What is architecture's place in the world? Combining history, theory, and polemic, George Baird probes into the conceptual lineage and current expressions of postmodernism and the critique of postmodern architecture over the past four decades, revealing the general failure of these theories to develop an architecture that is politically engaged and affirmative of the public sphere.Hannah Arendt's imperative of worldliness plays a pivotal role in Baird's reading of what has come to be called architecture's belief system. It is not enough, he argues, to reject the totalizing models of publicness that have been typical both of modernism and of many of its postmodern successors. Rather, he insists, it is necessary to construct a "space of appearance" that is large and diverse enough to make places for all of us. Baird stakes out clearly and sharply the recent history of ideas that bear on the field, recovering influences and ideas that have been omitted from standard histories of modernism and building an understanding of our present dilemmas that is constructive and critically informed.The period from 1960 to the present has seen the collapse of the conditions that shored up modern architecture, as conventionally understood, and has also seen modernism succeeded by a whole series of tentative alternatives, none of which has successfully achieved the decisive legitimization modernism once held. After an extended introduction that situates architecture's current dilemmas within the broader currents of cultural theory, The Space of Appearance focuses on specific historical episodes or developments.Each chapter outlines a different controversy or series of controversies, or depicts the gradual and insidious erosion of certain firmly held beliefs. Each chapter is also structured around a conceptual account of issues that have evolved in the trajectory of contemporary cultural theory since the key interventions of Arendt in the 1950s.
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Editorial Reviews
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"A well-crafted, Hegelian fugue connecting three crucial epochs in modern architecture where the architectural is immersed in the political." Robert-Jan van Pelt Canadian Architect
"Baird's argument is compelling. Perhaps a harbinger of things to come, it removes us from the irony and pessimism of postmodernism and reevalutes the hope and social commitment that the modernists never abandoned. Out of the depths of a very silent landscape, Baird rallies us to the call!" M. Christine Boyer, Professor, School of Architecture, Princeton University
About the Author
George Baird is Partner in Baird/Sampson Architects in Toronto and Professor of Architecture at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design.
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This review is from: The Space of Appearance (Paperback)
The Space of Appearance derives its title, as the author indicates, from a paragraph in Hannah Arendt's book, The Human Condition where she stated that:"Action and speech create a space between the participants which can find its proper location almost any time and anywhere. It is the space of appearance in the widest sense of the word, namely, the space where I appear to others as others appear to me, where men exist not merely like other living or inanimate things but make their appearance explicitly." Baird takes this as the initial point for his theoretical investigation of the different courses that architecture has taken in the Twentieth century, attempting to trace the 'political' dimension of architecture, and the failures of the Modern Movement to fully translate its social ideals, without abandoning hope that this remains a worthwhile and timely project. Baird's book is a timely reminder that architecture must rise above the trivial formal gymnastics and marketing slogans of these times to assume its role as a generator of public space and ultimately as a catalyst of the socio-political.
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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8
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- Modern Architecture and the End of Empire (British Art and Visual Culture Since 1750, New Readings) (British Art and Visual Culture Since 1750, New Readings) by Mark Crinson in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Architecture of the Everyday by Steven Harris on page 47, and page 49
- The Anxious City: British Urbanism in the late 20th Century by Richard J. Williams on page 22, and Back Matter
- The Anxious City: British Urbanism in the late 20th Century by Richard J. Williams on page 22, and Back Matter
- Integral Urbanism by Nan Ellin in Back Matter
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