The Contribution of William JR Curtis to the Historiography of Modern

An Intertwined History: The Contribution of William J.R. Curtis to the Historiography of Modern Architecture

Macarena de la Vega de León

Dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Architectural History

University of Canberra November 2018

Abstract

This dissertation explores the writing of history through the close reading of William J.R. Curtis’s Modern Architecture Since 1900 (1982). Curtis’s book lies in a transitional period in the history of modern architecture: between the establishment of research degrees in North American schools in the 1970s; and the consolidation of the discipline as the subject matter of historiographical research in the 1990s. These developments culminated in 1999 with a major methodological reassessment of the history of modern architecture, its education and its scholarly study in journals such as JSAH and JAE. The study of postcolonial theories in architecture, also at the turn of the century, challenged the previously accepted canon of architectural history by urging the development of a global history of architecture (which remains today undefined). Curtis worked on the first edition as a young researcher in North America in the late 1970s and on the definitive edition of the book in the early 1990s: Modern Architecture Since 1900 is exemplary of, and contemporary to, these developments.

By discussing in-depth Curtis’s classificatory strategy, proposed definitions, and position on the main protagonists of modernism, this dissertation is the first-ever mapping of the historicity of the book, of its contribution, and of the experiences which lead to its publication. It proposes a comparative textual analysis of the three editions of the book and the related published research, contextualising it with other contributions at the time. The thesis also draws on direct communication with Curtis in which he shared with the candidate reflections and access to archival material. The argument focusses on two themes which were simultaneously part of architectural debate and introduced in Curtis’s text: regionalism and postmodernism. These notions were, in his narrative, two sides of the same coin. They encompass his methodological approach to the architecture of the late twentieth century, which he critiques based on a criterion of authenticity; a nebulous category which he links to immutable architectural values and on his own first-hand experience around the world.

Despite Curtis’s underrepresentation, and sometimes misrepresentation, in subsequent research on global history, this thesis positions him as a ‘pioneer’ in this developing field. He can be understood as the first ‘cartographer’ who tried to map a modern tradition, or traditions, inclusive and aware of the exchanges between the soon to be politically incorrect terms of ‘the West’ and the ‘non-West,’ ‘Third World’ and ‘developing countries.’ Curtis addressed some of the main points in the critique of postcolonial theories in architecture with the first edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900 and added a global approach to the modernist canon in the 1996 edition. His book is closer to the idea of ‘intertwined history’ than subsequent synoptic histories of modern architecture or the more recent global histories of architecture. Central to the contribution of this dissertation is to bring forth the way Curtis’s writing of history intertwines the modern and the global.

Contents

Abstract ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………... i Form B ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… iii Acknowledgments ………………………………………………………………..……………………………………. vii Chapter One_ Introduction …………………………………………………………………………………………. 1 Aim, Premises and Significance of the Study ...... 2 From the Modern to the Global: A Theoretical Framework ……….…………………… 9 Positioning Modern Architecture Since 1900 in Historiography ...... 26 Overview of the Study …………………………………………..…..…………………………………… 40 Chapter Two_ William Curtis and Modern Architecture Since 1900 ………………………..… 45 The Editorial ‘Life’ …………………………………………………………………………………………… 45 Critical Responses to the Three Editions ………………………………………………………… 50 Classificatory Strategies in the Three Editions ………………………….…………..……..… 62 The Story of the Writing ……………………………………………………..…………………………. 80 Chapter Three_ William Curtis and Regionalism ……………………………………………………… 97 Critical Responses to Curtis’s Approach to Regionalism ………………………………… 97 Turkey and Greece in Modern Architecture Since 1900 ………………………………..… 101 Australia in Modern Architecture Since 1900 ………..……………………………..………… 109 Contextualising Regionalism between the 1970s and the 1990s ……..……………… 119 Chapter Four_ William Curtis and Postmodernism ……………………………………………….… 137 Critical Responses to Curtis’s Approach to Postmodernism ……………………….… 137 Mapping Postmodernism in Modern Architecture Since 1900 ……………………..… 142 Postmodernism, Modernism and Authenticity …………………………………………..… 148 Contextualising Postmodernism between the 1970s and the 1990s …………….… 160 Chapter Five_ Rethinking William Curtis: Between the Modern and the Global in Architecture ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 177 The Task of History and the Role of the Historian ………………………………………… 178 A Modern Tradition …………………………………………………………………………………….… 193 Conclusion: An Intertwined History ..……………………………………………………………………… 207 Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 223 v

Acknowledgments

The completion of this dissertation has only been possible with the generous guidance, mentorship, and constant support in every endeavour of my primary supervisor Professor Gevork Hartoonian. I also thank the invaluable help of my supervisory panel: Associate Professor Scott Heyes and Professor John Macarthur from the University of Queensland. I am grateful for the encouragement and the thoughtful feedback which they provided at different stages in my candidature. I also acknowledge the generous collaboration of William J.R. Curtis, who shared his archive and thoughts with me.

Having moved to Australia in 2014 to commence my studies, I received enormous help and support from what today is wisely called the HDR Support team at the University of Canberra and the HDR team at the Faculty of Arts and Design; especially Anushya Kumar, Dr Joelle Vandermensbrugghe and Debra Hippisley. The thorough editing work done by Dr Anika Quayle needs also to be acknowledged. I am grateful for the generosity of the Centre for Architecture, Theory, Criticism and History at the University of Queensland in making me part of their vibrant research environment in the latest phases of my candidature in Brisbane.

My research experience in Australia has been supported, firstly, by my family, and later on, by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) International Scholarship. I am extremely grateful for the full support of everyone who contributed to strengthen my scholarship application, from my supervisory panel to the Centre for Creative and Cultural Research and its director, Distinguished Professor Jen Webb.

However, I have received the most important support from my family and friends. Thanks to my Spanish friends who have cheered me up in the distance, to the new and dear friends from throughout the world, from whom I learned so much, and to all #LittleHelpers on academic Twitter. Thanks to Klée, for your love and patience, especially towards the end of this experience. The most special thank you to my Abu, my sister Nuria, my brother Antonio and my parents for your love and support, and for keeping me company always during this almost four-year-long exciting journey.

vii

Introduction: Aim, Premises, Significance

Chapter One_ Introduction

It was merely coincidental, but ultimately significant, that Modern Architecture Since 1900 was the book I chose, back in 2002, for my end-of-semester history assessment at my university in Madrid, and the book which, in the end, became the subject matter of my doctoral investigation, entitled ‘An Intertwined History: The Contribution of William J.R. Curtis to the Historiography of Modern Architecture.’ Just as Curtis finalised the manuscript of the first edition of the book on the Sunshine Coast, north from Brisbane, it is also in Brisbane that I have finalised the writing of this text. This dissertation discusses the long and complex history of Modern Architecture Since 1900, which has been part of Curtis’s “life for more than a quarter of a century,” almost forty years today, and somehow, of mine for more than fifteen years – an evident and unavoidable generational gap.1

In this task, Curtis himself has played an important role: it was Jorge Sainz, translator of Curtis’s work into Spanish and my former professor at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, who informed Curtis of my intention to study Modern Architecture Since 1900 as part of my doctoral dissertation, and from early 2016 to mid-2017 we had a regular communication via email, in which he shared with me not only comments and insight, but also documents from his personal archive. This communication was intended to result in an interview with Curtis, scheduled to take place in Cajarc, the South of France, in July 2017, for which I was granted approval by the Human Research Ethics Committee at the University of Canberra, however Curtis suddenly cancelled.

This dissertation is the result of three and a half years of research work, which is evident in the text’s structure and in the way the argument unfolds and, even in the way the writing develops. In the early stages of my candidature, I believed that Curtis’s contribution was related to his formulation of authenticity, and then, more recently, to his theorisation of a modern tradition; this was reflected in the working titles of my

Introduction: Aim, Premises, Significance thesis, ‘The Search for Authenticity’ and ‘A Modern Tradition,’ respectively. Towards the end of my candidature, it became obvious that Curtis’s contribution lies in the way he builds a narrative that intertwines buildings, architects, countries, events and facts from 1900 up until what for him was the recent past, i.e. the early 1990s. I organised my argument thematically, with a focus, in general, on the content of Curtis’s book, and, in particular, on the themes of regionalism and postmodernism, exemplary of the architecture of the late twentieth century, which are theorised and introduced in Curtis’s narrative around the same time. Instead of devoting a chapter to reviewing the consulted literature, references to sources are made when appropriate throughout this dissertation. The discussion resulting from this theme-focussed research revolves around notions of authenticity, balance and tradition, which characterise not only Curtis’s discourse in Modern Architecture Since 1900, but also his own approach to history and his practice as a critic and historian.

This introductory chapter presents the aim of this study, its premises, and the justification of the choices made throughout the three and half years. It also includes an outline of the relevant events, facts and books related to the history, theory and historiography of architecture from the years when Curtis was working on the book, from the late 1970s until the 1990s. This outline of relevant literature results in the theoretical framework sustaining the dissertation, upon which I build the conclusion. Before presenting the summary of the content of the different chapters, this introduction will also position the book Modern Architecture Since 1900 within the tradition the histories of modern architecture. Finally, the content of the different chapters of this dissertation is explained in the overview of the study.

1. Aim, Premises and Significance of the Study

The aim of this dissertation is to critically address the contribution of the historian William J.R. Curtis (March 21, 1948-) and his history Modern Architecture Since 1900 to the field of the historiography of modern architecture, as defined by Panayotis Tournikiotis in his homonymous book, published in 1999. This dissertation follows the

Introduction: Aim, Premises, Significance distinction between history and historiography outlined by Jean-Louis Cohen in the bibliography of L’architecture au futur depuis 1889 (2012). Cohen regards as “histories” the books written by Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Reyner Banham and Leonardo Benevolo, among many others; and as “historiographies of the twentieth century,” the books written by Maria Luisa Scalvini and Maria Grazia Sandri, Tournikiotis and Anthony Vidler, among others. 2 I understand the need to be aware that “the historiography of modern architecture” is arguably a field or category that has lost its criticality today, as is “modern architecture.” However, I argue that it is the framework in which to understand Curtis’s book and its writing. During the course of this research, which used Tournikiotis’ Historiography as a starting point, this project evolved into an exploration of more contemporary/current formulations and periodisations in architectural history, in which Curtis’s arguments may still be valid.

Curtis published the first edition of the book in 1982; the second, with an addendum on recent architectural works in 1987; and he fully revised, expanded and reorganised the content for the third edition, published in 1996. The timeframe of this investigation is therefore delimited by the time when Curtis was working on the different editions of the book: from 1978 to 1993-1994. Within this timeframe, and prompted by the revision and expansion of the content towards the third edition, this dissertation investigates the many relevant differences between the three editions of Modern Architecture Since 1900. In his review of the third edition of the book in Spanish, Jorge Sainz finishes his account of the changes Curtis introduced by claiming that “meticulously comparing editions can often result in a fatiguing, but revealing task,” – which, I would add, is exactly the task that this dissertation will undertake.3

Apart from discussing Curtis’s aims and premises, and the content of Modern Architecture Since 1900, the focus of this dissertation are two main themes: regionalism and postmodernism. Why? Firstly, because these themes reflect like no others Curtis’s

2 Jean-Louis Cohen, L’architecture au futur depuis 1889/ The Future of Architecture since 1889 (Paris: Phaidon, 2012), 494-495. 3 Jorge Sainz, “Arquitectura moderna: última edición,” review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, Arquitectura Viva, no. 49 (July-August 1996): 73. Author’s translation into English. 3

Introduction: Aim, Premises, Significance stated aim of presenting a “balanced, readable overall view of the development of modern architecture in other parts of the world from its beginnings until the recent past,” while leaving the issue of ideology aside.4 Regionalism and postmodernism are the two sides of the coin that Curtis uses to present the architecture of the late twentieth century. His polemical writing on postmodern Classicism and on regionalism, together with his many travels in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, and individual studies on architects, accompanied the transition from the first to the third edition of the book.5

Secondly, I am focussing on regionalism and postmodernism because these two notions were being formulated and theorised as a result of the architectural debate in the late twentieth century, and were introduced in histories written at this time, including Modern Architecture Since 1900. There is a difficult balance between the position of the historian and critic, and Curtis’s attitude towards the recent past, incorporating coverage of buildings and countries neglected by previous historians, has been considered to be brave. It is interesting to note that the delimited timeframe of this dissertation coincides which has been considered by some scholars to be the life span of postmodernism: for Peter Osborne, postmodernism was an episode in the history of criticism which lasted from 1979 to 1999.6

Furthermore, not only did Curtis frame regionalism as the modernist, or pro-modern, response to postmodernism, and even postmodernism as having a certain continuity with modernism, but he also discussed these two approaches towards architecture in terms of their relation to its authenticity: the search for balance between modernity and tradition; an appropriate understanding of both the old and the new, whatever this may mean in different countries or cultural contexts. In Curtis’s opinion, an authentic regionalist or authentic modernist would look for this balance without conflict or resistance, while a postmodernist would indulge in facile exercises in

4 William J.R. Curtis, “Introduction,” in Modern Architecture Since 1900 (London: Phaidon Press, 1996), 13. 5 William J.R. Curtis, email message to author, August 31, 2016. 6 Peter Osborne, “The Postconceptual Condition: Or, the Cultural Logic of High Capitalism Today,” Radical Philosophy vol 184 (March/April 2014): 19. 4

Introduction: Aim, Premises, Significance revivalism and arbitrariness. Curtis was not the first one to refute postmodernist claims that modern architecture is unrooted and anti-history, but it is a significant part of his argument to redefine modern architecture as a tradition, developed, disseminated, transplanted and transformed, and to highlight the significance of its relationship with history.

Why is this research project significant? Firstly, because there is no previous historiographical research on Curtis’s writings in general, or on Modern Architecture Since 1900 in particular, although looking at his work is necessary, or at least significant, in order to understand the writing of history in the late twentieth century. There are mentions of his book in broader historiographical studies, and I have had access to an analysis by a PhD student in the historiography of architecture at the Universidad Politécnica de Barcelona. However, there is no monographic study of his writing in the style of Sokratis Georgiadis’ and Detlef Mertins’ studies of Sigfried Giedion, or Nigel Whiteley’s and, more recently, Todd Gannon’s books about the writings of Reyner Banham.

Secondly, this project is significant because Modern Architecture Since 1900 has been omitted from, or misrepresented in, recent catalogues and bibliographies, and, despite the full revision the book underwent in subsequent editions, recent studies on the history of modern architecture often still refer to the first edition of the book. As one very illustrative case: on September 7, 2015 Curtis wrote an email entitled ‘Biennale XV September 2015: A Discordant Echo!!’ which he addressed to Joseph Rykwert, Peter Buchanan, and James Ackerman, among many others. In a long text, he gives his opinion about the exhibition ‘Latin America in Construction: Architecture 1955-1980’ organised by the Museum of Modern Art in New York between March 29 and July 19, 2015 and about its catalogue, where Patricio del Real “pretends to give an overview of

Introduction: Aim, Premises, Significance the literature on the subject” and resorts to a caricature of the first edition of Curtis’s book.7 Curtis continues:

The third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900 is not even mentioned in the bibliography which is quite some omission given its unparalleled treatment of Latin American architects and subjects, and given the fact that the book circulates widely in Spanish and in Portuguese. It is well known all over Latin America in its various language editions and in fact is read worldwide. Why is there no mention of it in its third edition in this Bibliography that pretends to be the most up to date text on the subject?8

With concerns about the reasons behind this absence, Curtis asks the addressees to re- open the third edition of his book and consider all the chapters that deal with Latin American architects and themes, and how “they are all placed in both local and international context, and where possible, their guiding ideas are.”9 In the epilogue to her edited book La arquitectura moderna en Latinoamérica (2016), Ana Esteban Maluenda indeed re-opens the three editions of Curtis’s book and considers all the chapters that deal with Latin America.10 Esteban shows how Latin American architecture has been accounted for by different historians of modern architecture from Hitchcock to Cohen, and concludes that it is Curtis, in the 1996 edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900, who demonstrates the deeper knowledge, grounded in his own experience, and who most thoroughly covers the development of modern architecture in different countries of Latin America.

Furthermore, none of the essays that Curtis published in the intervening years between editions, some of which are analysed in different chapters of this dissertation, appear in the anthologies on architectural theory published in 1996 by Kate Nesbitt, in 1998 by K. Michael Hays, or in 2010 by A. Krista Sykes.11 For example, Nesbitt’s stated

7 William J.R. Curtis, email message to several academic acquaintances on the occasion of the Buenos Aires Biennale, September 7, 2015. Forwarded to author on July 7, 2016. 8 Curtis, email message on the occasion of the Buenos Aires Biennale, September 7, 2015. 9 Curtis, email message on the occasion of the Buenos Aires Biennale, September 7, 2015. 10 Ana Esteban Maluenda, “Latinoamérica en la historiografía moderna,” in La arquitectura moderna en Latinoamérica, ed. Ana Esteban Maluenda (Barcelona: Reverté Editorial, 2016). 11 Kate Nesbitt, ed., Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture: An Anthology of Architectural Theory 1965-1995 (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996). K. Michael Hays, Architecture Theory Since 1968 (Cambridge, MA.: The 6

Introduction: Aim, Premises, Significance timeframe in Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture, is 1965 to 1995 (although she reproduces a 1963 essay by Giulio Carlo Argan, and the most recent ones are from 1993), which coincides in part with the delimited time period of this dissertation; nonetheless, she does not include an essay by Curtis on the development of modern architecture in the late twentieth century in any of the thematic sections. Hays’ Architecture Theory Since 1968, which follows on from Joan Ockman’s 1993 anthology spanning the years 1943 to 1968, is organised chronologically rather than thematically, but includes essays published up to 1993; Sykes follows on from Nesbitt’s work and starts Constructing a New Agenda in 1993, although, following in the footsteps of Hays, who also wrote the afterword, she orders the essays chronologically. Again, neither of these scholars includes work by Curtis.

