Architecture and Modernity : a Critique / Hilde Heynen

This Page Intentionally Left Blank Architecture and Modernity MIT Press | Cambridge, Massachusetts | London, England Hilde Heynen Architecture and Modernity A Critique © 1999 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. This book was set in Univers by Graphic Composition, Inc. and was printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Heynen, Hilde. Architecture and modernity : a critique / Hilde Heynen. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-262-08264-0 (hc : alk. paper) 1. Architecture, Modern—20th century. 2. Architecture and society—History—20th century. 3. Philosophy, Modern—20th century—Influence. I. Title. NA680.H42 1999 724′.6—dc21 98-38512 CIP2 for Robbe, An, and Anskim viii Acknowledgments 2 Introduction Architecture Facing Modernity 8 Concepts of Modernity 14 Dwelling Fades into the Distance . 1 18 The Dilemmas of Architecture Constructing the Modern Movement 26 An Architectural Avant-Garde? 29 Sigfried Giedion: A Programmatic View of Modernity New Experiences and a New Outlook Space, Time and Architecture: The Canon of Modern Architecture From Avant-Garde to Canonization 43 Das Neue Frankfurt: The Search for a Unified Culture 2 Ideas and Intentions The Dialectics between an Avant-Garde and a City Das Neue Frankfurt as Avant-Garde Reflections in a Mirror 72 The Experience of Rupture 75 Adolf Loos: The Broken Continuation of Tradition Dwelling, Culture, and Modernity An Architecture of Differences Discontinuous Continuity 95 Walter Benjamin: The Dream of a Classless Society Mimesis and Experience To Brush History against the Grain Architecture or the Physiognomy of an Era Dwelling, Transparency, Exteriority Architecture, Modernity, and Dwelling 3 118 Building on Hollow Space: Ernst Bloch’s Criticism of Modern Architecture Heimat as a Utopian Category Washable Walls and Houses like Ships Modernism as a Breaking Point within the Capitalist System 128 The Venice School, or the Diagnosis of Negative Thought Architecture and Utopia The Metropolis and Negative Thought Dwelling and the “Places” of Modernity History as Critique of Ideology Architecture as Critique of Modernity 148 Avant-Garde versus Modernism 151 New Babylon: The Antinomies of Utopia Unitary Urbanism and the Critique of Functionalism New Babylon: The Antithesis of the Society of Lies The Tragedy of Utopia 174 No Way Out: Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory Constellating the Nonidentical Modernity as the Unfolding of the Dialectic of Enlightenment Mimesis and Negativity The Dual Character of Art 192 Mimesis in Architecture Mimesis in Contemporary Theory The Issue of Critique Between the Lines A Tower of Babel 4 220 Afterword: Dwelling, Mimesis, Culture 226 Notes 260 Index This Page Intentionally Left Blank Acknowledgments This book would never have materialized without the help and encouragement of many people. When it was still in the stage of a Ph.D. dissertation, one of my main interlocutors was Geert Bekaert, whose essay on imitation laid the founda- tion for my interest in mimesis. To my other advisor, André Loeckx, I owe special thanks, not only for his institutional support, but also for his continued presence as my most challenging and demanding intellectual sparring partner. Herman Neuckermans I thank for the opportunity he gave me to do research at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. In an initial stage of my investigations, I enjoyed the hospitality of Michael Müller in Bremen, who was a very helpful guide for studying the work of Walter Benjamin. I have learned a lot from discussions with friends, among whom I should mention Christine Delhaye, Bart Verschaffel, Lieven de Cauter, and Rudi Laermans. My coeditors of the Dutch Benjamin Journaal contributed, through their comments and criticisms, to the chapters on Benjamin and Adorno: René Boomkens, Ineke van der Burg, Koen Geldof, Ton Groeneweg, Paul Koopman, Michel van Nieuwstadt, and the late Wil van Gerwen, who passed away much too early. In 1991 and 1992 I had the opportunity to test some of the thoughts developed in this book by exposing myself to the scrutiny of the students in the MIT program on History, Theory, and Criticism. I wish to thank Stanford Anderson for his invitation, David Friedman for his coaching, and Sibel Bozdogan for her friend- ship and support. Together with the students they made my months at MIT a very worthwhile experience. The postdoctoral fellowship I received from the Getty Grant Program enabled me to transform a dissertation into a book. During that process much was added and many things changed; in particular the case study on New Babylon was elaborated, facilitated by the generous help of Constant. For encouraging me all the while and pushing me to finalize the manuscript, I wish to thank Mark Wigley, Michael Hays, Beatriz Colomina, and Richard Plunz. Donald Gardner was invaluable as a translator. Whatever awkward