Histories of the Immediate Present
Subtitle: Inventing Architectural Modernism (Writing Architecture)
Contributors: Peter Eisenman (Foreword)
Publisher: The MIT Press; MIT Press
Published: June 30, 2008
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 280
ISBN-13: 9780262720519
Subjects: History - Specific Styles; Architecture / General; History - General; Architecture
Description: "Anthony Vidler looks at the historical approaches of Emil Kaufmann, Colin Rowe, Reyner Banham, and Manfredo Tafuri, and the specific versions of modernism advanced by their historical narratives. Vidler shows that the modernism conceived by Kaufmann was like the late Enlightenment projects he revered, one of pure geometrical forms and elemental composition; that of Rowe saw manifest ambiguity and complexity in contemporary design; Banham's modernism took its cue from the aspirations of the futurists; and the "Renaissance modernism" of Tafuri found its source in the division between the technical experimentation of Brunelleschi and the cultural nostalgia of Alberti. Vidler's investigation demonstrates the inevitable collision between history and design that pervades all modern architectural discourse - and has given rise to some of the most interesting architectural experiments of the postwar period."--Jacket.