Curtis is also omitted from Detlef Mertins’ overview of architectural history writing in the introduction to his book Modernity Unbound: Other Histories of Architectural Modernity (2011). Mertins identifies how, during the 1980s, “the pantheon of heroes was also expanded to include minor figures who had not fitted into previous master narratives,” without mentioning Modern Architecture Since 1900 as one of these inclusive narratives.12 However, even if these scholars do not include Curtis, some of the essays that Nesbitt and Hays does include allow contextualising Curtis’s approach within others written at that same time regarded as, one could argue, more successful. Finally, taking note of these omissions leads us to the third reason why this dissertation is significant: I posit that, at least in the Anglophone world, there is a lack of acknowledgment of the changes Curtis introduced to the third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900, and, therefore, a lack of assessment of its relevance. The global impact of the book in architectural history education, both in terms of sales and very early translation into other languages, seems to have prevented the book from being

MIT Press, 1998). A. Krysta Sykes, Constructing a New Agenda: Architectural Theory 1993-2009 (New York: Princeton University Press, 2010). 12 Detlef Mertins, Modernity Unbound: Other Histories of Architectural Modernity (London: AA Publications, 2011), 7. 7

Introduction: Aim, Premises, Significance considered a scholarly contribution to the historiography of modern architecture worthy of study.

This dissertation proposes to understand histories of modern architecture, and Curtis’s book in particular, through the study of their writing – that is, through historiography. The historiography of modern architecture constitutes, therefore, not only the starting point for this research, but also its methodology. In terms of methodology, this study is qualitative in nature, a comparative textual analysis and close reading of secondary sources: the three editions of Modern Architecture, and essays published by Curtis on themes including regionalism and postmodernism in the intervening years between editions. This dissertation also provides a thorough contextualisation of Curtis’s work within the disciplinary discourses of architectural history, theory, and criticism from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, and studies its possible resonances in today’s discourse. The email correspondence with Curtis that commenced in March 2016 is an original and primary source: his reflections, indications and recommended literature add originality to this research.

Following Mark Jarzombek’s argument in his review of The Historiography of Modern Architecture, this study focusses on the “historian,” on William J.R. Curtis.13 Between the late 1970s and early 1990s, historians played a critical role in defining and transforming the priorities, not only of the discipline of architectural history, but also of the practice of architecture, and Curtis was one of these historians presenting his narrative at this time. Following John Peponis’ argument, also in his review of The Historiography of Modern Architecture, this dissertation has an exploratory character: I, as a ‘cartographer,’ set myself to map the contribution Curtis made with the writing of Modern Architecture Since 1900 and several essays between the late 1970s and early 1990s. Finally, following Iain Borden’s argument in Intersections: Architectural and Critical Theory (2000), this study aims “to recognise the grounds on which the

13 Mark Jarzombek, review of The Historiography of Modern Architecture by Panayotis Tournikiotis, The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians vol 60, no. 1 (March 2001), 108. 8

Introduction: Aim, Premises, Significance historical interpretation is being made.”14 Modern Architecture Since 1900 needs to be studied in the context of the contributions to, and diverse debates on, the history and theory of architecture taking place between the 1970s and 1990s, and then positioned within the field of the writing of architectural history in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

2. From Modern to Global: A Theoretical Framework

Before studying the content of Curtis’s Modern Architecture Since 1900, it is necessary to outline a theoretical framework delimited by the time in which he was working on the writing of the book. Curtis’s book lies in a transitional period in the history of modern architecture: between the establishment of research degrees in North American schools in the 1970s, and the consolidation of the discipline as the subject matter of historiographical research in the 1990s. These developments culminated in 1999 with a major methodological reassessment of the history of modern architecture, its education, and its scholarly study in journals such as Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians and Journal of Architectural Education. The study of postcolonial theories in architecture, also at the turn of the century, challenged the previously accepted canon of architectural history by urging the development of a global history of architecture (which remains today undefined). Curtis worked on the first edition as a young researcher in North America in the late 1970s and on the definitive edition of the book in the early 1990s: Modern Architecture Since 1900 is exemplary of, and contemporary to, these developments.

Paraphrasing Pierre Bourdieu, this dissertation is an attempt to explore the limits of the theoretical box in which Curtis is imprisoned, or, at least, by which he is influenced, even if he denies any theoretical debt – just as my exploration is

14 Iain Borden, “From Chamber to Transformer: Epistemological Challenges and Tendencies in the Intersection of Architectural Histories and Critical Theories,” in Intersections: Architectural History and Critical Theory, ed. Iain Borden and Jane Rendell (London: Routledge, 2000), 6. This introductory essay was written by Iain Borden; the content is based on a two-way exchange of ideas between the two authors. 9

Introduction: From Modern to Global imprisoned in its own box.1 In order to improve the understanding of Curtis’s contribution to the writing of history, it is necessary to discuss three shifts that I detect in the history, theory and historiography of architecture from the 1970s to the 1990s.

Shift 1: Professionalisation of the Discipline of the History of Architecture It was in the 1970s that the history of modern architecture was professionalised, as multiple scholars agree. As early as 1988, Marvin Trachtenberg addressed the state of the art of recent architectural history and concluded that “there are far more well- qualified architectural scholars teaching in colleges than ever, and far more architectural surveys and period courses being taught.”2 Curtis’s book is one of those architectural surveys, and the result of the period courses he was delivering at the end of the 1970s, which are discussed in the section on ‘The Story of the Writing of Modern Architecture Since 1900’ in Chapter Two of this dissertation. Recently, Mark Jarzombek still argued the importance of remembering that “until the 1970s modern architecture did not have a dedicated scholarly ‘history,’ and how, as a proper historical field, it looked exclusively into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.”3

In 1989, Edward W. Soja talked about an “epochal transition in both critical thought and material life,” since the 1970s to the late 1980s.4 Keith L. Eggener reflects on the “vigour and range” that the study of architectural history developed during the 1960s and 1970s.5 According to him, survey courses in architectural history became a standardised part of the new postgraduate programs that had been established in both fine arts departments and schools of architecture at American universities. Eggener highlights the “intensified interdisciplinarity” of the development of architectural

1 Jorge Otero-Pailos, Architecture’s Historical Turn: Phenomenology and the Rise of the Postmodern, (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), 262. Quote from Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature, ed. Randal Johnson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 184. 2 Marvin Trachtenberg, “Some Observations on Recent Architectural History,” The Art Bulletin vol 70, no. 2 (June 1988): 208. 3 Mark Jarzombek, “Architecture: The Global Imaginary in an Antiglobal World,” Grey Room 61 (Fall 2015), 114. 4 Edward W. Soja, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (London: Verso Books, 1989), 5. 5 Keith L. Eggener, ed., American Architectural History: A Contemporary Reader (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), 11. 10

Introduction: From Modern to Global history in the 1960s and 1970s, and how this is “apparent in both the topics authors choose to work on and the methods they use to study them.”6

The development of architectural history coincided with a theoretical reassessment of modern architecture in the United States, at a time “when young architects were almost without work.” 7 According to Mary McLeod, the deteriorated economic situation “not only permitted theoretical speculation, but also further fuelled perceptions of the architect’s diminished social role.”8 Starting in 1967, several institutes for research on history and theory became active both in the United States and in Europe. In 1967, Peter Eisenman founded the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies and, also in 1967, the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta) was founded in Zürich, organising exhibitions, publications, and becoming a place to generate theory, history and scholarly research networks. The creation of new architectural history programs in key institutions in Italy, by Bruno Zevi and Manfredo Tafuri, and the aforementioned in the United States, “was paralleled by the hiring, in the 1970s, of historians by schools of architecture. ”9 From the early 1970s, and because of a world recession, there was an increase in the production of theory, a process that faded out in the 1990s; at this time, these takes on theory started to be historicised in several anthologies, inaugurated, according to Philip Ursprung, by Hanno-Walter Kruft’s Geshichte der Architekturtheorie (1985).10

The aforementioned anthologies of theory, which followed the path opened by Kruft, are also the result of the work of a second generation of scholars, which emerged in the 1980s, and began to extend the premise of postmodernist intellection in the direction

6 Eggener, American Architectural History: A Contemporary Reader, 13. 7 Mary McLeod, “Architecture and Politics in the Reagan Era: From Postmodernism to Deconstructivism,” Assemblage no. 8 (February 1989): 27. 8 McLeod, “Architecture and Politics in the Reagan Era...,” 27. 9 Mark Jarzombek, “The Disciplinary Dislocations of (Architectural) History,” in “Architectural History 1999/2000,” ed. Eve Blau, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians vol 58, no. 3 (September 1999): 489. 10 Philip Ursprung, “E-Flux Architecture presents ‘History/Theory,’” (colloquium, E-Flux, New York, November 14, 2017). Hanno-Walter Kruft, Geshichte der Architekturtheorie: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1985). A History of Architectural Theory: From Vitruvius to the Present (New York: Princenton Architectural Press, 1994). 11

Introduction: From Modern to Global of what is now called ‘theory.’11 Both generations of scholars contributed to an increased dynamism between scholarly research and architectural production. Interestingly, as Jarzombek points out, these generations of scholars writing in the midst of the postmodernist debate, “mapped out a range of work which moved, on the one hand, from a critique of contemporary postmodernist historicism toward a renewed understanding of avant-gardist history, and, on the other hand, from a critique of context toward a more vigorous understanding of postmodernist-avant- gardist ontology.” 12 Jarzombek argues that, rather than signifying an abandonment of modernism in favour of a postmodernist restructure of architecture, the expansion and intensification of the history-theory discourse between the 1970s and 1990s “served to bring modern architecture up to speed with its 0wn critical modernity, allowing for a fuller exploration of issues relating to context, gender, and politics,” not only in the practice, but also in the teaching of architecture.13

Shift 2: Change in the Readership of the History of Architecture In the transitional period between the 1970s and 1990s, one of the “tremendous” changes in the discipline of architectural history, according to Jarzombek, was how “publishing houses have defined a rapidly growing readership of art and architecture books.”14 Interestingly, it is an argument that functions both ways, because an increasing quantity of published books reflects a growth in the readership, and this growth in the readership also results in an increase in the offer made by publishing houses to meet the demand. One of the examples that could be considered a turning point towards a new readership in the field is Spiro Kostof’s A History of Architecture (1985).15 In his review of the book, John E. Hancock points out that “textbook writing, because the issues it raises have more to do with method than research, more to do with literary style than footnoted documentation, has seemed both a lost art and a

11 Jarzombek, “The Disciplinary Dislocations of (Architectural) History,” 489. 12 Jarzombek, “The Disciplinary Dislocations of (Architectural) History,” 489. 13 Jarzombek, “The Disciplinary Dislocations of (Architectural) History,” 489. 14 Jarzombek, “The Disciplinary Dislocations of (Architectural) History,” 488. 15 Spiro Kostof, A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985). 12

Introduction: From Modern to Global thankless task in today’s academic environment,”16 and Curtis’s Modern Architecture Since 1900, published three years earlier, raises similar issues: as discussed in the next chapter of this dissertation, it has a readable style that avoids footnotes – a style that may contribute to the aforementioned lack of acknowledgement by, or thanklessness of, the academic, scholarly environment. However, as Leonard Eaton points out, a textbook, regardless of its readable style, can also be “a synthesis of sound scholarship, up-to-date interpretation, and excellent analysis.”17

Eaton highlights Kostof’s argument that “all buildings are worthy of study,” and that historians have too often concentrated on major monuments.18 Sibel Bozdoğan agrees, considering Kostof’s inclusion of non-monumental and non-Western traditions in his architectural survey to have been “rightly recognised and celebrated as a monumental step.”19 She notes that similar changes permeated histories of modern architecture, and, although she does not refer directly to Curtis’s Modern Architecture Since 1900, this dissertation looks at his inclusiveness of non-Western traditions in his narrative. Kostof’s methodology for creating a successful textbook for students of history in architectural schools is very similar to Curtis’s approach, including the fact that both incorporate the first-hand experience of the architecture into their narratives; “whenever possible, Kostof has taken pains to visit the places about which he writes.”20 In his review, Hancock reflects on Kostof’s methodological approach and on his aim to write a book of unprecedented breadth:

Although in the preface Kostof writes that ‘all-inclusiveness’ was not one of the book's aims, there is enough reference elsewhere to ‘a broader, more embracing view,’ ‘the total context of architecture,’ ‘a more inclusive

16 John E. Hancock, Review of A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals by Spiro Kostof, Journal of Architectural Education vol 39, no. 3 (Spring 1986): 31. 17 Leonard K. Eaton, Review of A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals by Spiro Kostof, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, vol 39, no. 3 (March 1988): 76. 18 Eaton, Review of A History of Architecture,75. 19 Sibel Bozdoğan, “Architectural History in Professional Education: Reflections on Postcolonial Challenges to the Modern Survey,” Journal of Architectural Education, vol 52 no. 4 (May 1999): 208. 20 Eaton, Review of A History of Architecture, 76. 13

Introduction: From Modern to Global

definition,’ and the like, to conclude that inclusiveness is nevertheless the primary way in which this work is intended to differ from its predecessors.21

David Watkin’s A History of Western Architecture (1986) can be considered another result of this change in readership, as a general manual on architectural history aimed at students.22 In the preface to the fourth edition (2005), Watkin recalls how, since the first edition, he considered the book to be the “first history of Western architecture to have appeared since the demise of the certainties of the modern movement.”23 A History of Western Architecture does not include an introduction stating the aims of the author, but is organised chronologically in eleven chapters: Mesopotamia and Egypt, Greek and Roman Classical architecture, Byzantine, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Classicism in the eighteenth century, the nineteenth century, Art Nouveau, and the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. While the first half of the book is titled with clear and well-established historiographical categories, the author seems to reject labelling the last three centuries. It stands out that Art Nouveau is given its own chapter and studied thoroughly in several countries, rather than being looked at as part of the twentieth century.

In “Some Observations on Recent Architectural History” (1988), Trachtenberg, while noting “the explosion of architectural literature in recent decades,” makes no reference to this change in readership.24 He does mention that the growing interest extends to not only the architecture profession, but also to part of the educated public. In Trachtenberg’s opinion, architectural historians are at fault for wanting to keep architectural history “at arm’s length,” making their writing “heavy, obscure, or pretentious, and often concerned with technical matters understandably unpalatable or irrelevant to readers devoted to drawings, paintings and sculptures.”25 While he acknowledges that architecture is a subject not without difficulties, he criticises the

21 Hancock, Review of A History of Architecture, 31. 22 David Watkin, A History of Western Architecture (London: Laurence King Publishing, 1986). 23 David Watkin, A History of Western Architecture (London: Laurence King Publishing, 2005), 9. 24 Trachtenberg, “Some Observations on Recent Architectural History,” 208. 25 Trachtenberg, “Some Observations on Recent Architectural History,” 208. 14

Introduction: From Modern to Global majority of architectural literature for not attempting to clarify or reduce such difficulties.

In the field that, for the purposes of this dissertation, is identified as historiography of modern architecture, there is an even earlier contribution that could also be regarded as exemplary of this change in readership. In the introduction to Storia dell’architettura contemporanea (1974), Renato De Fusco explains how he aimed to make the text accessible “to all students and to everybody that approaches for the first time the history of the architecture of our time.”26 According to Esteban, “De Fusco’s objective was ‘reduction,’ which resulted in a simple systematic approach to the phenomenon, its meaning and structure.”27

Shift 3: Disciplinary Reassessments in the History of Architecture Towards the end of the twentieth century, there was a certain urge to reassess the discipline of architectural history from different points of view. Firstly, and from the early 1980s onwards, there was a growing interest in the study of its writing, culminating in 1999 with the publication of Tournikiotis’ The Historiography of Modern Architecture. Secondly, at this time the first essays were published applying postcolonial theories to architectural history, resulting in a growing interest in the global from 1999 onwards. As John Macarthur and Andrew Leach point out, “disciplines speak of customs, institutions, and genres – a whole set of conditions” – in this case, conditions that sit anterior to architectural practices, which constrain the architect’s creativity, and, I would add, the historian’s creativity.28 It is within these conditions, customs, institutions and genres that these reassessments took place.

Indeed, towards the end of the twentieth century, an insightful inventory of new perspectives and themes in architectural history was presented in special issues of the

26 Renato De Fusco, Historia de la arquitectura contemporanea (Madrid: Blume, 1981), 7. Author’s translation into English. Originally published as Storia dell’architettura contemporanea (Roma and Bari: Laterza, 1974). 27 Ana Esteban Maluenda, “Latinoamérica en la historiografía moderna,” in La arquitectura moderna en Latinoamérica, ed. Ana Esteban Maluenda (Barcelona: Reverté Editorial, 2016), 317. Author’s translation into English. 28 John Macarthur and Andrew Leach, “Architecture, Disciplinarity and the Arts: Considering the Issues,” in Architecture, Disciplinarity and the Arts, ed. John Macarthur and Andrew Leach (Ghent: A & S Books, 2009), 11. 15

Introduction: From Modern to Global

Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians and the Journal of Architectural Education, both in 1999. The scholarly editorial work contained in the two special issues of these major architectural journals can be understood as the culmination of the theoretical reassessment process initiated by the preparation and publication of theory anthologies.