formulations survived in the final text are completely my own responsibility. I am grateful to Roger Conover for his confidence in my ability to write this book, to Julie Grimaldi for her continuous help with the whole process, to Mitch Evich and Matthew Abbate for their very careful and consistent editing, and to Jim McWethy for his design work. I dedicate the book to my children Robbe, An, and Anskim Goris, who lived with me through all the difficulties and gratifications of its coming-into-being. Beauty today can have no other measure Theodor W. Adorno, 1965: except the depth to “Schönheit heute hat kein anderes Mass als die which a work resolves Tiefe, in der die Gebilde die Widersprüche contradictions. A work austragen, die sie durchfuhren und die sie must cut through the bewältigen einzig, indem sie ihnen folgen, contradictions and nicht indem sie sie verdecken.” overcome them, not by covering them up, but by pursuing them. Architecture and Modernity Introduction This book grew out of a puzzlement I felt when studying the ideas embodied in modern architecture. My perplexity had to do with the inadequacy of the concept of modernity that was operative in the modern movement. To my eyes—trained as they were by the study of critical theories such as those of Walter Benjamin or Theodor Adorno—the concept of modernity I found in the work of Sigfried Giedion or in the periodical Das Neue Frankfurt seemed rather naive and unbalanced. I was puzzled by the gap between the discourse of the modern movement on the one hand and cultural theories of modernity such as those of the Frankfurt School on the other. If one realizes for instance that Ernst May (the architect behind Das Neue Frankfurt) and Theodor Adorno were both working in the same city during the same period (Frank- furt in the late 1920s), it seems rather strange that there are no traces of any intellectual exchange between them. Researching this topic gradually resolved my puzzlement as to the factual cir- Introduction cumstances of this absence of exchange. My fascination for the related theoretical questions nevertheless remained, as may be judged from the material presented in this book. I still consider it exceptionally intriguing to see how many divergent positions have been developed with respect to the question of what architecture is sup- posed to be and how it should relate to societal conditions brought about by modernity. It was my aim in writing this book to clarify several of these positions and to highlight in what respect precisely they differ from one another. The book thus discusses the relationship between modernity, dwelling, and architecture. Modernity is used here in reference to a condition of living imposed upon individuals by the socioeconomic process of modernization. The experience of modernity involves a rupture with tradition and has a profound impact on ways of life and daily habits. The effects of this rupture are manifold. They are reflected in modernism, the body of artistic and intellectual ideas and movements that deal with the process of modernization and with the experience of modernity.1 Modernity is understood in different ways by a wide range of authors and crit- ics. One can see it as determined by the opposition between a capitalist civilization and its cultural, modernist counterpart. The relation between these poles, however, is conceived of in divergent ways: some perceive them as not related at all; for oth- ers there is a dialectical relationship at stake in which modernism consciously or un- consciously, directly or indirectly, positively or negatively reflects the effects of capitalist development. Further distinctions and specifications can be made: one can discern an avant-garde attitude that aims at the reintegration of art and life; one can moreover distinguish between programmatic and transitory conceptions of modernity, as well as between “pastoral” and “counterpastoral” modernisms. Within the fields of philosophy, sociology, and cultural theory, such issues are indeed extensively discussed. Critical theories such as those of the Frankfurt School gave birth to a complex and sophisticated discourse concerning modernity and modernism. The history and theory of twentieth-century architecture on the other hand developed rather independently from this rich tradition; even many of the more re- cent developments in architecture went along without taking into consideration critical positions such as those of the Frankfurt School. This book aims at facing this rift. It tries to interrelate both strings of intellectual discourse. On the one hand it discusses architecture from the perspective of critical theory, and on the other hand it modifies positions within critical theory by linking them with architecture.2 The book should operate on two levels. First, it contains a theoretical discus- sion of the relation between architecture, modernity, and dwelling.

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