectural Theory (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001)

Vaughan Hart and Peter Hicks (eds.), Paper Palaces: The Rise of the Renaissance Architectural Treatise (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).

Payne, Alina. The Architectural Treatise in the Renaissance: Architectural Invention, Ornament, and Literary Culture, (Cambridge University Press, 1999).

Mark Wigley, “Untitled: The Housing of Gender,” in Beatriz Colomina (ed.), Sexuality and Space (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1992) 327-389.

 

 

 

3.  Curriculum as Polemic: Disciplining Architecture from Academy to University

 

Blondel, François-Nicolas. Cours d’Architecture, enseigné dans l’Academie royle d’architecture, vol.I to III, (Paris: 1675-1683).

Blondel, Jacques-François. Cours d’Architecture vol. I to VI (Paris: 1771-7).

Guadet, Julien, Elements et theorie de l’Architecture: cours professe a l’Ecole nationale et speciale des beaux-arts, (Paris: Libraire de la construction moderne, 1902).

Trans. by N. Clifford Ricker as Elements and Theory of Architecture, (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1966).

Ware, William, An Outline for a Course in Architectural Instruction, (Boston, 1855).

Ware, William, The American Vignola, (Boston, 1902-6).

 

Background Reading:

Cammy Brothers, “What Drawings did in Renaissance Italy,” in Alina Payne (ed.), The Companions to the History of Architecture, Volume I, Renaissance and Baroque Architecture. (John Wiley & Sons, 2017).

McQuillan, James. “From Blondel to Blondel: On the Decline of the Vitruvian Treatise,” in Vaughan Hart and Peter Hicks (eds.), Paper Palaces: The Rise of the Renaissance Architectural Treatise (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), pp.338-357.

Barzman, Karen-Edie, The Florentine Academy and the Early Modern State. The Discipline of Disegno (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

Hughes, Anthony, “‘An Academy for Doing.’ I: The Accademia del Disegno, the Guilds and the Principate in Sixteenth-Century Florence,” The Oxford Art Journal, 9:1, 1986, pp.3-10.

Hughes, Anthony. “’An Academy for Doing’ II: Academies, Status, Power in Early Modern Europe,” The Oxford Art Journal, 9:2, 1986, pp.50-62.

Goldstein, Carl. Teaching Art: Academies and Schools from Vasari to Albers, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

Chafee, Richard. “The Teaching of Architecture at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, “ in Drexler, Arthur (ed.), The Architecture of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, (New York: MoMA, 1977), pp.61-109.

Clausen, Meredith. "The Ecole Des Beaux--‐Arts: Toward a Gendered History." Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, vol.69, no.2, 2010, 53-61

Middleton R. “J.F. Blondel and the Cours d’Architecture,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, XVIII, 1959, pp. 140-148.

Anthony Gerbino, Francois Blondel: Architecture, Erudition, and the Scientific Revolution (the Classical Tradition in Architecture), (London: Routledge, 2010)

Weatherhead, Arthur Clason, The History of Collegiate Education in Architecture in the United States, (Los Angeles, 1941).

Caroline Shillaber, Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Architecture and Planning - 1861-1961: A Hundred Year Chronicle, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1963).

Richard Oliver (ed.), The Making of an Architect 1881-1981 (New York: Rizzoli: 1981).

Chewning, J.A. "William Robert Ware at MIT and Columbia" Journal of Architectural

Education Vol. 33(2), 1979, pp.25-29.

Sharon Sutton, When Ivory Towers Were Black (Fordham University Press, 2016).

 

 

4.          The Invention of Architectural History: Strategic Narratives

 

Vasari, Giorgio, The Lives of the Artists, trans. Julia Conaway Bondanella and Peter Bondanella, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).

Winckelmann, J.J. The History of Ancient Art [1764/1776], trans. (New York: F. Unger: 1969).

Burckhardt, Jacob. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy [1867], trans.

Middlemore, S.G.C. (New York: Modern Library, 1954).