Historiographical Research29

During the late 1980s and early 1990s yet another generation of historians shifted focus once more, this time to the writing of history itself and the construction of architectural discourse in the broadest sense. This foregrounded the inevitable biases of historical studies and the propensity of modernist histories to present narratives of internally coherent linear development when the reality was jagged, messy and included an ever- proliferating cast of figures and an ever-expanding field of contestations.30

Published in 1999, The Historiography of Modern Architecture is the main example of this shift in focus. Panayotis’ book is the result of a doctoral dissertation defended in 1988, and informed by the structuralism of his approach. In the introduction to his book, he includes the etymological definition of “HISTORIOGRAPHY: the writing of history, written history.”31 Jorge Otero-Pailos still defends in the epilogue to Architecture’s Historical Turn (2010), the idea that “the question is to properly account historically that those claims were made, and to grasp the manner in which they were put forth.”32 This dissertation aims to properly account historically for Curtis’s claims in Modern Architecture Since 1900, and to reflect on the manner and the context in which they were put forth, as part of the historicity of architectural intellectuality.

29 The research on Historiography was published as “The Historiography of Modern Architecture: Twenty-Five years Later,” Athens Journal of Architecture vol 1, no. 2 (April 2015): 97-110. Also published in Architectural Theory and History edited by Stavros Aligragkis and Nicholas Patricios (Athens: Athens Institute for Education and Research, 2015), 3-17. Also published in Spanish as “Después de Tournikiotis,” post-script and bibliographical appendix to the re-edition of Panayotis Tournikiotis, The Historiography of Modern Architecture (Barcelona: Reverté Editorial, 2014), 263-275, 293-294. 30 Detlef Mertins, Modernity Unbound: Other Histories of Architectural Modernity (London: AA Publications, 2011), 7-8. 31 Panayotis Tournikiotis, The Historiography of Modern Architecture (Cambridge, MA.: The MIT Press, 1999), viii. 32 Otero-Pailos, Architecture’s Historical Turn..., 251. 16

Introduction: From Modern to Global

Historiographical research reflects on the writing of history to propose a contemporary theoretical framework for discussing histories and historians. Rigorous analysis about the writing of the history of modern architecture began to be systematised in the 1980s, coinciding with the reassessment of modern architecture. David Watkin proposed one of the first itineraries through architectural history in his book The Rise of Architectural History (1980), a general overview of the field, by giving an account of documents published from 1700 to 1980 and classifying them geographically.33 In 1981, Demetri Porphyrios edited a special issue of Architectural Design ‘On the Methodology of Architectural History.’ In Italy, Maria Luisa Scalvini and Maria Grazia Sandri, analysed various histories in L’ immagine storiografica dell’architettura contemporanea da Platz a Giedion (1984), from Gustav Platz’s Die Baukunst der neuesten Zeit to Sigfried Giedion’s Space, Time and Architecture, finishing their overview in 1941. 34 In Spain, Emilia Hernández Pezzi’s Historiografía de la arquitectura moderna (1988) focussed on examples of even earlier historiography, from Adolf Behne’s Der Moderne Zweckbau to Walter Curt Behrendt’s Modern Building.35 Similar interest emerged in the United States, illustrated by Sande Cohen’s Historical Culture: On the Recording of an Academic Discipline (1986) and Peter Novick’s That Noble Dream: The ‘Objectivity Question’ and the American Historical Profession (1988).

Since then, the historiography of modern architecture has been the subject matter of international conferences and disciplinary studies. Rethinking Architectural Historiography (2006) synthesises enquiries into parameters and boundaries that arose at the conference “Architectural History: Between History and Archaeology?” – hosted by the Centre for Research in Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities and King’s College, Cambridge, in November 2003.36 Diane Favro argues in her contribution to the conference that, “after years with very little self-reflection, architectural history has

33 David Watkin, The Rise of Architecture History (London: The Architectural Press, 1980). 34 Maria Luisa Scalvini and Maria Grazia Sandri, L’ immagine storiografica dell’architettura contemporánea da Platz a Giedion (Rome: Officina Edizioni, 1984). 35 Emilia Hernández Pezzi, Historiografía de la arquitectura moderna (Madrid: Universidad Complutense, 1988). 36 Dana Arnold, Elvan Altan Ergut and Belgin Tura Özkaya, eds., Rethinking Architectural Historiography (London and New York: Routledge, 2006). 17

Introduction: From Modern to Global followed [history, art history and archaeology], producing vital publications exploring the history of the field, methods and research trends,” including Tournikiotis’ Historiography.37

In Histories of the Immediate Present (2008), Anthony Vidler discusses four categories and four historians who embodied the re-invention of architectural modernism: Neoclassical Modernism through Emil Kaufmann; Mannerist Modernism through Colin Rowe (the only historian not included in Tournikiotis’ corpus); Futurist Modernism through Reyner Banham; and Renaissance Modernism through Manfredo Tafuri.38 Vidler both praises and criticises Tournikiotis’ Historiography: on the one hand, it is an “excellent analysis,” and “must form the basis of any serious study of the works” of every historian in his corpus; on the other hand, he comments on the “structuralist” character of Tournikiotis’ approach, and on the lack of context – context which he provides in his study.39 According to Esra Akcan, Vidler’s driving force is the “ubiquitous, yet interminable, question:” “where does history stand for contemporary architecture?”40 Moreover, he ends up reflecting on history – or, in this case, on post- histoire. Andrew Leach uses the term “usefulness,” to refer to Vidler’s work regarding the possibilities of a direct relationship between history and theory.41

In The Mental Life of the Architectural Historian (2011), Gevork Hartoonian studies three authors responsible for early histories of modern architecture: Nikolaus Pevsner, Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Sigfried Giedion. 42 Hartoonian intends to examine the true nature of these histories with two aims: first, to highlight connections and differences between the history of architecture and the tradition of the history of art;

37 Diane Favro, “The digital disciplinary divide: reactions to historical virtual reality models,” in Rethinking Architectural Historiography, ed. Dana Arnold (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 200. 38 Anthony Vidler, Histories of the Immediate Present: Inventing Architectural Modernism (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008). 39 Vidler, Histories of the Immediate Present, 201, footnote 4. 40 Esra Akcan, Review of Histories of the Immediate Present: Inventing Architectural Modernism by Anthony Vidler, Journal of Architectural Education vol 62, no. 3 Criticism in Architecture (February 2009), 89. 41 Andrew Leach, What is Architectural History? (Cambridge, UK and Malden, MA: Polity Press,2010), 119. 42 Gevork Hartoonian, The Mental Life of Architectural Historian: Re-opening the Early Historiography of Modern Architecture (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011). 18

Introduction: From Modern to Global and second, to establish analytical categories for these first histories, “to sharpen the profile of a historical time that has been formative for a contemporary understanding of the project of modernity.”43 Hartoonian explores his historians’ mental lives looking at three different aspects: the influence that previous historians had on their work; the links to contemporary theory of art and architecture; and the readings that Kenneth Frampton and Manfredo Tafuri have made of their ideas and concepts. According to Hartoonian, Tournikiotis “is the first one” – and it should be added ‘the last’ – “to take into consideration the entire gamut of contemporary historiography of architecture.”44

Both Vidler and Hartoonian take into account exactly what Tournikiotis deliberately left aside in his analysis: context. According to Akcan, Vidler’s “explanations owe less to a detailed textual analysis of each historian’s works” – which is an integral part of Tournikiotis’ methodology – “than to a thorough contextualisation of each writer within the internal discourse of architectural history and criticism.”45 The same could be argued of Hartoonian’s study. It is necessary to stress the use of this word, ‘historian,’ since, according to Jarzombek in his review of Panayotis’ Historiography, this is the first book to include historians in the narrative of modern architecture. Jarzombek writes: “Panayotis Tournikiotis’ book reminds us that even at this most foundational level historians throughout the twentieth century played critical roles in defining and transforming the priorities of the modern movement.”46 Akcan agrees on the fact that, at least in Vidler’s book, “historians are treated as agents of architectural change and as prisms through which a better understanding of the period can be achieved.”47

Some of the historians of modern architecture have also been the subject matter of recent monographic studies. For instance, in 2002 Nigel Whiteley presented an in-

43 Hartoonian, The Mental Life of Architectural Historian, 1. 44 Hartoonian, The Mental Life of Architectural Historian, 6. 45 Akcan, Review of Histories of the Immediate Present, 90. 46 Mark Jarzombek, Review of The Historiography of Modern Architecture by Panayotis Tournikiotis, The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians vol 60, no. 1 (March 2001), 108. 47 Akcan, Review of Histories of the Immediate Present, 90. 19

Introduction: From Modern to Global depth discussion of Reyner Banham’s writings; in 2007 Andrew Leach published his research on Manfredo Tafuri; in 2009 Emmanuel Petit edited a volume on Philip Johnson; and in 2011 Susie Harries articulated her discourse on Nikolaus Pevsner.48 The most recent reassessment of Banham’s writing, by Todd Gannon, builds on earlier interpretations: Tournikiotis’ anti-establishment Banham, Anthony Vidler’s futurist Banham and Nigel Whiteley’s pragmatist Banham. Gannon claims that “where earlier narratives focus on Banham’s well-known impatience with disciplinary conventions, I draw attention to his simultaneous and seemingly contradictory embrace of the traditional values inscribed in those conventions.”49 Gannon’s study adds to an existing body of knowledge of Banham’s writing and explores a new point of view, which, in turn, sheds new light on previous interpretations. This dissertation, in contrast, is, to Curtis’s and my own knowledge, the first attempt at an interpretation of his writing.

Global Research

The point in architectural history is not to incorporate Indian, Chinese, Islamic and other architecture into the Western canon in some form of benign tokenism, not to discard the Western canon and replace it with works of the non-Western other. Rather, the point is to show what [Edward] Said calls “intertwined histories,” that is, to show that contrary to the basic assumption of traditional Eurocentric historiography, the Western canon and the cultural production of societies outside Europe and North America are not separate and independent. For one thing, the Western canon has been too deeply imprinted in the culture of the non-Western world for so long as to become as much their property as that of the West. At the same time, other cultures have been essential to the very definition of the Western canon: rational versus sensual qualities, tectonic versus decorative, evolutionary versus stagnant, among others.50

In the 1999 special issue of the Journal of Architectural Education, Sibel Bozdoğan reflects on the need to apply postcolonial theories to the study and education of

48 Nigel Whiteley, Reyner Banham: Historian of the Immediate Future (Cambridge, MA. and London: The MIT Press, 2002). Andrew Leach, Manfredo Tafuri: Choosing History (Gante: A&S Books, 2007). Emmanuel Petit, ed., Philip Johnson: The Constancy of Change (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009). Susie Harries, Nikolaus Pevsner: The Life (London: Chatto & Windus, 2011). 49 Todd Gannon, Reyner Banham and the Paradoxes of High Tech (Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute, 2017), 3. 50 Bozdoğan, “Architectural History in Professional Education,” 210-211. 20

Introduction: From Modern to Global architecture. It seems to Bozdoğan, and it is highlighted later on by Esra Ackan, that “an emphasis on both difference and diversity is necessary – an emphasis as much on what can be shared across cultures as on what is different,” in order to avoid discourses of identity.51 She argues that it is “in subtler instances of cross-cultural exchange through travel, trade and diplomacy as well that such intertwined histories unfold,” enabling us to understand the boundaries without homogenising the differences between cultures.52

Writing just after the turn of the century, Esra Akcan, reflects on this idea of diversity and defines the term “global neither as the antonym of geographical/regional difference, nor as the synonym of ‘generic (architecture).’”53 She frames global as a result of a complex condition and process of globalisation that produces both sameness and difference, both cross-cultural dialogues and hegemonic monologues, and an increased emphasis on local values.54 As a result of this complex process, she believes that scholars need to develop new categories and strategies, to “produce useful explanatory devices that would help us refine our knowledge about these countries,” and, I would add, incorporate them into a broad narrative of the development of architecture, in general, and of the twentieth century in particular.55 For Ackan, one of the challenges for future scholarship in the twenty-first century is to construct a new understanding of universality, one that rightly includes everyone and everything worldwide, making them feel represented by universally shared values that are not necessarily Eurocentric.56

These calls for a reconsideration of the writing and teaching of architectural history under the lens of postcolonial theories and the emergence of ‘global’ contributed to generating an increasing number of publications, some edited volumes and some

51 Bozdoğan, “Architectural History in Professional Education,” 209. 52 Bozdoğan, “Architectural History in Professional Education,” 214. 53 Esra Akcan, “Critical Practice in the Global Era: The Question Concerning ‘Other’ Geographies,” Architectural Theory Review vol 7 no. 1 (February 2002): 37. 54 Akcan, “Critical Practice in the Global Era,”37. 55 Akcan, “Critical Practice in the Global Era,” 51. 56 Akcan, “Critical Practice in the Global Era,” 54. 21

Introduction: From Modern to Global authored books, as well as the growing literature on diverse countries, as parts of what was then referred to as the ‘Other.’ At this point, it is worth bringing up again Spiro Kostof’s A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals (1985), not only as a precedent given his aforementioned inclusiveness, but also because some of the histories discussed further on were written as a reaction against his work.

Kenneth Frampton and Luis Fernández-Galiano edited large and comprehensive resources written by specialists on localised regions, the fragmented Mosaic (1999) and Atlas (2008), respectively.57 Editors Elie Haddad and David Rifkin admit to the unavoidable unbalance in the scope of their Critical History (2014): the first part presents the major theoretical developments after modernism – namely, postmodernism, deconstructivism, and postcolonial criticism in architecture, and high-tech and sustainable architecture; the second part unfolds architectural developments in different regions and countries around the world, each chapter written by a specialist scholar. To devote only a chapter to Africa, or to Latin America, does not avoid what Esra Ackan calls the homogenisation of the ‘Other.’

Broader approaches to ‘global,’ covering longer periods of time, appear in Mark Jarzombek, Vikramaditya Prakash and Francis Ching’s A Global History of Architecture (2006, second edition 2011) and Kathleen James-Chakraborty’s Architecture Since 1400 (2014). Jarzombek, Prakash and Ching established a periodisation that begins in 3500 BCE and has different intervals, discussing architectural examples of each period from around the world until the end of the twentieth century and postmodernism.58 For example, from 1400 to 1600, the Renaissance in Italy is discussed alongside architectural movements in China, Korea, Japan, Thailand and Pakistan, the production of the Ottoman Empire, and architectural production in New England and by the Incas.

57 Kenneth Frampton, ed., World Architecture: A Critical Mosaic 1900-2000 (Wien: Springer, 1999). Luis Fernández- Galiano, ed., Atlas Global Architecture circa 2000 (Fundación BBVA, 2008). 58 Mark Jarzombek, Vikramaditya Prakash and Francis D.K. Ching, A Global History of Architecture (New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons, 2006). 22

Introduction: From Modern to Global

Acknowledging the difficulty of doing justice to the complexity and variety of architecture since 1400, James-Chakraborty presents “targeted discussions of environments around the world, not privileging one continent over another as the locus of modernity or of modernism, the aesthetic expression of modernity, at any particular time.”59 Very recently, Kenneth Frampton referred to Architecture Since 1400 as a mega academic book.60 Despite its integrated inclusiveness, this survey present absences, especially of the continents of Africa and Australia-New Zealand. During the course of our communication, James- Chakraborty shared her reasons for writing the book:

I wrote Architecture Since 1400 very consciously in opposition to Kostof, the text I was using for my own survey, and to the other texts that I was being approached by publishers to use or being asked to review in manuscript. Architecture Since 1400 arose as well out of a very particular class that covered that material, rather than my Modern Architecture survey, which I construct very differently. In particular I was furious about the coverage (or lack thereof) of work by women in all of these books and manuscripts and by the sense that, even when the so-called Global South was covered that they were still seen as in some way less modern.61

The latest re-assessment of the contributions to ‘global architectural history’ undertaken by Ackan and Jarzombek, among others, engages with two debates: on the one hand, the methodological and disciplinary (meta)debate regarding architectural history, and, on the other, the debate on the appropriate content of architectural education at both the undergraduate and postgraduate level. While accepting that challenging the Western canon it is not an easy task, Akcan reviews the growing scholarly interest in rereading the history of architecture in the past twenty years, namely from 1984 to 2014, and finds that most attempts have been unsuccessful. To reshape the architectural canon in schools, and in literature, scholarship needs to go

59 Kathleen James-Chakraborty, Architecture Since 1400 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014), xviii. 60 Kenneth Frampton, “A conversation with Kenneth Frampton: Can there be a Global Architectural History today?” CCA lecture at the Paul Desmarais Theater, delivered on April 6, 2017, accessed May 11, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRWp5AqAZjs. 61 Kathleen James-Chakraborty, email message to author, June 8, 2017. 23

Introduction: From Modern to Global beyond the inclusion of a “few token examples from ‘non-Western’” architecture.62 She still advocates for an improvement of the notion of universality, for “an architecture better equipped for a global future, so that globalisation does not unfold as a new form of imperial imagination.”63

Reviewing the global history that took shape roughly between 2005 and 2015, Jarzombek points out that it “has thereby become a history through and across “localities,” when it should be something completely different.64 Jarzombek advocates for a more elastic use of ‘global,’ a concept already being reopened and rethought “precisely because we have to face the challenge of what global means or could mean in the future.”65 A global history is more than global practice, global travel and globally- scaled education, and a first step towards it needs to be the challenge of “the false duality between tradition and modernism,” being tradition and modernism “two sides of the same phenomenon,” a fact of which, according to Jarzombek, scholars are well aware – a fact which still contributes to legitimate Eurocentrism.66

Also recently, these explorations of the writing and education of a global history have resulted in not only literature but also online platforms and resources which allow us to break free from the canon and its categories. GAHTC had its origins in informal conversations between Mark Jarzombek and Vikramaditya Prakash, while they were at work on the second edition of A Global History of Architecture. It is a free, online resource of global architectural history teaching materials created and curated by a collaborative of teachers. The platform continues to develop, as has their book, which had a third edition released in 2017. The Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative is another example of platform dedicated to advancing research and education in the history and theory of architecture, by generating, presenting, and publishing

62 Esra Ackan, “Postcolonial Theories in Architecture,” in A Critical History of Contemporary Architecture: 1960- 2010, ed. Elie G. Haddad and David Rifkin (London: Ashgate, 2014), 120. 63 Ackan, “Postcolonial Theories in Architecture,” 119. 64 Jarzombek, “Architecture: The Global Imaginary in an Antiglobal World,” 111. 65 Jarzombek, “Architecture: The Global Imaginary in an Antiglobal World,” 121. 66 Jarzombek, “Architecture: The Global Imaginary in an Antiglobal World,” 117. 24

Introduction: From Modern to Global innovative scholarship from multidisciplinary perspectives. The Routledge Encyclopaedia of Modernism was launched on May 9, 2016, as a large and comprehensive resource with over a thousand articles from experts in the field that cover eight key subject areas, including architecture. The current 64 entries on architecture cover mainly individual architects (a majority of them from Japan and countries in Latin America), groups, movements, and schools.

