Revolution? Architecture and the Anthropocene

Susannah Hagan

• Publisher: Lund Humphries
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781848224889
• eBook ISBN: 9781848225817
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture Methods & Materials

There is almost nothing new left to say about the urgent need to reduce our devastating impact on the biosphere that supports us. In architectural terms, we have been told since the 1960s that mainstream architecture is not engaged enough with the environmental consequences of what it produces and how it produces it. The usual approach is to propose new ways of designing and building to persuade the reader of the centrality of environmental concerns. But too many readers have remained resolutely unpersuaded over decades.
In four sharp, interlocking essays, this book asks why the majority of the architectural profession and its clients still only pay lip service to the importance of the environmental. The first - Overthrowing - examines the Modern Movement's astonishing success in establishing itself, and its legacy in contemporary architectural culture; the second - Converting - explores the inability of the environmental movement to ignite and transform architecture in the same way; the third - Making - discusses the importance of shifting architecture back to a materially-based view of itself to increase its effectiveness, and finally - Educating - looks at the need for architectural education to urgently reconsider how and what it teaches in the volatile 21st century.
This in no way diminishes the extraordinary contribution that a minority in architectural practice and education have made to the development of environmental design and environmental thinking over the past fifty years. In each essay, therefore, are examples of innovative and determined people pursuing other ways of practicing architecture and other ways of training architects for this critical century, who are pulling the model of a nature-centric practice out of the margins and into the centre.

Notes

Overthrowing

1 For the purposes of this discussion, ‘nature’ is the biosphere, which was here before us and will be here after us, but the biosphere overlaid with our cultural interpretations.

2 Leon Battista Alberti ([1452] 1991). On the Art of Building in Ten Books. Joseph Rykwert (trans.). Cambridge, Mass and London: MIT Press. 303–4.

3 Le Corbusier ([1933] 1967). The Radiant City. New York: Orion Press. English translation based on the original French La Ville Radieuse, published in 1933.

4 Ted Benton (1994). ‘Biology and Social Theory in the Environmental Debate’. In Social Theory and the Global Environment. Michael Reclift and Ted Benton (eds.). London: Routledge. 28.

5 Adolf Behne ([1926] 1996). The Modern Functional Building. Michael F. Robinson (trans.). Los Angeles: The Getty Center for the History of Art. 138. English translation based on the original edition published in 1923.

6 Le Corbusier ([1930] 1991). Precisions. Edith Schreiber Aujame (trans.). Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. 218.

7 Kenneth Frampton ([1980] 1992). Modern Architecture: a critical history. London: Thames and Hudson. 327.

8 Paul Ricoeur (1965). History and Truth. Charles A. Kelbley (trans.). Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press. 276–7

9 Kenneth Frampton. ibid.

10 Hassan Fathy (1986). Natural Energy and Vernacular Architecture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 15.

11 Alvar Aalto ([1938] 1986). ‘Address to the Nordic Building Congress’. Oslo, 1938. In Goran Schildt, Alvar Aalto: The Decisive Years. New York: Rizzoli. 221.

12 Ingebord M. Rocker (2006, July/August). ‘Calculus Based Form: an interview with Greg Lynn’, in Architectural Design 76 (4). 88–95.

13 ibid.

14 Richard Neutra (1989). Nature Near: late essays of Richard Neutra. William Marlin (ed.). Santa Barbara: Capra Press. 33.

15 ibid.15.

16 Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers (1985). Order Out of Chaos. London: Flamingo. 12.

17 Koen Steemers, (1997). ‘Project ZED – Towards zero emission urban development’. In Research Digest 8 – Solar Energy in Architecture and Urban Planning. E. Fitzgerald, and J. Owen Lewis (eds.). Dublin: Energy Research Group April 1997. 11–12.

18 Catherine Slessor (2001). Eco-tech: Sustainable Architecture and High Technology. London: Thames & Hudson.

Converting

1 Erich Mendelsohn ([1919] 1971). ‘The Problem of a New Architecture’. In Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-Century Architecture, Ulrich Conrads (ed.), Michael Bullock (trans.). Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press.

2 James Wines (1997). ‘Passages’. In The Architecture of Ecology (Architectural Design). London: Academy Press. 32.

3 Adolf Loos ([1908] 2019). Ornament and Crime. Shaun Whiteside (trans). London: Penguin Books Ltd. 21.

4 Frank Lloyd Wright ([1914] 1960). ‘Organic Architecture’. In Frank Lloyd Wright: Writings and Buildings, Edgar Kaufmann and Ben Raeburn (eds.). New York: Horizon Press. 102.

5 Paul Scheerbart ([1914] 1972). Glass Architecture and Alpine Architecture. London: November Books. 14.

6 Antonio Sant’Elia with Filippo Tommaso Marinetti ([1914] 1971). ‘Futurist Architecture’. In Programs and Manifestoes on 20th Century Architecture, Ulrich Conrads (ed.), Michael Bullock (trans.). Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press. 35.

7 Erich Mendelsohn (1971). ‘The Problem of a New Architecture’. ibid. 54.

8 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe ([1923] 1971) ‘Working Theses’. In Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-Century Architecture, Ulrich Conrads (ed.), Michael Bullock (trans). Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press. 74.

9 Le Corbusier ([1929] 1971). The City of Tomorrow. Frederick Etchells (trans.). London: The Architectural Press. 21. English translation based on the original French Urbanisme, published in 1925.

10 Charlotte Perriand (1929, April). ‘Wood or Metal’, in The Studio ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Overthrowing
• Converting
• Making
• Educating
• Revolution
• Notes
• Illustration Credits