Wölfflin, Heinrich. Principles of Art History: The Problem of the Development of Style in later Art [1915] trans. M.D. Hottinger, (Dover, 1950).

Frankl, Paul. Principles of Architectural History: The Four Phases of Architectural Style, [1914], trans. James F. OGorman, (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1932).

 

Background Reading:

Alina Payne, “Vasari, Architecture, and the Origins of Historicizing Art,” RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, No. 40 (Autumn, 2001), pp. 51-76.

Rubin, Patricia Lee, Giorgio Vasari: Art and History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995).

Potts, Alex, Flesh and the Ideal: Winckelmann and the Origins of Art History (New Haven: Yale University, 1994).

Whitney Davis, “Wincklemann Divided: Mourning Art History,” Journal of Homosexuality, vol. 27 no.1-2, 1994, 141-160

Watkin, David. The Rise of Architectural History, (London: Architectural Press, 1980).

Porphyrious, Demetri (ed.), On the Methodology of Architectural History, Architectural Design Profile, Architectural Design, vol. 51 no 6/7, 1981.

Wright, Gwendelyn and Parks, Janet (eds.), The History of History in American Schools of Architecture 1865-1975, (Princeton Architectural Press, 1990).

Podro, Michael. The Critical Historians of Art, (Yale University Press, 1982).

Preziozi, Donald. Rethinking Art History: Meditations on a Coy Science, (Yale University Press, 1989).

Mark Crinson and Richard J. Williams, The Architecture of Art History: A Historiography (London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2018).

Alina Payne, “Architectural History and the History of Art: A Suspended Dialogue,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 58, No. 3, Architectural History 1999/2000 (Sep., 1999), pp. 292-299.

 

 

 

5.      The Invention of Criticism: Buildings in Review

 

Camille, Francois (ed), Journal des bâtiments civils [1800-].

Daly, Cesar (ed.), Revue Générale de lArchitecture [1839-1888].

 

Background Reading:

Lipstadt, Helen. "Early Architectural Journals," in Robin Middleton (ed.). The Beaux-Arts and Nineteenth Century Architecture, (London: Thames and Hudson, 1982), pp.50-57.

Lipstadt, Helen. "The Building and the Book in César Dalys Revue Générale de lArchitecture ." in Beatriz Colomina, (ed.). Architectureproduction, (Princeton Architectural Press, 1988), pp.24-55.

Van Zanten, Ann Lorenz. "Form and Society: César Daly and the Revue Générale de lArchitecture ," Oppositions 8, 1977, pp.136-45.

Becherer, Richard. Science Plus Sentiment: César Daly’s Formula for Modern Architecture, (Ann Arbor: UMI, 1984).

Wrigley, Richard, The Origins of French Art Criticism, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).

Fort, Bernadette, “Voice of the Public: The Carnivalization of Salon Art in Prerevolutionary Pamphlets,” Eighteenth-Century Studies, Spring 1989, vol. 22, no.3, 368-394.

 

 

 

6.      Theory as Weapon: System versus Manifesto

 

Perrault, Claude, Ordonnance for the Five Kinds of Column after the Method of the Ancients [1673/84] trans. I.K. McEwen (Santa Monica: Getty Center, 1993).

Diderot, Denis and D’Alembert, Jean le (eds.). Encyclopédue, ou Dictionnaire rasionné des sciences, des arts et des metiers (Paris: Briasson, et. al. 1751-1780).

Laugier, Marc-Antoine. An Essay on Architecture [1753] trans. Wolfgang and Anni Herrmann (Los Angeles: Hennessey and Ingalls, 1977).

Durand, Jean-Nicolas-Louis. Précis of the Lectures on Architecture [1802] trans. David Britt. (Los Angeles: Getty Institute, 2000).

Viollet-Le-Duc, Eugène-Emmanuel. Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du Xie au XVIe siècle (1854-68). Partial trans. By Kenneth D. Whitehead as The Foundations of Architecture: Selections from the Dictionnaire raisonné (New York: George Braziller, 1990).