Research concerning the global and world histories of architecture brings the theoretical framework of this dissertation to the present. From 29 November to 1 December 2017, a workshop was run, entitled: ‘World Histories of Architecture: The Emergence of a New Genre in the Nineteenth Century.’ The workshop was organised by The Lorentz Center, and chaired by Christopher Drew Armstrong (University of Pittsburgh), Martin Bressani (McGill University) and Petra Brouwer (UvA Amsterdam). The aims were twofold: firstly, to contribute to contemporary scholarship of global architectural history by enhancing historical and theoretical understanding of global architectural narratives; and secondly, to recover the reflections of the original authors on the original survey texts, and shed a new light on the origins of the genre. Both James-Chakraborty and Jarzombek contributed to offering new perspectives on world architectural history today by reflecting and commenting on issues raised at the preceding sessions. During the course of my communication with James-Chakraborty, she recalls:

The focus was on nineteenth century surveys and more particularly on those written in English, French, German and Dutch. The authors discussed included Louisa Tuthill and Banister Fletcher, Choisy and a number of Germans, including Lübke and Kugler. Issues discussed included the print technology of the time (Mari Hvattum gave a paper on popular journals) and exhibitions (Barry Bergdoll), but it was largely on how the world was covered (or not), on the approach taken and on who the audiences were. I was asked, along with Mark Jarzombek and Dell Upton, to contribute our perspective on the state of these surveys today, as, since the appearance of Kostof, there has been a revival of more inclusive texts.67

67 Kathleen James-Chakraborty, email message to author, December 03, 2017. 25

Introduction: From Modern to Global

While the disciplinary debate looked into ‘interdisciplinarity’ or ‘transdisciplinarity,’ and the inclusion of new media and tools, Curtis was and still is an advocate for going back to architectural principles and values, and of first-hand experience of the buildings he includes in his narrative. While the inclusiveness of his historical narrative was unprecedented in comparison to contemporary and subsequent historians, Curtis’s Modern Architecture Since 1900 is not referred to or cited by the aforementioned authors urging to challenge the Western canon and to write an ‘intertwined history.’

3. Positioning Modern Architecture Since 1900 in the Historiography1

Following on from the previously drafted general theoretical framework of the historiography, history and theory of architecture at the end of the twentieth century, this section situates Modern Architecture Since 1900 within the context of histories of modern architecture written in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. A brief overview points out what the main contribution of each text is considered to be, and what impact different theoretical trends have had on the writing of history. In addition, Curtis’s commentary on the different histories, included in the book’s bibliographical note, sheds light on his own reception of the histories; it may even be a way to infer his unacknowledged theoretical debts. Most importantly, by emphasising what previous histories lacked, Curtis highlights what he considers to be the originality of his own contribution. This section’s starting point is the histories selected by Panayotis Tournikiotis to be included in the corpus of his book, The Historiography of Modern Architecture (1999).2 Tournikiotis’ work catalogues books written until the

1 Parts of this section were published as Macarena de la Vega, “A Tale of Inconsistency: The Absence and Presence of Australia in the Historiography of Modern Architecture,” Fabrications vol 28, no. 1 (February 2018): 47-76. 2 Panayotis Tournikiotis, The Historiography of Modern Architecture (Cambridge, MA.: The MIT Press, 1999). My take on the book and its subsequent impact has been published as Macarena de la Vega, “The Historiography of Modern Architecture: Twenty-Five Years Later,” Athens Journal of Architecture vol 1 no 2 (April 2015): 97-110. It was also published in Spanish as the postscript to the latest edition of the book. 26

Introduction: Positioning Modern Architecture Since 1900

1980s by historians based in Europe and North America, a list that has been extended and updated by subsequent historiographical research.3

What we now call ‘modern architecture’ became visible as a phenomenon in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century and its naming was consolidated with an exhibition held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA) in 1932, entitled ‘Modern Architecture: International Exhibition’ organised by American architectural historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock and American critic Philip Johnson. In the introduction to the exhibition’s catalogue, the museum’s director at the time, Alfred Barr, announces a “new style” disseminating around the world that has been called International Style.4 However, ‘international’ at that time referred to works built exclusively by central European, American, and Japanese architects.

Hitchcock and Johnson also co-authored the book The International Style (1932).5 In the book, they included more architects than in the catalogue, and they also included countries with an incipient modern architecture, at that time, like Spain, but excluded Japan. Hitchcock himself revisited the significance of this book in his subsequent work Architecture: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (1955) and in the prologue to the later edition of The International Style.6 According to Hitchcock, the book’s significance lay less in its content than in its timely appearance. Despite not being, according to Panayotis Tournikiotis, a history of modern architecture The International Style needs to be part of this overview as “a work of history” and one of the most influential on subsequent interpretations.7

3 See Ángel Isac, “La historia de la arquitectura del siglo XX: modelos historiográficos,” in Lecciones de los maestros: aproximación histórico-critica a los grandes historiadores de la arquitectura española, ed. Maria Pilar Biel Ibáñez and Ascensión Hernández Martínez (Zaragoza: Institución ‘Fernando El Católico’ y Universidad de Zaragoza, 2009), 35- 58 and Ana Esteban Maluenda, “Latinoamérica en la historiografía moderna,” in La arquitectura moderna en Latinoamérica, ed. Ana Esteban Maluenda (Barcelona: Reverté Editorial, 2016), 291-339. 4 Catalogue Modern Architecture: International Exhibition (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1932). 5 Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, The International Style: Architecture Since 1922 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1932). 6 Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Architecture: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1958). Reprinted with foreword and appendix by Hitchcock, The International Style (New York: W. W. Norton, 1966). 7 Tournikiotis, The Historiography of Modern Architecture, 142. 27

Introduction: Positioning Modern Architecture Since 1900

In fact, Hitchcock’s Modern Architecture: Romanticism and Reintegration (1929), 8 can be considered the first history of modern architecture with an international ambition, and, at the time of its publication, the only one written in English and not in German as was customary during the 1920s.9 These previous histories, written in German and copiously illustrated, included Walter Gropius’ Internationale Architektur (1925), Adolf Behne’s 1923. Der moderne Zweckbau (1925), Walter Curt Behrendt’s Der Sieg des neuen Baustils (1927), Ludwig Hilberseimer’s Internationale neue Baukunst (1927), Gustav Platz’s Baukunst der neusten Zeit (1927), Sigfried Giedion’s Bauen in Frankreich (1928), and Bruno Taut’s Die neue Baukunst in Europa und Amerika (1929). With the exceptions of Giedion and the art critic Behne, these authors were all practising architects. According to Curtis, Hitchcock and Johnson’s selection of buildings in The International Style could have been influenced by this early historiography. He argues that “Hitchcock and Johnson attempted to characterise the predominant visual modes in a selection of modern architectural works, and to relate these to structural effects of concrete and steel,” dismissing buildings which did not follow these premises.10 For Curtis, their emphasis was purely stylistic.

In 1933, the Austrian art historian Emil Kaufman published Von Ledoux bis Le Corbusier: Ursprung und Entwicklung der autonomen Achitektur.11 There is a lack of consensus regarding its inclusion in the different historiographical studies discussed in the previous section, however, a close reading of it suggests that, for the purposes of this dissertation, the book should be reconsidered as a history of modern architecture. The investigation into Von Ledoux bis Le Corbusier was the subject matter of my Master’s dissertation, which demonstrated Kaufmann’s preference for the architecture

8 Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Modern Architecture: Romanticism and Reintegration (New York: Payson & Clarke, 1929). 9 This idea is fully explored in Macarena de la Vega, “A Historical Legacy: Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Early Modernism,” Cuaderno de Notas no. 16 (July 2015): 73-78. DOI 10.20868/cn.2015.3119. It was also published in Spanish as the postscript to the latest edition of the book Arquitectura moderna: romanticismo y reintegración. 10 William J.R. Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900 (Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1996), 690. 11 Emil Kaufmann, Von Ledoux bis Le Corbusier: Ursprung und Entwicklung der autonomen Architektur (Vienna: Rolf Passer, 1933). 28

Introduction: Positioning Modern Architecture Since 1900 of the Age of Reason, and in this case, for the architecture of Claude-Nicolas Ledoux.12 Writing in the early 1930s, Kaufmann claims that “an interpretation of current architecture’s essence cannot be the object of historical research.”13 His work on the architects of the Enlightenment opens a wider understanding of modernity and establishes him as a transitional figure between the generation of art historians who established fundamental concepts and principles, like Heinrich Wölfflin and Paul Frankl, and others of his own generation who began considering modern architecture as a subject of historical research.

Following the MoMA exhibition, the field of the historiography of modern architecture began to gather momentum when the German art historian Nikolaus Pevsner published Pioneers of the Modern Movement: from William Morris to Walter Gropius (1936) in London, 14 after being forced to resign his lectureship at the University of Göttingen by the Nazis. It took Pevsner thirteen years, a selection of new images, and several corrections to publish the second edition, in which the main change was not to the content but the title – changed Movement to Design.15 Pevsner substantially revised Pioneers of Modern Design in 1960, including a new paragraph at the end summarising what had happened since 1914, where his account of modern architecture ended.16 Indeed, he did not see the point in looking beyond 1914.17 According to Curtis, “Pevsner traced the impact of Morris’ moral ideas and of nineteenth-century engineering on formulations around the turn of the century,” implying that selected buildings by Auguste Perret, Peter Behrens, Josef Hoffmann, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Gropius

12 A summary of the master’s dissertation is published as Macarena de la Vega, “Reconsidering Emil Kaufmann’s Von Ledoux bis Le Corbusier,” Cuaderno de Notas no. 15 (July 2014): 110-118. 13 Emil Kaufmann, De Ledoux a Le Corbusier: Origen y desarrollo de la arquitectura autónoma (Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 1982), 94. Author’s translation into English. 14 Nikolaus Pevsner, Pioneers of the Modern Movement: from William Morris to Walter Gropius (London: Faber & Faber, 1936). 15 Nikolaus Pevsner, Pioneers of Modern Design: from William Morris to Walter Gropius (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1949). 16 Third edition revised and expanded, Pioneers of Modern Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1960). 17 Nikolaus Pevsner, “Architecture in Our Time, the Anti-pioneers,” The Listener, no. 29 (December 1966). 29

Introduction: Positioning Modern Architecture Since 1900

“were part of a saga, resulting in what Pevsner felt was the true rational style of the twentieth century.”18

When Swiss art historian and critic Sigfried Giedion published Space, Time and Architecture (1941) the book expanded on Pevsner’s vision: first, it highlighted the importance of engineering works, and, second, it considered modern architecture until 1940.19 Giedion’s account, like Pevsner’s, is characterised by his commitment to the architecture of the early twentieth century, which he was historicising. For Sibel Bozdoğan, the book is the “epitome” of the classical surveys of modern architecture, and it perpetuated a position which represented “twentieth-century European modernism as the unique and rational expression of modern industrial society and the teleological destiny of architectural development everywhere else.”20 As Detlef Mertins pointed out in 2011, “thirty or forty years ago, architectural history was dominated by a few major books on modern architecture that provided narratives of epochal identity along with introductions to major figures, movements and themes.”21 Giedion’s book replaced Pevsner’s Pioneers as the history of modern architecture.

Two further editions of Space, Time and Architecture were published without much modification in 1949 and 1954. The fourth edition appeared in 1962, with a new preface where Giedion explained why he had refused to add a second volume with the more recent works, and a brief introduction to the architectural climate of the 1960s. Four years later, Giedion prepared a new edition with numerous changes to the entire text and significant additions. Curtis observes similarities between Pevsner’s and Giedion’s approaches. According to him, Giedion “believed it was the historian’s task to characterise the ‘constituent’ facts of a period, those which supposedly represented the

18 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 690. 19 Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a new Tradition (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1941). 20 Sibel Bozdoğan, “Architectural History in Professional Education: Reflections on Postcolonial Challenges to the Modern Survey,” Journal of Architectural Education vol 52, no. 4 (May 1999): 208. 21 Detlef Mertins, Modernity Unbound: Other Histories of Architectural Modernity (London: AA Publications, 2011), 5-6. 30

Introduction: Positioning Modern Architecture Since 1900

‘spirit of the age,’ and to ignore the rest.”22 Curtis comments on Giedion’s emphasis on the role of new materials and a new concept of space. Although he is also very critical of the latest editions of Space, Time and Architecture for being “selective tracts in favour of a cause with which Giedion was directly involved,”23 Curtis regards the book as “extremely powerful” for its influence on more than a generation’s view of modern architecture.24

According to Curtis, the historian’s perspective changed after the Second World War when a younger generation of historians “became conscious of the symbolic and ideological flavour of modern architecture.”25 The first book of the post-war period is Storia dell’architettura moderna (1950) by the Italian architect Bruno Zevi.26 His aim is to address other strands of modern architecture – architects and buildings outside of the canon established by the early historians. Zevi did not follow their methodology, contesting without totally rejecting their positions. According to Jean-Louis Cohen, in his Storia Zevi explores the relationship between architecture and politics, and considers a wide range of buildings.27

Zevi revised and updated his history in subsequent editions, incorporating more facts, comments, and images almost until his death in 2000. Despite his inclusiveness regarding architects and buildings that had been neglected by previous historians, he was not concerned with countries and regions outside of Europe and the United States, with the exception of Brazil and their reception of Le Corbusier’s work. In Curtis’s opinion, Zevi belongs to an entirely different historiographical tradition, and his book, which gave previously neglected Frank Lloyd Wright a central role, “was pervaded by the author’s strong commitment to dynamic spatial values as a measure of a

22 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 690. 23 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 690. 24 Curtis, Le Corbusier, 10. 25 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 690. 26 Bruno Zevi, Storia dell’architettura moderna (Turin: Einaudi, 1950). 27 Jean-Louis Cohen, L’architecture au futur depuis 1889/ The Future of Architecture since 1889 (Paris: Phaidon, 2012). 31

Introduction: Positioning Modern Architecture Since 1900 supposedly ‘organic’ cultural synthesis.”28 Curtis understands Zevi’s polemics to be a consequence of their time, and highlights the significance of underlying spatial concepts in the Italian’s reading of modern architecture.

