Class 5: Space/Architecture/City

Michel de Certeau, 'Walking in the City'

● Strategies (ways in which spaces are intended to be used, created by institutions to organise society) vs. Tactics (forms of disobedience used by individuals to navigate/resist these structures)

● Walking as a creative act, everyday life as a creative practice (making personal meaning out of public spaces)

● The Concept City ('a floorplan frozen in time', abstract, idealised, based on efficiency & control)

● 'The city is a text that is written by planners but constantly rewritten by its inhabitants'

Modernism

○ 20th century

○ Rapid urban development, more egalitarian worldview, new building materials

○ Permanence, functionality, harnessing advancements in material production to serve social needs, utopian vision

○ Criticised for: stifling uniformity, a sense of oppression

○ Lack of ornamentation, form = function

○ Key writers: Michel Foucault's Panopticon, Situationist International

○ e.g. Corbusier's Villa Savoye & Unite d'habitation Marseille, Oscar Niemeyer's Alvorada Palace

Postmodernism

○ Late 20th century

○ Historical context: Response (but not necessarily a rejection) of Modernism, pushback against alienating structures

○ Combination of various architectural styles & materials mixed in unconventional ways

○ Key writers: Denise Scott Brown's and Robert Venturi's Ducks vs. Decorated sheds

○ e.g. Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery, London

David Olsen, 'The City as a Work of Art'

● 'The city is the largest & most characteristic art form of the 19th century'

● Understanding a city can help us understand its culture

● Hegel's Zeitgeist (periods)

● Gombrich's anti-Zeitgeist (individual artists & well-defined movements, but NOT periods)

● Olsen: The Zeitgeist as a useful myth for the working historian (may be unattainable, but keeps historians alert to patterns)

Bank of England (1831)

Sir John Soane’s Museum, London (living room/library/dining room)

Sir John Soane’s Museum, London (the picture room)

Sir John Soane’s Museum, London (the model room)

Sir John Soane’s Museum, London (the monk’s parlour)

Villa Savoye (1928-31), Le Corbusier

Unite d’habitation Marseille, France (1945), Le Corbusier

Alvorada Palace (1957-8), Oscar Niemeyer

Sainsbury Wing, National Gallery, London (1991)

Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975)

• The panopticon

Denise Scott Brown & Robert Venturi: Ducks vs. Decorated Sheds