Semper, Gottfried, Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts; or, Practical Aesthetics (1860-62), trans. Harry Mulgrave (Los Angeles: Getty Institue, 2004).

 

Background Reading:

Craig Buckley (ed.), After the Manifesto, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015).

Conrads, Ulrich (ed.), Programs and Manifestoes on 20^th Century Architecture (London: 1970).

James Graham, “The Critic as Producer: An Essay on Essays on Architecture,“ Avery Review, no.1., 2014.

Harrington, K. Changing Ideas on Architecture in the ‘Encylopédie’ (Ann Arbor: UMI, 1985).

Pfammatter, Ulrich. The Making of the Modern Architect and Engineer: The Origins and Development of a Scientically and Industrially Oriented Education (Basel: Birkhauser, 2000).

Viollet-Le-Duc, Eugène-Emmanuel. Entretiens sur l’architecture [1872], trans. by Benjamin Bucknall as Lectures on Architecture vol. I and II (New York: Dover, 1987).

Damish, Hubert. “The Space Between: A Structuralist Approach to the Dictionary,”

Architectural Design 81, pp.84-89.

Charles L. Davis, Building Character: The Racial Politics of Modern Architectural Style (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019).

Jencks, Charles and Kropf, Karl. Theories and Manifestoes of Contemporary Architecture, (Chichester: Academy Editions, 1997).

 

 

7.      The Canonization of Modern Theory

 

Le Corbusier, Toward an Architecture, intro. Jean-Louis Cohen, trans. John Goodman, (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2007)

Giedion, Sigfried. Space, Time and Architecture, Harvard University Press, (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1941).

 

Background Reading:

Giedion, Sigfried, “History and the Architect,” Journal of Architectural Education, 12:2, 1957, 14-16

Bonta, Juan, Architecture and Its Interpretation: A Study of Expressive Systems in Architecture (London: Lund Humphries: 1979), pp.91-158.

Gillory, John, Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1993), pp. 3-84.

Colomina, Beatriz. "Esprit Nouveau" in Colomina, Beatriz (ed.), Architectureproduction, (Princeton Architectural Press, 1988), pp. 24-55.

Otto Wagner, Modern Architecture: A Guidebook For His Students to This field of Art

[1896] trans. Harry Mallgrave (Santa Monica: Getty Center, 1988).

Giedion, Sigfried, Building in France, Building in Iron, Building in Ferro-Concrete

[1928], trans. Sokratis Geogiadis (Santa Monica: Getty Center, 1995).

"Sigfried Giedion: A History Project," Special issue, Rassegna 25, 1979.

Georgiadis, Sokratis, Sigfried Giedion: An Intellectual Biography (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1989).

Sekler, Eduard F. “Sigfried Giedion at Harvard University,” in Elisabeth Blair MacDougall (ed.), The Architectural Historian in America, (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1990), pp.265-71.

Almut Grunewald (ed.), The Giedion World, Sigfried Giedion and Carola Giedion-Welcker in Dialogue, (Scheidegger & Spiess, 2019.)

 

8.      Domesticating Discourse: Soft Packages

 

Hitchcock, Henry Russell and Philip Johnson. Modern Architecture: International Exhibition, Museum of Modern Art Catalog, 1932.

Hitchcock, Henry Russell and Philip Johnson. The International Style, W.W. (New York: Norton, 1966).

Rowe, Colin. The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and other Essays, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1976).

 

Background Reading:

Hitchcock, Henry Russell, Modern Architecture: Romanticism and Reintegration, (New York: Payson and Clarke, 1929).

Hitchcock, Henry Russell, Painting Towards Architecture, (New York: Sloan and Pearce, 1948).

Hitchcock, Henry Russell, "Modern Architecture--A Memoir," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Dec 1968, pp.227-233.

Terence Riley. The International Style: Exhibition 15 and the Museum of Modern Art, (New York: Rizzoli, 1992).