Hitchcock wrote the aforementioned Architecture: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (1958) in London so that he could visit buildings throughout Europe. An interesting feature of the 1958 edition is that the images in their entirety are grouped at the end – organised by relations and similarities, not by countries – building a graphic discourse as significant as the written one. The graphic discourse was suppressed in 1971 when the images were integrated into the main body of the text. The last edition of Hitchcock’s book (1977) included an epilogue on works and architects since 1958. Architects “unknown internationally” in the mid-1950s whose work was “of rising consequence” in the 1960s are not included in the main body of the text because Hitchcock was not interested in merely listing names.29 According to Curtis, this book constitutes “sound scholarship of an undaring kind” and belongs to “that tradition of art history which concentrates on the description of stylistic movements.” Curtis characterises Hitchcock’s approach to architectural history as “safe,” as one that “tacitly assumes that one should group together things that look alike and trace the influence of one architect’s style on the work of others.”30 While he criticises the book’s neglect of the social role of architecture and the fact that “even individual artistic personalities were blended into ‘phases’ and ‘developments,’” he also praises the good bibliography and useful notes.31 Overall, Curtis describes Architecture: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries as a “weighty reference work.”32

Meanwhile, the 1960s were characterised by a new historiographical perspective. According to Tournikiotis, history became then the means to accentuate the

28 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 690. 29 Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Architecture: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977), 578. 30 William J.R. Curtis, Le Corbusier: The Evolution of his Architectural Language and its Crystallisation in the Villa Savoye in Poissy (Milton Keynes: The Open University Press, 1975), 9. 31 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 690. 32 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 690. 32

Introduction: Positioning Modern Architecture Since 1900 weaknesses of the modern movement and to search for a different architecture.33 One of the best examples of this historiographic shift is Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (1960) by British art historian Reyner Banham,34 a student of both Pevsner and Giedion.35 Banham believed that modern architects had not been able to make the best of the technology of their time. In Mertins’ opinion, Banham “took issue with machine symbolism,” and for this reason, he focussed on rationalism, futurism and the American inventor Buckminster Fuller.36 For Curtis, this book is “remarkable” and grounded on “a sounder documentary foundation than its predecessors, as it was based on theoretical texts of the first three decades” of the twentieth century and on statements made by the architects, rather than on the analysis of forms.37 Curtis sees in Banham a “far greater awareness of symbolic meanings,”38 which refuted Pevsner’s idea of a “sort of universal ‘rational’ style of the twentieth century.”39 The criticism that the book received for its Eurocentrism, its treatment of Wright and its almost total avoidance of politics resulted, in Curtis’s opinion, from critics not properly understanding Banham’s aims. The most recent reassessment of Banham’s writing by Todd Gannon, “reveals another Banham, one committed not only to discrediting entrenched conventions and dissolving disciplinary boundaries but also to maintaining and strengthening core traditions and values.”40

The next historian in this overview, Leonardo Benevolo, had been educated as architect and historian with the histories by Pevsner, Giedion, and even Zevi. In Storia dell’architettura moderna (1960) Benevolo studies modern architecture’s origins in the profound changes that occurred around 1750, and its consolidation around 1919 with

33 Tournikiotis, The Historiography of Modern Architecture, 169. 34 Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (London: The Architectural Press, 1960). 35 Mertins, Modernity Unbound, 6. 36 Mertins, Modernity Unbound, 6. 37 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 690. 38 Curtis, Le Corbusier, 10. 39 Curtis, Le Corbusier, 11. 40 Todd Gannon, Reyner Banham and the Paradoxes of High Tech (Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute, 2017), 3-4. 33

Introduction: Positioning Modern Architecture Since 1900 the Bauhaus.41 His aim is to address the present, and he updates the content in the subsequent editions (the 32nd edition appeared in 2014, three years before his death) with significant additions such as chapters on specific countries written by other historians. Unlike Giedion’s, Benevolo’s book consists of two volumes, the second one dedicated to the twentieth century. He places even more emphasis than Giedion on the industrial vernacular and modern town planning, “subsuming leading figures and high design within broader societal and environmental transformations.”42 Benevolo extended both Giedion’s and Zevi’s treatments of the nineteenth century, highlighting “the reformist roots of modern architecture and urbanism, and the crises following from industrialisation,” according to Curtis.43 He argues that Benevolo’s Storia lacks a close analysis of individual works and includes political debates surrounding the modern movement.

Just five years later, the British architect and historian Peter Collins published Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture (1750- 1950).44 In Collins’ account, the modern movement crystallised in 1890 due to the appearance of the technological innovations that formalised the ideas (and ideals) of Enlightenment, and not in the 1920s and 1930s, as claimed by previous historians. As was the case with Benevolo, Curtis observes in Collin’s work an emphasis on ideas, rather than forms. Furthermore, in this book, Collins blames previous authors for having merely focussed on image and appearance. Thus, Curtis claims that Collins’ Changing Ideals “must be counted among the seminal works of modern architectural scholarship.” 45

The Italian architect and historian Manfredo Tafuri ended the decade with Teorie e storia dell’architettura (1968). 46 He proposed a critique of architecture, which, according to Tournikiotis, he understood as the means for a revolutionary education

41 Leonardo Benevolo, Storia dell’architettura moderna (Bari: Laterza, 1960). 42 Mertins, Modernity Unbound, 6. 43 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 690. 44 Peter Collins, Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture (1750-1950), (London: Faber & Faber, 1965). 45 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 691. 46 Manfredo Tafuri, Teorie e storia dell’architettura (Bari: Laterza, 1968). 34

Introduction: Positioning Modern Architecture Since 1900 aiming at a radical shift in the capitalist society. Surprisingly, Curtis does not even mention this book in his bibliographical note.

The field of the historiography of modern architecture expands in the following decade in the work of the American architectural theorist and landscape architect Charles Jencks. Modern Movements in Architecture (1973) is the result of his doctoral dissertation supervised by Banham, whose Theory and Design in turn was the result of his (Banham’s) doctoral dissertation supervised by Pevsner.47 The book sets a new critical standard and radically rejects the early historiographical interpretations of the modern movement. Jencks adds a new label, ‘late modern,’ to classify works that did not follow the Modern orthodoxy, but could not be considered postmodern.

When compared with previous histories, Renato De Fusco’s Storia dell’architettura contemporanea (1974) was meant to be read by students and a generally unspecialised audience, and is one of the examples of the change in readership experienced in the field, which was discussed in the previous section of this dissertation.48 As a result, he presents a reduced, basic, and systematic organisation of modern architecture, its significance, and structure. Also in Italy, Tafuri and Francesco Dal Co published Architettura contemporanea (1976) as part of a universal history of architecture coordinated by Pier Luigi Nervi.49 This book, which Curtis regards as “lavish,” focusses on the development of the modern industrial city mainly American and European, rather than on buildings or architects.50 Curtis writes:

The authors were proud to announce their Marxist affiliations and to mar any pretence at objectivity in a social polemic. Even so, their treatment of American and Soviet city planning was most useful. However, the years after 1950 were given little coverage and next to nothing was said about architecture outside Europe and the United States.51

47 Charles Jencks, Modern Movements in Architecture (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973). 48 Renato De Fusco, Storia dell’architettura contemporanea (Roma and Bari: Laterza, 1974). 49 Manfredo Tafuri and Francesco Dal Co, Modern Architecture (London: Academia Editions, 1980). Architettura contemporanea (Milan: Electa, 1976). 50 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 691. 51 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 691. 35

Introduction: Positioning Modern Architecture Since 1900

Also in 1976, Pevsner published A History of Building Types (1979), whose new approach is mentioned in this overview despite the fact that Curtis does not discuss it. All in all, it can be seen that, although the different histories published between the 1930s and 1980 differ significantly in the definition, origin and key figures that they ascribe to modernism, their authors, at least Pevsner, Giedion, Banham and Benevolo, conveyed the belief that “modern architecture was a single unified historical phenomenon.”52 Even if, in most cases, the intention was to challenge pre-existing formulations, even to reject or contradict them, they ended up surrendering to the codification of modern architecture. Just as a new generation of architects were challenging the leadership of the masters, a new generation of historians began to crack the monolithic construct of modern architecture. In Mertins’ historiographical periodisation, Joseph Rykwert’s The First Moderns (1980), Tafuri’s The Sphere and the Labyrinth (1980), and Anthony Vidler’s The Writing of the Walls: Architectural Theory of the Late Enlightenment (1987) offered alternatives of great complexity and irresolution. Mertins highlights Kenneth Frampton’s effort to include architectural figures who did not fit previous narratives, such as Alvar Aalto, Giuseppe Terragni and Erich Mendelsohn, in his history. He does not discuss Curtis.

The first edition of Frampton’s Modern Architecture: A Critical History (1980) covers the period from 1750, which he identifies as the origin of modern architecture, to the end of the 1970s.53 It has been considered “both a history and a collection of essays”54 and to have replaced Giedion’s book as the primary survey of modern architecture.55 In the plenary talk at the 2018 conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Frampton reflected on the book, “which aside from being an operative history of the rise and fall of the Modern Movement, was also the agency with which I first observed the inroads made into architecture by the advent of high-speed film and the impact

52 Mertins, Modernity Unbound, 6. 53 Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History (London: Thames and Hudson, 1980). 54 Maluenda, “Latinoamérica en la historiografía moderna,” 319. Author’s translation into English. 55 Bozdoğan, “Architectural History in Professional Education,” 209. 36

Introduction: Positioning Modern Architecture Since 1900 that this invention had on both our reception and conception of architecture.”56 Frampton reflects on different concepts and relates them to build his discourse, organised thematically and not chronologically. The second edition, appeared in 1985 with an extra chapter on ‘Critical Regionalism: Modern Architecture and Cultural Identity,’ and the third appeared in 1992 with another chapter on ‘World Architecture and Reflective Practice.’ In the introduction to the third revised edition, “Frampton makes an apology for not having included recent work from India, Australia, Canada, Latin America, and the Middle East.”57 Frampton added a chapter on ‘Architecture in the Age of Globalisation: Topography, Morphology, Sustainability, Materiality, Habitat, and Civic Form 1975-2007’ to the fourth edition of Modern Architecture: A Critical History (2007). As with Curtis, there are differences between the three editions of Frampton’s book, both of them being British architectural historians and critics disseminating their research from American institutions. In Curtis’s opinion, Frampton’s was another book, together with Tafuri’s and Dal Co’s Architettura contemporanea, “which emphasised ideology at the expense of other matters and which did not address the problems of ‘developing countries.’”58

As a result of his seamless relationship with the Spanish editorial scene, Curtis is aware of the publication of Después del movimiento moderno, arquitectura de la segunda mitad del siglo XX (1993) written by the Spanish architect and historian Josep Maria Montaner.59 The book was first translated into Italian in 1996, but it is not available in English. The author proposes a periodisation divided into three phases: revisions and continuities between 1945 and 1965; postmodernism: and the different positions that characterised architecture between 1977 and 1992. For Curtis, Montaner’s is one of the first attempts to clarify the overall shape of the years since 1970, “but the closer it gets to the present the more it relies upon questionable critical categories, and the less it

56 Kenneth Frampton, Plenary Talk at the 71st Annual International Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, in Saint Paul, Minnesota, delivered on Friday, April 20, 2018. Published on May 21, 2018. 57 Bozdoğan, “Architectural History in Professional Education,” 209. 58 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 691. 59 Josep Maria Montaner, Después del movimiento moderno, arquitectura de la segunda mitad del siglo XX (Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 1993). 37

Introduction: Positioning Modern Architecture Since 1900 analyses actual buildings or specifically architectural ideas.”60 Although in subsequent editions Montaner looks at minimalism and ecology in architecture, the book still lacks coverage of the cultures of the third world.

The next two works embody the field of architectural historiography in the early twenty-first century, and, hence, are not commented on in Curtis’s bibliographical note. The British architect and scholar Alan Colquhoun wrote Modern Architecture (2002) as emeritus professor of architecture at Princeton University.61 His aim was to summarise the main ideas and most relevant works up to the year 1965, which means that he did not attempt to clarify the situation of architecture after 1970. Still, even at the beginning of the twenty-first century, Colquhoun continued the tradition of writing about modern architecture focussing on experiences in central Europe, the United States, Japan, and, very briefly, Latin America, and presented a succinct overview of modern architecture, neglecting the architecture in developing countries.

Based in New York like Frampton, the French historian Jean-Louis Cohen wrote the most recent history of modern architecture to date, L’architecture au futur depuis 1889 (2012).62 He is interested in expanding the field to include art, urbanism and technology and to understand the ideas and narratives behind both built and unbuilt architectural projects. Cohen’s narrative highlights the importance of everything that has to do with France and the French colonies, beginning at “the title that marks the beginning of what he confusingly names ‘the future of architecture’ in 1889 – year of the International Exhibition in Paris which commemorated the storming of the Bastille and the most iconic legacy of which is the Eiffel Tower.”63

60 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 691. 61 Alan Colquhoun, Modern Architecture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). 62 Jean-Louis Cohen, L’architecture au futur depuis 1889/ The Future of Architecture since 1889 (Paris: Phaidon, 2012). 63 Luis Fernández-Galiano, “La óptica francesa: otra historia del siglo XX,” Arquitectura Viva, no. 144 (2012): 77. Author’s translation into English. 38

Introduction: Positioning Modern Architecture Since 1900

One of the most recent contributions to the field is David Rivera’s La otra arquitectura moderna: expresionistas, metafísicos y clasicistas 1910-1950 (2017).64 The book aims to remind us of the range of architectural proposals during the first half of the twentieth century, outside of the ideological orthodoxy of the modern movement, and even of its opposite, a historicism which only copied the past. As Paul Goldberger points out in the prologue to the book, “key figures such as Michel de Klerk, Edwin Lutyens and Jože Plečnik used historical forms to create a completely new architecture, which, for all intents and purposes, lacked any precedent.”65 Interestingly, de Klerk and Lutyens, as well as Raymond Hood, whose work Rivera also highlights, are already present in the first edition of Curtis’s book. The third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900 presented an expansion of their analysis and the addition of Plečnik. Still, Rivera adds Curtis, though to a lesser degree than Henry-Russell Hitchcock, to the list of most read and influential historians whose work “diminished or underrated the vast majority of the architectural production of the first half of the twentieth century.”66 No reference is made in La otra arquitectura moderna to Curtis’s analysis and discussion of that ‘other’ modern architecture.

In summary, and for the purpose of this study, the difference between architectural history and historiography is key. The history of architecture is a discipline initiated at the beginning of the twentieth century, but ‘professionally’ established in the 1970s, as claimed by Mark Jarzombek and discussed in the previous section of this chapter. In this dissertation, the terms ‘history’ and ‘histories’ are also used to refer to specific books written by historians who gave their accounts of modern architecture. Historiography is understood in this dissertation, following Tournikiotis’ premise, as the study of the writing of history, as well as the specific books written by scholars who study the writing of different historians.

64 David Rivera, La otra arquitectura moderna: expresionistas, metafísicos y clasicistas 1910-1950 (Barcelona: Reverté Editorial, 2017). 65 Rivera, La otra arquitectura moderna, 8. Author’s translation into English. 66 Rivera, La otra arquitectura moderna, 13. Author’s translation into English. 39

Introduction: Positioning Modern Architecture Since 1900

Firstly, before the post-Second World War era, the histories of modern architecture were written by art historians with specific architectural knowledge and training, and after it, by architects with specific historical knowledge and training. Curtis is one of the exceptions, given that he – like, for example, Banham – received his early training in Art History, followed by a postgraduate specialisation in architecture. As pointed out by Jean-Louis Cohen, each history of modern architecture, as a narrative, “carried its own particular biases,” in what he has called “the problem of inclusion.”67 In order to study each particular bias, he refers to the previously discussed historiographical studies, clarifying the difference between history and historiography that has been used to construct this thesis. Modern Architecture Since 1900 is the history that the historiographical study proposed in this dissertation attempts to map

4. Overview of the Study

The previous sections in this chapter lay down the foundations of this study of the contribution of Curtis’s history Modern Architecture Since 1900 to the field of the historiography of modern architecture, and clarify that in this dissertation the ‘histories’ are the books, and ‘historiography,’ is the study of their writing. Chapter Two focusses, firstly, on the book’s editorial life, the different editions and very early translations into other languages which have resulted in the book’s global impact as a foundational text for architectural students worldwide. The first Spanish translation appeared in 1986, followed by German and Japanese translations before the end of the 1980s. There are also translations of the third edition of the book into Italian, French, Portuguese and Chinese. In Chapter Two, I discuss the different reviews of the three editions and the main points they raise, not only in relation to the content of the book but also to Curtis’s own experience of writing and, later on, rewriting the book. The section ‘The Story of the Writing of Modern Architecture Since 1900’ summarises Curtis’s own personal experiences, from the 1970s, when, as a recent graduate and young scholar, was commissioned to write the book, to the 1990s when he prepared

67 Cohen, L’architecture au futur depuis 1889/ The Future of Architecture since 1889, 15. 40

Introduction: Overview the revision, reorganisation and expansion of the content in preparation for the third edition, with a special emphasis on the travels he made and the books he published in the intervening years. Some points reviewers make are not accurate if confronted with both the content of the book and Curtis’s recollections; on the other hand, some points raised by reviewers are acted upon by Curtis in the revision and reorganisation of the content for the third edition of the book.

In this dissertation I will look at the topics of regionalism and postmodernism, in two thematic chapters, Chapter Three and Chapter Four, respectively. I will ask the questions: How do reviewers respond to Curtis’s account of regionalism and postmodernism in the book (if they do)? Secondly, what are the differences between the three editions of the Modern Architecture Since 1900 regarding Curtis’s account of regionalism and postmodernism? Thirdly, and since both notions were being formulated and theorised at the time when Curtis was writing and including them in his history, in what terms were other historians and theorists discussing regionalism and postmodernism? Each thematic chapter concludes by contextualising Curtis’s narrative in relation to other theoretical approaches or considerations debated and published within the delimited timeframe, from around 1978 to 1993-94.

In the case of regionalism, I have studied these differences between the three editions of Modern Architecture Since 1900 using as examples three countries outside of what could be considered the ‘Western’ canon: Greece in the periphery of Europe; Turkey as a region that receives influences from Asia, Europe and the North of Africa; and Australia, in the Asia-Pacific region. In the first edition, both Turkish and Greek architecture are merely mentioned as inspiration for modern masters and it is not until the third edition that Curtis addresses Turkish and Greek modern architecture; by contrast, in the case of Australia the account is relatively complete from the first edition, although with important additions in the definitive one. In the third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900, Curtis develops his argument for a more inclusive understanding of the notion of universalism, or for a ‘blend of universalisms,’ instead of regionalism, to fight the peripheral character of the term.

Introduction: Overview

There is also a certain development in Curtis’s argument on postmodernism between the three editions: in the first edition, Curtis regards postmodernism as a mood; he claims that those who view postmodernism as a distinct and significant movement are claiming a degree of originality for it that is, in his opinion, excessive. Writing the third edition in the early 1990s, and looking back at the intervening years, Curtis claims that postmodernism proved to be ephemeral and was characterised by an arbitrariness that resulted in a useless modernism/postmodernism debate. In his opinion, postmodern critique was another crisis preceding a new phase in the consolidation of modern architecture; it was yet another reorientation to re-examine certain core ideas of modern architecture, hinting at a certain continuity.