Helen Searing, “Henry-Russell Hitchcock: The Architectural Historian as Critic and Connoisseur,” in Elisabeth Blair MacDougall (ed.), The Architectural Historian in America, (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1990), pp.251-263.

Donald Albrecht et.al, Partners in Design: Alfred H. Barr Jr. and Philip Johnson (New York: Monacelli, 2015).

ANY, no. 7/8 (1994), special issue on Colin Rowe.

Kazys Varnelis, "We Cannot Not Know History": Philip Johnson's Politics and Cynical Survival,” Journal of Architectural Education, November 1995, vol. 49 no.2, 92-104.

 

 

9.  Theory on the Couch: Self-Analysis

 

Banham, Reyner. Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, (Architectural Press, 1960).

Banham, Reyner. New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic, (Architectural Press, 1966).

Banham, Reyner. “History and Psychiatry” [1960], in Banham, Reyner. Design By

Choice: Ideas in Architecture, edited by Penny Sparke, (London: Academy Editions, 1981).

Tafuri, Manfredo, Theories and History of Architecture (New York: Harper and Row, 1976).

 

Background Reading:

Agrest, Diana and Gandelsonas, Mario. “Semiotics and Architecture: Theoretical Work or Ideological Consumption," Oppositions 1, 1972.

Tournikiotis, Panyotis, The Historiography of Modern Architecture (Cambridge: MIT, 1999).

Zevi,Bruno, “A Message to the International Congress of Modern Architecture [1948],” in Andreas Oppenheimer Dean, Bruno Zevi on Modern Architecture (New York: Rizoli, 1983, pp.126-134.

Banham, Reyner, Scenes in American Deserta, (Gibbs M. Smith, 1982).

Banham, Reyner, Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment. (Architectural Press, 1969).

Banham, Reyner, The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic (New York: Reinhold, 1966).

Banham, Reyner. A Concrete Atlantis: US Industrial Building and European Modern Architecture, (MIT Press, 1986).

Banham, Mary. et. al. (eds.), A Critic Writes: Essays by Reyner Banham, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996).

Whitely, Nigel, Reyner Banham: Historian of the Immediate Future (Cambridge: MIT Press,  2001).

Pevsner, Nikolaus. Pioneers of Modern Design from William Morris to Walter Gropius, (London, 1936).

Sunwoo, Irene, “Whose Design? MoMA and Pevsner’s Pioneers,” Getty Research Journal, 2010, no.2, 69-82.

Tafuri, Manfredo. "There is no Criticism, only History," Design Book Review, Spring 1986.

“Being Manfredo Tafuri,” special issue, ANY 25/26, 2000.

Vidler, Anthony, Histories of the Immediate Present: Inventing Architectural Modernism, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008).

 

 

 

10.              Postmodern Theory: Engaging the Other

 

Venturi, Robert. Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, (New York: The Museum of Modern Art 1966 and revised edition 1977).

Denise Scott Brown, Robert Venturi, and Steven Izenour. Learning from Las Vegas, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1972 and second edition 1977).

Moore, Charles. “You Have Got to Pay for the Public Life,” Perspecta 9/10 (1965), pp.57-87.

Moore, Charles. “Plug it in, Rames, and See if it Lights Up. Because We Aren’t Going to Keep it Unless it Works,” Perspecta 11 (1967), pp.32-43.

 

Background Reading:

Venturi, Robert. "A Billdingboard Involving Movies, Relics and Space." Architectural Forum, April 1968, pp.74-79.

Scott Brown, Denise. "Learning From Pop," Casabella, no 359-60, Dec. 1971, pp.15-23

Venturi, Robert. Iconography and Electronics on a Generic Architecture: A View from the

Drafting Room (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996).

Von Moss, Stanislaus. Venturi, Rauch and Scott Brown: Buildings and Projects, (New York: Rizzoli, 1987).

Peter Blake, Gods Own Junkyard: The Planned Deterioration of Americas Landscape , (New York: Holt Rhinehart and Wilson, 1964).

Robbins, David. ed., The Independent Group: Postwar Britain and the Aesthetics of Plenty, (MIT Press, 1990).

Cook, Peter ed., Archigram, (Studio Vista Publishers, 1972).

Aaron Vinegar, I am a Monument: On Learning from Learning from Las Vegas, (2008).

 

 

11.              The Commodification of Architectural Theory

 

Frederick Jameson. "Postmodernism, Or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism," New Left Review, no.164, 1984. pp.53-92.

Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City, (MIT Press, 1960).

 

Background Reading:

Sitte, Camillo, “City Planning According to Artistic Principles [1889]” trans. by George Collins and Christiane Collins in Camillo Sitte: The Birth of Modern City (New York: Rizzoli, 1986), pp.129-332.

Moholy-Nagy, L. Von Material zu Architektur (Munich: 1928). Moholy-Nagy, L. Vision in Motion, (Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1947).

Kepes, Gyorgy. Language of Vision, (Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1944). Cullen, Gordon. Townscape (New York: Rheinhod, 1961).

Kevin Lynch, Donald Appleyard and John Meyer, The View from the Road, (MIT Press, 1964).

Frederic Jameson, “The Brick and the Balloon: Architecture, Idealism and Land Speculation,” New Left Review, no. 228, March-April 1998, 25-46.

Reinhold Martin, “Architecture’s Image Problem: Have We Ever Been Postmodern?” Grey Room, no.22, 2006, 6-29.

 

 

12. Transgressive Theory: Insecurities of Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality

Tafuri, Manfredo. "The Historical Project," in The Sphere and the Labyrinth: Avant- Gardes and Architecture from Piranesi to the 1970s, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987), pp.1-21.

Dennis Hollier, Against Architecture: The Writings of Georges Bataille (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992)

Irene Cheng, Charles L. Davis II, Mabel Wilson (eds), Race and Modern Architecture: A Critical History from the Englightenment to the Present, (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020).

Darrell Wayne Fields, Architecture in Black: Theory, Space and Appearance (Bloomsbury, 2015).

Beatriz Colomina (ed.), Sexuality and Space (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1992).

 

 

Background Reading:

Teresa Stoppani, Giorgio Ponzo and George Themistokleuous, This Thing Called Theory (London, Routledge, 2017).

James Graham (ed.), 2000+ The Urgencies of Architectural Theory (Columbia Books on Architecture and the City, 2015).

Louis Rice and David Littlefield (eds.), Transgression: Towards an Expanded Field for Architecture, (London: Routledge, 2015).

Sadler, Simon and Hughes Jonathon. Non-Plan: Essays on Freedom, Participation and Change in Modern Architecture and Urbanism (London: Architectural Press, 2000).

Assemblage 41. [2000] Special issue on the state of critical theory.

Libero Andreotti--Xavier Costa (eds), Theory of the Derive: And Other Situationist Writings on the City (Barcelona: ACTAR, 1996).

Assemblage 27. [1995] Special issue on the “Tulane Conference.”

Elisabeth Grosz, Space, Time and Perversion (London: Routledge, 1995).

John Whiteman et. al. (eds.). Strategies in Architectural Thinking, (MIT Press, 1992).

Mabel O. Wilson, “White by Design,” in Darby English and Charlotte Barat (eds.), Among Others: Blackness at MoMA,” ed. by (MoMA Publications, 2019).

López-Durán, Fabiola, Eugenics in the Garden: Transatlantic Architecture and the Crafting of Modernity (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2018).

Arindam Dutta, The Bureaucracy of Beauty: Design in the Age of its Global Reproducibility (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006).

Mabel Wilson, “Black Bodies/White Cities: Le Corbusier in Harlem,” ANY, no 16, 1996, 35-39.

Zenep Celik, Le Corbusier, Orientalism, Colonialism, Assemblage no 17, 1992, 58-77.