The notions of regionalism and postmodernism are, in his narrative, two sides of the same coin – he contrasts an authentic regionalism with the lack of authenticity in postmodernist production. Curtis’s treatment of regionalism and postmodernism exemplifies his methodological approach to the architecture of the late twentieth century, which he critiques based on the criterion of authenticity, a nebulous category which he links to immutable architectural values and on his own first-hand experiences around the world. The Cambridge Dictionary defines authenticity as “the quality of being real or true.” Curtis uses the notion of authenticity in architecture to identify buildings as worthy of acceptance or not, by the standards of his own definition. Curtis relates the authenticity of a building to the authorship/agency of the architect, rather than to the building’s fidelity to a possible original, a different understanding of authenticity to that used in the field of architectural preservation.

The discussion in Chapter Five revolves around two important issues that the comparative thematic analysis raised: Curtis’s own understanding of history, and the formulation of what he refers to as ‘a modern tradition.’ With regard to Curtis’s understanding of history, I will look at his recurrent reflections on the task of history and the roles of the historian in Modern Architecture Since 1900 and in his research papers written in the intervening years between editions. The reflection on Curtis’s mapping of the architecture of the late twentieth century, of the recent past, raises the

Introduction: Overview issue of balancing the role of the historian with that of the critic. By discussing Curtis’s stance on the writing of history, this dissertation brings forth the specificity of his own methodology, deeply rooted in the first-hand experience of architecture and in dialogues with architects.

With regard to Curtis’s formulation of ‘a modern tradition,’ this dissertation presents Curtis as a ‘cartographer’ who tried to map a modern universal tradition or traditions, inclusive and aware of the exchanges between what should not be called ‘the West’ and the ‘non-West.’ Some of the main points of the aforementioned critique of postcolonial theories in architecture (theorised around the key year 1999), had already been addressed by Curtis, even in the first edition, in 1982. Curtis never presented the ‘non- West’ as an entity opposed to the ‘West;’ he understood that traditions are both diverse and different. True, he uses expressions like ‘Third World,’ and ‘developing countries,’ criticised by postcolonial theorists in architecture, but this would no doubt have been avoided in any subsequent edition published after 1999. However, it is not only about inclusiveness and how many countries appear in Modern Architecture Since 1900, but also, and most importantly, about how they were included in a cohesive and coherent narrative.

The conclusion to this dissertation is built around a reflection on Modern Architecture Since 1900 as exemplary of Curtis’s historical discourse, with regard to the aforementioned three shifts discussed in my theoretical framework, which stand out in the development of the history, theory and historiography of architecture, from modern to global, between the 1970s and the 1990s. Firstly, there is ‘professionalisation’ of the discipline of architectural history in the early 1970s, with the introduction of doctorate research programs in universities in Europe and the United States, as argued by Mark Jarzombek – this makes Curtis’s book one of the first professional historical narratives of modern architecture, and the only one that has been the object of a thorough revision and reorganisation. Secondly, there is the change in the readership of architectural history in the late 1970s and early 1980s, embodied in undergraduate and postgraduate students of architecture, which led to a need for readability and

Introduction: Overview legibility, of which Curtis’s book is also exemplary. Finally, there are the disciplinary reassessments that occurred in the late 1990s, and the studies of postcolonial theories in architecture, which have had an influence on my reading of Curtis’s book. This dissertation is the first historiographical assessment of Curtis’s historical discourse. As a result of the arguments that unfold in the coming chapters, I posit that Modern Architecture Since 1900 is closer to the idea of an ‘intertwined history,’ as formulated by Edward Said in 1978, than are any of the other synoptic histories of modern architecture. And there, I posit, lies Curtis’s main contribution.

Modern Architecture Since 1900: The Editorial Life

Chapter Two_ William J.R. Curtis and Modern Architecture Since 1900

Modern Architecture Since 1900 was meant to be entitled Modern Architecture, 1900- 1975. Evidence of this is in a letter written on August 28, 1981 by James S. Ackerman, in which he shares with Simon Haviland, director of Phaidon Press at the time, his positive reactions to Curtis’s manuscript which are further disclosed in this chapter.1 Not having an end date in the title, Modern Architecture Since 1900 simplified for Curtis and the publisher the possibility of updating the content of the book. The aim of this chapter is, firstly, to outline the book, its different editions and translations into languages other than English, and the critical responses that each edition, even some translations, received. Secondly, this chapter investigates Curtis’s classificatory strategies in organising, and later on reorganising, the content of the book and the main definitions he proposed. Finally, and as a result of my direct communication with Curtis and analysis of archival documents he provided, this dissertation presents the story of the writing, and subsequent rewriting, of the content of the book. This chapter should be considered to function as an exegesis of Curtis’s book.

1. The Editorial ‘Life’ of Modern Architecture Since 1900

Modern Architecture Since 1900 was the result of a commission from Phaidon Press to Curtis in 1978. Curtis used research material he had collected for his own teaching practice and during his trips throughout the world and wrote the book “between early 1980 and early 1981.”2 Some of the main ideas were first formulated in earlier monographs and articles, and in subsequent broader outlines and essays. The aim was to present a “balanced, readable overall view of the development of modern architecture in other parts of the world from its beginnings until the recent past,”

1 James S. Ackerman, Prof of Fine Arts, Harvard University, Letter to Simon Havilan, Director of Phaidon Press, August 28, 1981. William J.R. Curtis, Letter sent via email message to author, February 21, 2017. WJRC Archive. 2 William J.R. Curtis, “Preface to the First Edition,” in Modern Architecture Since 1900 (London: Phaidon Press, 1996), 6. 45

Modern Architecture Since 1900: The Editorial Life emphasising that “the stress of this book is less on the theoretical roots of modern architecture than on its emergence and ensuing development.” 3 Curtis admits that this was “quite deliberate.”4 For him, previous historians had neglected the later phases of modern architecture, especially since the 1960s and around 1970. He also wanted “to show what modern architecture may mean in remote parts of a rapidly changing world” – a world which he was actively visiting and charting.5 He aimed at studying that modern architecture “with a dispassionate distance,” placing authenticity at the core of his research and leaving ideology aside.6

Curtis wrote the preface to the second edition, published in 1987, from Ahmadabad, the sixth largest city in India, where he was writing a book on the Indian architect Balkrishna V. Doshi, which was published the following year.7 For this second edition, the book remained unchanged except for the addition of an addendum entitled ‘Search for Substance: Recent World Architecture.’ Curtis claims to have fought against “the drift of critical opinion then current, avoiding the usual, but misleading postures concerning ‘modernism’ and ‘postmodernism,’” which are further investigated in Chapter Four of this dissertation.8 Curtis based this final chapter on primary research and the evidence of the buildings he had experienced first-hand. In 1995, from his family house in Cajarc, South of France, Curtis admitted then that the time had “come for some major additions and revisions.”9

The third and, so far, definitive edition appeared in 1996, and was the result of an examination which started in late 1993. The revision process proved the book to be,

3 William J.R. Curtis, “Introduction,” in Modern Architecture Since 1900 (London: Phaidon Press, 1996), 13-14. 4 Curtis, “Introduction,” 14. 5 Curtis, “Preface to the First Edition,” 6. 6 Curtis, “Introduction,” 12. 7 William J.R. Curtis, Balkrishna V. Doshi: An Architecture for India (New York: Rizzoli, 1988). 8 William J.R. Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900 (Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1996), 691. 9 Curtis, “Preface to the Third Edition,” 9. 46

Modern Architecture Since 1900: The Editorial Life according to Curtis, an evolving project, a working hypothesis, which must be tested, reordered and refined.10 He recalls:

The creation of the third edition has been a massive undertaking for all concerned – author, publisher, editors, picture researchers and designer – and represents something like a collective act of faith. When Richard Schlagman took over Phaidon Press in 1990, he and his new architectural editor David Jenckins immediately expressed interest in the long-term future of this book. The initiative for a new edition came at the right time, as there was just about the distance necessary to allow a major revision.11

Curtis’s aim with the third edition was to integrate new available knowledge and experience into the existing structure of Modern Architecture Since 1900, focussing on themes and notions which had been left underdeveloped. That new knowledge included literature on modern architecture from the past more than fifteen years, ranging from detailed monographic studies on individual buildings and architects, to theoretical speculations on different aspects of architecture. As Marvin Trachtenberg identified in 1988, most architectural writing produced since approximately 1960 had been in the form of monographs on individual architects or buildings, even on building types.12 Catalogues with critical essays and new information resulted from retrospective exhibitions on most major figures of modern architecture, and became Curtis’s source. “While the polemical oversimplifications of the earlier histories have become less and less tenable” due to the publication of those monographic studies on key modern architects in the intervening years between the three editions, “the need remains for texts charting large-scale developments.”13 He argued that the intention behind the revision of Modern Architecture Since 1900 was “to reveal more of the original soul while giving a better shape to the body.”14

10 William J.R. Curtis, “Preface to the Third Edition,” in Modern Architecture Since 1900 (London: Phaidon Press, 1996), 9. 11 Curtis, “Preface to the Third Edition,” 10 12 Marvin Trachtenberg, “Some Observations on Recent Architectural History,” The Art Bulletin vol 70, no. 2 (June 1988): 208-241. 13 William J.R. Curtis, “Preface to the Third Edition,” in Modern Architecture Since 1900 (London: Phaidon Press, 1996), 9. 14 Curtis, “Preface to the Third Edition,” 9. 47

Modern Architecture Since 1900: The Editorial Life

Apart from the aim of integrating new knowledge and completing the mapping of the later decades of the twentieth century, Curtis was driven by his rejection of contemporary ‘fashions’ or trends. During the course of my communication with Curtis, he admitted that the “transition from first to second and above all third editions of Modern Architecture Since 1900 was in part propelled by a refusal to accept the dominant fashions whether postmodernism, deconstructivism, etc.,” which are the basis of the last three chapters of the third edition.15 It is worth noting that the rejection of dominant fashions was also present when preparing the first edition. Curtis understands the book to be “a historical bridge [which] might be built across the stream of passing intellectual fashions to a more solid philosophical ground, partly with the hope that this might encourage a return to basic principles.”16

For Curtis, revising a book is just as difficult as writing a book in the first place, “as it requires self-criticism and the desire to re-examine entrenched assumptions.”17 In revising, Curtis took into account both formal and informal criticism by others. He admitted:

On the whole, the first edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900 was given a warm reception by reviewers in its various language editions. But there were several useful criticisms. I did listen when told that not enough was said about Mies van der Rohe, about the city, about the inheritance of nineteenth-century ideas and about the architecture of the Spanish- speaking world.18

After the process of intensive re-examination, Curtis gave more emphasis to the following themes: architecture and the city; interactions between personal and period style; the transformation of the past in Western and non-Western contexts; the interplay between individual inventions and technological or vernacular norms; the tension between ‘local’ and ‘universal’ within modernism; the concept of a modern tradition; the effects of modernisation; and the underlying structure of world

15 William J.R. Curtis, email message to author, June 6, 2017. 16 William J.R. Curtis, “Introduction,” in Modern Architecture Since 1900 (London: Phaidon Press, 1996), 17. 17 William J.R. Curtis, Le Corbusier: Ideas and Forms (London: Phaidon Press, 2015), 477. 18 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 692. 48

Modern Architecture Since 1900: The Editorial Life architectures of the recent past. In spite of the thorough revision of the book, what Curtis calls the underlying intentions of Modern Architecture Since 1900 and its basic framework, remain unchanged. The way in which he adds these key ideas to the outline of the book is analysed in the section on ‘Classificatory Strategies in the three Editions.’ Similarly, Curtis’s aims, objectives and statements about the book, and his success in living up to them, will be evaluated in the light of the critical responses to the book from different reviewers, as well as with the actual content.

However, before moving on to these matters, it is necessary to acknowledge the existence of Modern Architecture Since 1900 in other languages worldwide, itself a global reality. The subsequent impact of Curtis’s book as a key academic textbook or survey on modern architecture was the result not only of several editions and reprints, but also of its translations into several other languages. The first translation into Spanish, La arquitectura moderna desde 1900 appeared in1986, even before the second English edition.19 Twenty years later, in 2006, an entirely new Spanish edition appeared, which Jorge Sainz re-translated from the third edition of the book, a translation which has been praised as “superb” by Curtis himself.20 The translations into German and Japanese appeared soon after the publication of the first Spanish edition, in 1989 and 1990 respectively.21 Interestingly, the title of the first German edition, Architektur im zwanzigsten Jahrhundert, changed in 2002 to Moderne Architektur seit 1900, again retranslated from the third edition.22 L’architettura moderna del Novecento, the translation into Italian of the book’s third edition, was published in 1999.23 In 2004, Phaidon published the French version, L’architecture

19 William J.R. Curtis, La arquitectura moderna desde 1900 (Madrid: Hermann Blume, 1986). Translated by Jorge Sainz Avia. 20 William J.R. Curtis, La arquitectura moderna desde 1900 (Madrid: Hermann Blume, 2006). Translated by Jorge Sainz Avia. Curtis, “A Historian’s Perspective on Modern Architecture.” Transcript. English version of text “La perspectiva de un historiador sobre la arquitectura moderna,” translated by Jorge Sainz and read out by the author in Spanish on the presentation of the translation of the third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900 at the Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, January 2007. WJRC Archive. 21 Kajima Shuppankai (Tokyo: 1990). Translated by Tomoko Goto, Akira Sawamura and Kaoru Suehiro. Architektur im zwanzigsten Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1989). Translated by Antje Pehnt. 22 Moderne Architektur seit 1900 (Berlin: Phaidon Press Limited, 2002). 23 L’architettura moderna del Novecento (Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 1999). Translated by Anna Barbara and Chiara Rodriquez. 49

Modern Architecture Since 1900: The Editorial Life moderne depuis 1900.24 Finally, in 2008 Curtis’s book was translated into Portuguese as Arquitetura moderna desde 1900.25 According to Curtis, “there is in fact a Chinese version of the third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900 published by China Architecture and Building Press,”26 however, I have not been able to confirm this in worldcat.org or at the publisher’s website. As with the English editions, which by 2013 had already been reprinted nineteen times, these translations have been repeatedly reprinted over the last thirty years resulting in the book having a global impact.

2. Critical Responses to the Three Editions of Modern Architecture Since 1900

This section investigates the main criticisms of Modern Architecture Since 1900 raised by influential art and architectural historians and theorists, and does so in relation to Curtis’s aim, as stated in the introduction to his work, of presenting a balanced readable overall view of the development, rather than roots, of modern architecture from its beginning until the recent past; of showing what modern architecture may mean in remote parts of the world; and of doing so with a certain dispassionate distance and placing authenticity at the core of his research. The previous section discussed Curtis’s acknowledgement of criticism’s usefulness in the process of rewriting the third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900, and the subsequent one will look in detail at the consequences these criticisms had for the book’s structure and content.

Influential art and architectural historians and critics – Stanislaus von Moos and Peter Serenyi (specialists in Le Corbusier), Samuel B. Frank, Doug Suisman, Graham Hughes, Brett Donham, Paul Oliver, Tom Heath and Aditya Prakash – reviewed the first edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900 in key architectural history journals such as JSAH

24 L’architecture modern depuis 1900 (Paris: Phaidon Press Limited, 2004). Translated by Jacques Bosser and Philippe Mothe. 25 Arquitetura moderna desde 1900 (Porto: Alegre Bookman, 2008). Translated by Alexandre Salvaterra. Source: worldcat.org 26 William J.R. Curtis, email message to author, February 21, 2017. 50

Modern Architecture Since 1900: Critical Responses and The Architectural Review, raising interesting issues. The second edition received a review by Peter Blundell Jones, and was included in Marvin Trachtenberg’s overview of architectural history in 1988. 1 Hans van Dijk also referred to it in Architectuur in NederlandJahrbock 1991-1992.2 The third edition was acknowledged by Andrew Mead in Architects’ Journal, Jean-Claude Garcia in L’Architecture d’Aujourd'hui, and Hans van Dijk in Archis, and discussed in detail by Jorge Sainz in the Spanish Arquitectura Viva.

Curtis’s aims can be summarised in three concepts: balance, readability and methodological distance. Regarding the first issue, balance, most historians reviewing the book agree that, although Le Corbusier is doubtlessly a key figure in understanding modern architecture, the excessive treatment of his work causes a lack of balance in Curtis’s book. According to Von Moos, even if it unbalances the book as a whole, the Le Corbusier’s detailed treatment “is particularly successful.”3 Frank highlights the “unevenness of treatment in which we are offered, for example, several chapters on Le Corbusier, but no single place to read about Mies.”4 It is worth noting that Mies’ work is discussed in the book, though not in a monographic chapter as with the work of Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright. Peter Blundell Jones even brings this lack of balance to the title of his review: “Curtis’s Corbussian Bent.”5 Although Oliver notes that Curtis is the author of two studies on Le Corbusier, he finds it questionable that nearly a fifth of Modern Architecture since 1900 is devoted to the Swiss modern architect. 6

1 Peter Blundell Jones, “Curtis’s Corbussian Bent,” review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, Architects Journal vol 187, no. 22 (June 1988): 79. Marvin Trachtenberg, “Some Observations on Recent Architectural History,” Art Bulletin vol 70, no. 2 (June 1988): 208-241. 2 Hans van Dijk, “Dutch Modernism and Its Legitimacy,” Architectuur in NederlandJahrbock 1991-1992 (Amsterdam, 1992). 3 Stanislaus von Moos, “Revising Modernist History: The Architecture of the 1920s and 1930s,” review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, Art Journal vol 43, no. 2 (summer 1983): 208. 4 Samuel B. Frank, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis and Modern Architecture and Design: An Alternative History by Bill Risebero, Journal of Architectural Education vol 36, no. 4 (summer 1983): 30. 5 Blundell Jones, “Curtis’s Corbussian Bent,” 79. 6 Paul Oliver, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, The Oxford Art Journal vol 5, no. 2 Architecture (1983): 55. 51

Modern Architecture Since 1900: Critical Responses

Curtis’s aim of balance is also intimately related to his choice to avoid the Marxist ideological biases he noted in both Frampton’s and Tafuri’s histories. Does this mean that Curtis is completely objective? Von Moos affirms that Curtis’s “aprioris” [sic] “are those of a Harvard-trained art historian rather than of a critic actively involved in architectural polemics and ideological controversy.”7 Moreover, for Von Moos, the role of Harvard University in the establishment of the ‘new tradition’ of architectural history in the United States is depicted in Modern Architecture since 1900 with clarity, insight and fresh information. Surprisingly, Serenyi believes that Curtis successfully and remarkably achieved balance. He defends the position that Curtis “achieves a balanced view by establishing a hierarchy that clearly reflects the relative importance of a given building, architect, or style.”8 Moreover, in Serenyi’s opinion, by focussing on the developments and not the antecedents of modern architecture, Curtis “strikes a new kind of balance in dealing with his subject,” a balance also related to his formulation of notion of authenticity as the chief criterion of excellence.9

Modern Architecture Since 1900 is considered a perfect textbook for introductory courses on architectural history as a result of Curtis’s aim to achieve readability. According to Frank, Curtis aims at the “textbook gap” that he, Curtis, drew attention to in his own review of Frampton’s and Tafuri’s histories in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (1981), and succeeds in improving on his contemporary competition. He is not the only reviewer to mention that polemical review written by Curtis. However, it is worth remembering that by 1981 most of the content of Modern Architecture Since 1900 was ready for publication, so the book’s first aims or intentions were not prompted by the histories of Frampton and Tafuri. For Serenyi, Modern Architecture Since 1900 is more readable than the early histories of modern architecture written by Pevsner, Giedion and Hitchcock, which were not suitable for the college market, as well as than its contemporary competitors written by Benevolo and Frampton. In Von Moos’ opinion,

7 Von Moos, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900, 209. 8 Peter Serenyi, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians vol 43, no. 3 (October 1984): 274. 9 Serenyi, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900, 274. 52

Modern Architecture Since 1900: Critical Responses

“Curtis succeeds in translating an overwhelming bulk of knowledge into a fluent and never over-loaded text.”10

A textbook is a “strange beast” according to Frank, and problems arise when trying to map comprehensively, and define the limits of, a field as diverse as modern architecture. Curtis chooses to look at modern architecture, in the twentieth century and throughout the world, as aforementioned when referring to his aims with Modern Architecture Since 1900. In Frank’s opinion, “since the first category [modern architecture] is vague, the second [in the twentieth century] an arbitrary matter of choice, and the third [throughout the world] doomed to tokenism,” these boundaries do not help Curtis to organise the book, which lacks of a rigorous structure.11

The quantity and quality of the images that accompany the text are key to considering Modern Architecture Since 1900 a perfect textbook. It is also one of the aspects praised by some reviewers. In Martin Pawley’s opinion, the strength of the first edition of the book “lies on its exhaustive selection of examples and the often careful use of contemporary photographs.”12 Jorge Sainz also highlights the improvement in the quality of the reproduction of the graphic material for the third edition, something which differentiates Curtis’s book from other similar scholarly books. Sainz notes that, in the third edition, “colour appears generously and abundantly not only in the pictures of buildings (increased both in number and quality), but also in drawings and paintings.”13 Andrew Mead considers the third edition to be “much enhanced, with over 800, well-reproduced colour and black-and-white photographs which serve rather than supplant the text (plans are still only occasionally provided.)”14

10 Von Moos, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900, 208. 11 Frank, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900, 30. 12 Martin Pawley, “Fish are Jumping,” review of Modern Architecture: A Critical History” by Kenneth Frampton and Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, The Architectural Review vol 174, no. 1041 (November 1983): 6. 13 Jorge Sainz, “Arquitectura moderna: última edición,” review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, Arquitectura Viva, no. 49 (July- August 1996): 73. Author’s translation into English. 14 Andrew Mead, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, Architects’ Journal vol 204, no. 10 (September 1996): 50-51. 53

Modern Architecture Since 1900: Critical Responses

Curtis’s book is still the first recommendation of a professor to students because it is written at a better pace and illustrated in a sensible way. At least this is what Luis Fernández-Galiano asserts when reviewing one of Curtis’s subsequent competitors, Cohen’s The Future of Architecture Since 1889.15 Frank argues that Curtis’s book “earns its place on the bookshelf” of the late historiography of modern architecture.16 Authenticity, again, shows up in relation to readability in Serenyi’s remarks:

Finally, it is a delight to see a textbook on the subject whose purpose is to show that even in the twentieth century the most lasting value of architecture is to move us and not to house or inform us. After so many books on the functional or informational aspects of modern architecture, it is refreshing to find a book whose author uses a highly selective approach to his subjects, focussing on the most enduring, and hence authentic, architectural achievements of our age. (...) In fact, no prior textbook on the subject has focussed so strongly on the notion that the architecture of the present, as of the past, is art, and that it deserves the same kind of scholarly treatment as architecture of the past.17

Even if Curtis’s book highlights the need for a scholarly treatment of the architecture of the present, some historians doubt whether he actually provides it. A negative consequence of his aim of achieving readability is that Von Moos, Frank and Serenyi accuse Curtis of neglecting scholarship. The reason given by Frank is the few citations in the text and the way they are referenced: “gathered at the end of the book with no indication in the text.”18 Von Moos argues that the book is not academic enough, owing to the “occasional indulgence in scholarly platitudes,” and the referencing system: “his decisions to reduce quotations from sources to a minimum, to abolish footnotes and to give general bibliographical references for each page at the end of the book.”19 Von Moos refers to the existence of a whole series of “questionable judgements” in very harsh terms:

15 Luis Fernández-Galiano, review of The Future of Architecture Since 1889, Arquitectura Viva no. 144 (2012): 77. Author’s translation into English. 16 Frank, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900, 29. 17 Serenyi, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900, 277. 18 Frank, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900, 30. 19 Von Moos, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900, 208. 54

Modern Architecture Since 1900: Critical Responses

There is a problem, however, with an architectural theory (even though an unacknowledged theory) so axiomatically built around conceptions like ‘formal integration,’ ‘stylistic entity,’ and ‘personal authenticity,’ and even the ‘instinct’ of ‘great men.’ What can one do with such problems as the reuse of old buildings or urban rehabilitation within a system of architectural values built on such vaguely sensibilistic [sic] and psychological criteria? Should not an architectural terminology respond to the culturally and socially pressing issues of the day? It is perhaps no coincidence that Curtis, frustrated with the ideological “jargon” which he denounces in his colleagues, is relatively uninterested in urban design except for its artistic or aesthetic aspects, and that he leaves sociology and politics out of the picture altogether. (…) Yet, while Curtis’s genteel disdain for ‘negative or positive propaganda’ forces him into a critical distance from these masters, he rather uncritically adopts their criteria of judgement.20

Serenyi states his concern for Curtis’s judgement criteria by asking the following question, one of the most difficult in architectural criticism: should a building’s aesthetic qualities or institutional content be used as a basis of judging its ultimate value?”21 In his review of Frampton’s Modern Architecture: A Critical History and of Curtis’s book, Martin Pawley makes the following comparison: “where Frampton is obscure, Curtis tends to be rash” – a synonym of unreflecting or careless, which can be related to Curtis’s allegedly neglecting scholarship.

Also related to readability, the idea of the textbook and the debate regarding Curtis’s scholarship is the consideration of Modern Architecture Since 1900 as a survey. Trachtenberg lists Curtis’s book as one of the recent surveys which fill out the chronological and geographical spectrum of modern architecture in a nearly complete manner. He describes it as “the most comprehensive and ‘neutral’ of the modern surveys, as against the more ideologically loaded histories by Tafuri and by Frampton.”22 He also points out that most surveys, which cover a specific historical period, depend on established material and ideas from secondary sources, whereas in

20 Stanislaus von Moos, “Revising Modernist History: The Architecture of the 1920s and 1930s,” review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, Art Journal vol 43, no. 2 (Summer 1983): 209. 21 Serenyi, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900, 276. 22 Marvin Trachtenberg, “Some Observations on Recent Architectural History,” The Art Bulletin vol 70, no. 2 (June 1988): 222. 55

Modern Architecture Since 1900: Critical Responses

Curtis’s case he combines this with his own first-hand experience of the buildings, and his conversations with contemporary architects.

Trachtenberg’s description of the book as ‘neutral’ can be linked back to another of Curtis’s aims: to approach modern architecture with a dispassionate distance. According to Serenyi, Curtis also succeeds in fulfilling this aim with a few exceptions, among them his treatment of the New York skyscraper, and of Russian revolutionary architecture. How can Modern Architecture Since 1900 show distance when its author is regarded as a modernist advocate? According to Serenyi, it is “refreshing to find an author today who is deeply committed to this view” of modern architecture, at a time when modernism is being criticised and rethought.23 In Serenyi’s opinion, Curtis fails to treat postmodernism with the aimed dispassionate distance because he is a convinced modernist. Brett Donham also considers Curtis to be a “confirmed modernist.”24 The reviewers’ opinion on Curtis’s account of postmodernism is further discussed in Chapter Four of this dissertation.

Some reviewers understand Curtis’s methodological approach – often referred to as formalist – in relation to the tradition of art historians dealing with architecture at the beginning of the twentieth century. Serenyi detects a link between Curtis’s discourse and the tradition of art history of Renaissance or Baroque architecture at the beginning of the twentieth century, and Von Moos argues that a link exists between Curtis, and Giedion and Pevsner. Despite the fact that Curtis disdains Giedion and Pevsner for being propagandists and ‘mythographers,’ “he rather uncritically adopts their criteria of judgement.”25 Von Moos sees no difference between Curtis’s insistence on form and meaning and Giedion’s and Pevsner’s fixation on progress and evolution, or on Zeitgeist. For him, “Curtis manages to pilot his subject back into the quieter water of an art history seminar room – from where, one is tempted to say, it had once started

23 Serenyi, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900, 275. 24 Brett Donham, “Revisionist Modernism,” review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, Progressive Architecture vol 65, no. 5 (May 1984): 185. 25 Von Moos, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900, 209. 56

Modern Architecture Since 1900: Critical Responses off.”26 Richard Pommer adds to this argument and points out that with Curtis’s approach, “modern architecture was brought into the fold of academic art history.”27

Curtis indeed rejects monolithic or simplistic definitions of modern architecture. Having said that, pluralism becomes a relevant notion to widen the boundaries, both in time and in space, of what could be considered modern architecture. Heath, for example, regards Modern Architecture Since 1900 as “much needed” to correct careless talk about the modern movement and to express its pluralism by “emphasising, as Curtis does, the continuity of a variety of traditions into and beyond the emergence of modernism.”28 However, as he points out, Curtis’s approach, which emphasises pluralism, risks being considered incoherent. The risk of incoherence did not arise in the work of Pevsner of Giedion given their programmatic selection, and the fact that Curtis avoids it is, in Heath’s opinion, “a tribute to his professionalism and his critical insight,” which also “serves to exclude editing the facts for polemic ends.”29 The way Heath advocates for Curtis’s professionalism contrasts with aforementioned reviewers who question his scholarship.

In his review of the Spanish version of the first edition of the book, Sainz highlights the pluralism or variety of Curtis’s methodological tools to chart the modern tradition. According to him, Curtis uses diverse intellectual media and approaches, which, “in some cases, generate a general and distant overview of an entire stream of modern architecture, whereas in others, present with a closer image of certain works or architects.”30 Writing in 1996, Sainz again praises Curtis’s “characteristic style,” in this case for approaching the architecture of the late twentieth century, which combines general exposition of main lines of thought with detailed description of the most

26 Von Moos, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900, 209. 27 Richard Pommer, “Revising Modernist History: The Architecture of the 1920s and 1930s,” Art Journal vol 43, no. 2 (summer 1983): 107. 28 Tom Heath, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, Architecture Australia vol 73, no. 5 (July 1984): 26. 29 Heath, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, 26. 30 Jorge Sainz, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, Arquitectura (Revista del Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Madrid) vol 266, no. 8 (May-June 1987): 8. Author’s translation into English. 57

Modern Architecture Since 1900: Critical Responses emblematic cases.31 For Frank, the variation of scales of Curtis’s approach results in the aforementioned unevenness of treatment between, for instance, Le Corbusier and Mies.

For Donham, pluralism is what characterises the twentieth century, and, consequently, old ways of looking at the history of architecture would no longer do. In his opinion, what makes Curtis’s book “useful” is that it provides “a change in the way we look at and understand the history of modern architecture,” which at the time, given the modern-postmodern debate, is particularly significant.32 As a result of that change, according to Donham, the book puts the history of modern architecture in context and in perspective. Curtis sets in its historical context not only modern architecture, but also its history, and he does not present modern architecture as “new-born, free and pure, as previous historians would have us believe.”33 As Prakash notes, Curtis not only narrates events, but also gives them meaning “with crystalline clarity.”34

Sainz is one of the reviewers who analyses the rewriting of Modern Architecture Since 1900; he does so by highlighting the additions and changes introduced to the 1996 edition. Mead agrees with Sainz that the third edition is considerably different, both in content as appearance. In comparing the editions, Mead also points out what “remain constant, and give this history its strength, are two things in particular: the relatively extended treatment Curtis gives to certain key words, allowing him to develop his argument by attention to specifies and to explore several layers of meaning; and his marked distaste for ‘-isms’ in place of ‘authenticity.’”35 Only one reviewer, Jean-Claude Garcia, highlights the significance of the built object in Curtis narrative, although this is a key issue in understanding his approach to modern architecture, discussed further in the next section of this chapter. For Garcia, it is a great book: “With a true gift of

31 Sainz, “Arquitectura moderna: última edición,” 73. Author’s translation into English. 32 Donham, “Revisionist Modernism,” 185. 33 Donham, “Revisionist Modernism,” 185. 34 Aditya Prakash, Design (India) (May 1983). Quoted from William J.R. Curtis short CV plus addendum with best book reviews. WJRC Archive. 35 Mead, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, 51. 58

Modern Architecture Since 1900: Critical Responses empathy he treats diverse examples, situating them in the context of the history of ideas and forms.”36

Finally, some of the reviews coming from places such as Spain, Australia and Singapore emphasise the book’s account of their own reality. For instance, Heath comments on the breathless and racing pace and tone of the third part of the book and on how, as a result, “signs of effort do appear, and occasional errors,” which reminds one of what Pawley referred to as Curtis’s rashness.37 Heath points out how Curtis placed Chatsworth in Sydney instead of New South Wales, and does not agree with Curtis on the relevance of the ‘Wrightian’ influence on Australian architecture – though he admits that these are “quibbles arising from local pride – or prejudice.”38 In his 1996 review, Sainz writes that Spanish modern architecture is one of the beneficiaries of the revision of the book; he sees in Curtis a deep commitment to Spanish architecture, as exemplified by the inclusion of Navarro Baldeweg’s Palacio de Congresos de Navarra in the list of buildings which formed the modern tradition, together with Robie House and Villa Savoye among others. He ends by stating: “You cannot ask for more.”39

Before moving on to a discussion of the content of the book, it is necessary to acknowledge a previous historiographical study of Modern Architecture Since 1900 written shortly after the publication of the third edition. It is an unpublished research project entitled “Arquitectura: entre Tradición e Invención” (Architecture: between Tradition and Invention) written by the researcher Germán Hidalgo Hermosilla, now a Professor at the Universidad Católica de Chile, but then, in 1997, a PhD student in Historiography of Architecture at the Universidad Politécnica de Barcelona.40 The title already gives an idea of the main focus of the paper: tradition and invention. Hidalgo looks into these concepts by addressing Curtis as author of the book, and by looking at

36 Jean-Claude Garcia, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, L’architecture d’ujourd'hui (December 1996). Quoted from William J.R. Curtis short CV plus addendum with best book reviews. WJRC Archive. 37 Heath, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900, 26. 38 Heath, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900, 26. 39 Sainz, “Arquitectura moderna: última edición,” 73. Author’s translation into English. 40 Germán Hidalgo Hermosilla, “Lectura del tratado La arquitectura moderna desde 1900: William J.R. Curtis, arquitectura entre tradición e invención” (research paper, Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña, 1997). 59

Modern Architecture Since 1900: Critical Responses his work on Le Corbusier as a main character in the narrative, and on Denys Lasdun as a perfect example, according to Hidalgo, of the relationship between both innovation and tradition.

As was the case with aforementioned reviewers Von Moos and Frank, Hidalgo commences his study with some general and biographical notes, and quickly begins his argument by discussing Curtis’s combined book review of Architettura contemporanea (1976) by Manfredo Tafuri and Francesco Dal Co, and Modern Architecture: A Critical History (1980) by Kenneth Frampton. Hidalgo also describes the book which Curtis and Eduard F. Sekler co-authored, Le Corbusier at Work: The Genesis of the Carpenter Center (1978). Interestingly, he does not mention the fact that this research resulted in Curtis’s being awarded a PhD degree in an unconventional manner. In Hidalgo’s opinion, Curtis needed to find what differentiated his own approach to the writing of the history of modern architecture from Tafuri’s ideological focus, Frampton’s criticality and Banham’s obsession with technology. Hidalgo writes: “His investigation in the realm of foundational ideas of an architectural work and its realisation into a specific form opened a fruitful exploration field.”41 Hidalgo highlights that Curtis’s approach to history favours continuity rather than a rejection of the past, and that this is what informs the historian’s notion of tradition, which will be thoroughly discussed throughout this dissertation.

Even if he does not refer to any of the book reviews available at the time, Hidalgo’s conclusion reiterates some points which have already been discussed: Curtis’s picture selection, which in Hidalgo’s opinion is diligent; the significance of Le Corbusier as the main character; and the rich descriptions with which Curtis interprets the ‘life’ of each building, from its inception or invention. Hidalgo wrote his research paper in 1997, just as the third edition appeared, without mentioning anything of the second edition and its addendum. Hidalgo finishes his epilogue by reflecting on the change of cover for

41 Hidalgo Hermosilla, “Lectura del tratado La arquitectura moderna desde 1900…,” 7. Author’s translation into English. 60

Modern Architecture Since 1900: Critical Responses the 1996 edition rather than on the contents.42 Other points made by Hidalgo are of more interest for this thesis, such as Curtis’s firm commitment not to write about buildings which he had not visited first-hand, and the coherence which exists between the aims and principles of Curtis’s writing, and the rigour of his methodology.43

Curtis’s emphasis on the recent developments of modern architecture led to the establishment of regionalism and postmodernism as the main thematic issues of this dissertation, and, therefore, specific comments from the aforementioned reviewers are explored in the next two chapters of this dissertation. However, a consequence of Curtis’s emphasis on ‘developments,’ which applies to the experiences in the post-war era of both regionalists and postmodernists, is Curtis’s transition from historian to critic throughout the book. The way in which Curtis balances the positions of historian and critic is explored in Chapter Five of this dissertation. Curtis’s account of the later phases of modern architecture is also the part of the book that reveals the most differences between the three editions. Indeed, Sainz mentions in his review that “to compare meticulously two editions tends to be a demanding but revealing task.”44 That is precisely what I am to demonstrate through my work in this dissertation, analysing the differences between the three editions in Curtis’s account of the development of modern architecture in the late twentieth century, and discussing what they may reveal.

42 Interestingly, during the course of our communication, Curtis did not mention the book’s cover. It may be that Hidalgo wants to read more into the use of Mies’ brick house for the cover than is really there. As I learned from my conversation with Jean-Louis Cohen for this research, a book’s title, cover design and layout have more to do with the work of editors and publishers than with the author’s aims or intentions. Jean-Louis Cohen, meeting with Gevork Hartoonian’s PhD students, July 9, 2017. 43 Hidalgo Hermosilla, “Lectura del tratado La arquitectura moderna desde 1900…,” 29. Author’s translation into English. 44 Sainz, “Arquitectura moderna: última edición,” 73. Author’s translation into English. 61

Modern Architecture Since 1900: Classificatory Strategies

3. Classificatory Strategies in the Three Editions of Modern Architecture Since 1900

During the course of my communication with Curtis, he said that “much of the structure and content of the book was anticipated by the course I [he] gave in Harvard in the Fall of 1978 on Modern Architecture.”1 In this section of the dissertation, I discuss the book’s premises, its structure and content, and the extent of its revision, before moving on to ‘The Story of the Writing of Modern Architecture Since 1900.’ As was the case in the previous section, it is necessary to keep in mind that Curtis’s aim was to present a balanced readable overall view of the development, rather than roots, of modern architecture from its beginning until the recent past; to show what modern architecture may mean in remote parts of the world, with a certain dispassionate distance and to place authenticity at the core of his research.

Premises of Modern Architecture Since 1900 In the introduction to the book, Curtis shares his firm belief in the idea that a historian who sets out to write a history of modern architecture has to begin with a definition of the subject.2 Therefore, this section begins by observing Curtis’s definition of both architecture and modern architecture. For Curtis, “architecture is a complex art embracing form and function, symbol and social purpose, technique and belief.”3 With regard to its social purpose, he writes that architecture is not only deeply rooted in the processes and paradoxes of society, but also transforms these into its own terminology. Curtis does not aim for balance only in his writing. For him, the historian needs to find a certain balance in his work between its disciplinary logic and the cultural forces which influence it. The historian needs to find balance between “the unique order of the individual invention,” and architectural rules and types.4 The fact that invention is mentioned in the first lines of Modern Architecture Since 1900 is evidence of its

1 William J.R. Curtis, email message to author, August 31, 2016. 2 William J.R. Curtis, “Introduction,” in Modern Architecture Since 1900 (London: Phaidon Press, 1996), 11. 3 Curtis, “Introduction,” 13. 4 Curtis, “Introduction,” 13. 62

Modern Architecture Since 1900: Classificatory Strategies significance in Curtis’s narrative, as is noted in the aforementioned study by Germán Hidalgo Hermosilla.

Even ‘modern architecture,’ which is the object of Curtis’s study, is defined as an ‘invention,’ in this case of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Modern architecture was conceived as a reaction against the chaos and eclecticism of the revival movements of the nineteenth century.5 According to Curtis, at the turn of the nineteenth century, there was no consensus on the image of the new architecture. Having established that, the role of modern architecture was to “proffer a new set of symbolic forms more directly reflecting contemporary realities than had the rag-bag of ‘historical styles.’”6 Curtis continues by pointing out that, between about 1890 and the 1920s, a number of different positions in architecture emerged which claimed ‘modernity’ as their chief attribute. It was not until the end of the 1920s that an allegedly broad consensus was achieved around the notion of the ‘International Style,’ overlooking other contemporary developments at the time. Curtis’s position on ‘International Style’ is very critical, as is noted in the analysis of the corresponding part of the book, but suffice to say that, for Curtis, “no single tag such as the ‘International Style’ will do justice to the range and depth of modern architecture produced between the wars.”7

There is a key question that historians aim to answer in their narratives: when does a specifically ‘modern architecture’ appear? Curtis describes this as a “tricky problem” to which there is no easy answer, rather a different answer depending on the historian you read. 8 In his case, setting the beginning of the book around 1900 or at the end of the nineteenth century, is intimately related to his aim to investigate the development of modern architecture, rather than finding and setting its origins in the Renaissance, the Industrial or the French Revolution.

5 Curtis, “Introduction,” 11. 6 Curtis, “Introduction,” 11. 7 Curtis, “Introduction,” 15. 8 William J.R. Curtis, “Introduction,” in Modern Architecture Since 1900 (London: Phaidon Press, 1996), 14. 63

Modern Architecture Since 1900: Classificatory Strategies

Central to Curtis’s discourse is the importance of buildings, and his own personal experience of them, as Jean-Claude Garcia pointed out in his review of the book in L’Architecture d’Aujourd'hui. That is why a key part in the process of structuring the content of Modern Architecture Since 1900 was the choice of buildings. Curtis writes of his aim to select buildings that are “outstanding works of art,” and “rich compounds of ideas and forms, which achieve symbolic resonance beyond the level of mere ‘signs.’”9 In the first edition of the book, his selected buildings were those that display a “highly articulated expression,”10 rather than the “symbolic resonance” he formulates in the third edition. Moreover, in the preface to the first edition, Curtis claims that he is not going to “make apologies” for concentrating on buildings that he considers to be of high visual and intellectual quality.11 As discussed in the previous section on the ‘Critical Responses to the three Editions of Modern Architecture Since 1900,’ this was a criterion harshly criticised by Stanislaus von Moos for its lack of theoretical foundation and for not corresponding to the culturally and socially pressing issues of the time.12

In an essay published in 2007 on re-reading modern architecture, Curtis added a nuance to his understanding of seminal buildings: he writes that important buildings are that reveal “a new faith,” which “challenge existing assumptions and alter the ground rules of the discipline” of architecture.13 Furthermore, he writes that extraordinary buildings “have a rare power to move us through the action of forms, light, space, material and the pressure of underlying ideas. Reliant upon modern concepts, techniques, notions of space and conceptions of society, they constitute microcosms, deep symbolic worlds, and possess a unique probity and authenticity.”14 In establishing his criteria, Curtis also considers the potential of these buildings to

9 Curtis, “Introduction,” 13. 10 William J.R. Curtis, “Introduction,” in Modern Architecture Since 1900 (London: Phaidon Press, 1982), 10. 11 William J.R. Curtis, “Preface to the First Edition,” in Modern Architecture Since 1900 (London: Phaidon Press, 1996), 6. 12 Stanislaus von Moos, “Revising Modernist History: The Architecture of the 1920s and 1930s,” review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, Art Journal vol 43, no. 2 (summer 1983): 209. 13 William J.R. Curtis, “Transformation and Invention: on Re-reading Modern Architecture,” The Architectural Review vol 221, no. 1321 (March 2007): 36-40. Original essay written by Curtis in February 2007, 1, WJRC Archive. 14 Curtis, “Transformation and Invention: on Re-reading Modern Architecture,” 2. 64

Modern Architecture Since 1900: Classificatory Strategies transcend their own time and reveal their implications and relevance over time. He adds that later architects can learn from the way these buildings solve existing problems.15

In Curtis’s opinion, it is through a close analysis of individual works of “high intensity,” as he puts it, – through a close study of their guiding ideas, their spatial structure, their societal myths, their responses to culture, technology and nature – that a historian may begin to sense, and to map, the deeper currents of a period. 16 However, in Curtis’s narrative this concept of “a period” is broad, as he understands that buildings of enough depth “occupy time on several levels, transmuting traditions near and far, transforming other realities in inner and outer worlds.” 17 In January 2007, on the occasion of the presentation of the Spanish translation of the third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900, Curtis mentioned that buildings “give material shape to myths in expressive spaces and forms,” and that they require a subtle approach if an historian is to attempt an interpretation.18 According to his way of writing history, for Curtis buildings are not to merely be labelled as products of a particular movement or architect, or placed in a particular period of time, but rather seen as individual creations, or inventions. The notion of invention appears throughout the content of Modern Architecture Since 1900, as Hidalgo’s study highlights, and it does so to define modern architecture, buildings and even the task of the historian.

The ‘International Style’ is not the only label that Curtis rejects. If buildings are not to be labelled by movements, neither then do movements define modern architecture. With the intention of avoiding the “reliance on ‘movements’ of the stock-in-trade survey” as part of his approach to the writing of history, which is discussed in depth in Chapter Five of this dissertation, Curtis deliberately varies the scale of analysis “from

15 Curtis, “Transformation and Invention: on Re-reading Modern Architecture,” 3. 16 Curtis, “Introduction,” 17. 17 Curtis, “Introduction,” 15. 18 William J.R. Curtis, “A Historian’s Perspective on Modern Architecture.” Transcript. English version of text “La perspectiva de un historiador sobre la arquitectura moderna,” translated by Jorge Sainz and read out by the author in Spanish on the presentation of the translation of the third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900 at the Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, January 2007. WJRC Archive. 65

Modern Architecture Since 1900: Classificatory Strategies chapter to chapter, sometimes to give a close-up, sometimes to give a long or broad view.”19 The fact is that there are a number of chapters in Curtis’s book that are dedicated to a single building or architect, as is the case with Le Corbusier, as pointed out by several of the aforementioned reviewers.

Another choice made by Curtis in preparing Modern Architecture Since 1900 is to begin every chapter, including the introduction, conclusion and even the addendum to the second edition, with one quotation.20 It is interesting to note that Kenneth Frampton’s Modern Architecture: A Critical History (1980) also commences each chapter with a quotation; moreover, they are the only two historians in the field that is designated in this dissertation the historiography of modern architecture to do so. Interestingly, neither Alan Colquhoun in Modern Architecture (2002), nor Jean-Louis Cohen in The Future of Architecture since 1889: A Worldwide History (2012) followed Frampton’s and Curtis’s example in the writing of their histories of modern architecture. When asked about the reasons behind it, neither Frampton nor Curtis can recall why they chose to begin the chapters with quotations. However, in the course of our communication, Curtis shared that he “chose very concise quotations reflecting appropriate general themes and referring to favourite authors. Frampton uses quotations that are far too long and which interrupt the flow of the text.”21 The comparisons with Frampton’s Modern Architecture, which appear at different points in this dissertation, are considered relevant because both Curtis and Frampton offer an account of recent architecture, not only in the first editions of their histories, but also in the subsequent ones.

Content of Modern Architecture Since 1900 Keeping Curtis’s premises in mind, this section discusses the content of the three editions of Modern Architecture Since 1900. The first edition, published in 1982, is

19 William J.R. Curtis, “Preface to the First Edition,” in Modern Architecture Since 1900 (London: Phaidon Press, 1996), 6. 20 See Macarena de la Vega, “Revisiting Quotations: Regionalism in Historiography,” Quotation: What does History have in Store for Architecture Today, Proceeding of the 34th Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, ed. by Gevork Hartoonian and John Ting (Canberra: SAHANZ, 2017), 125-134. 21 William J.R. Curtis, email message to author, May 2, 2017. 66

Modern Architecture Since 1900: Classificatory Strategies organised into three parts, to which, in 1987, Curtis added an addendum to the second edition on recent architectural works. Apart from the introduction, conclusion and addendum, he wrote twenty-eight chapters: seven for Part 1, eleven for Part 2 and ten for Part 3. The third edition of the book, which appeared in 1996, presents the most recent architectural developments in an entirely new fourth part, and completely reorganises the content of the previous three parts. This time, Curtis includes thirty- five chapters: nine in Part 1, twelve in Part 2, eleven in Part 3, and three in Part 4. Some of the changes he introduces are simply products of the different times: for example, he changes England and America in the first edition, to Britain and the U.S.A in the third edition; developing countries to developing world.

The first part of the book addresses the problem of the origins of modern architecture, from the nineteenth century until the emergence of the avant-garde movements. Through his approach, Curtis claims to trace “the way inherited strands of thought come together in various individual minds” during the period of time when “forms were invented to express, simultaneously, a revulsion against superficial revivalism, and confidence in the energies and significance of modern life.”22 These individual minds belong to Victor Horta, Antoni Gaudi and Charles Rennie Mackintosh, as Art Nouveau representatives; the Austrians Otto Wagner, Josef Hoffman and Adolf Loos; Louis Sullivan, John Wellborn Root and Frank Lloyd Wright and their work in Chicago; Peter Behrens, and Auguste Perret, among others. For Curtis, most future “modern masters,” some trained by these individual minds, “were exposed to regionalist formulations or versions of classicism during their formative years, and these influences were gradually absorbed into their work through process of abstraction.”23 He writes:

Pevsner justly described it as the ‘pioneer’ phase of modern design, and this seems fair enough so long as one is not tempted to write off its creations as mere ‘anticipations’ of what came later, and so long as one does not imagine that, the path from this exploratory period to the 1920s to have been

22 Curtis, “Introduction,” 15. 23 Curtis, “Introduction,” 15. 67

Modern Architecture Since 1900: Classificatory Strategies

straightforward. The future ‘modern masters’ both rejected and extended their immediate predecessors as they steered their way through a legacy of nineteenth-century dilemmas: how to reconcile old and new, mechanical and natural, utilitarian and ideal?24

The significance that Curtis gives to what he refers to as the balance between the old and the new is present throughout his narrative; he includes it when he discusses regionalism and architectural development not only in the late twentieth century, but also at the beginning of the century. Looking at the period around the year 1900, he already traces a struggle to achieve something new without entirely leaving the past behind, rather than the tabula rasa argued for by early historians.

During the process of revising and rewriting the content of Modern Architecture Since 1900, Curtis acknowledges having done more to discuss the cultural role of architecture and to deal with interactions between building and the wider environment, meaning the urban environment. He gives the example of the chapter on ‘Industrialisation and the City: The Skyscraper as Type and Symbol,’ inserted near the beginning of Part 1, which deals with the late nineteenth century industrial city and the architectural and philosophical dilemmas posed by the skyscraper. According to Curtis, “while this is largely an American story (even a Chicago story), it also serves to outline some of the basic structures and generic contradictions of the capitalist city,” which have to do with mobility and infrastructures, and with new building typologies like libraries and train stations, and which he also finds in London and Paris.25 Another addition to Part 1 is chapter 8 on ‘National Myths and Classical Transformations.’ Curtis studies both subjects at the beginning of the twentieth century and, in his opinion, they “also explain some of the formative influences on the ‘modern masters,’ and hint at the later continuation of regional and classical influences within modern architecture itself.”26

24 Curtis, “Introduction,” 15. 25 William J.R. Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900 (Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1996), 692. 26 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 692. 68

Modern Architecture Since 1900: Classificatory Strategies

As a result of the revision of the content of Part 1, Curtis gives more attention to the inheritance of theories from the nineteenth century (e.g. the writings of Gottfried Semper), and to diverse conceptions of nature. Even if he does not expressly admit that these additions were an attempt to rectify a lack of theoretical grounding in his work, they are precisely what some reviewers felt was missing in the first edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900. Interestingly, Curtis emphasises the reviewers’ praise rather than their critiques, when he talks about the revision process.

The second part of the book concentrates on ‘The Crystallisation of Modern Architecture between the Wars.’ In Curtis’s narrative, several ideals and definitions of ‘the modern’ coexisted in the 1920s, sometimes overlapping, sometimes conflicting: functionalism and ‘new objectivity,’ idealism, expressionism, and primitivism and nature worship.”27 It is worth noting that the use of ‘–isms’ is acceptable to Curtis as long as they are used to map the beginning of the twentieth century. In contrast, he criticises the use of ‘-isms’ in the work of contemporary historians when it refers to architectural developments of the 1970s and 1980s. The main characters of Part 2 are Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius, Erich Mendelsohn, Gerrit Rietveld, Konstantin Melnikov, Rudolph Schindler and Richard Neutra, to mention only a few. They are part of Curtis’s survey because they “created buildings of such innovatory force that they dislodged the hold of previous traditions, laying down a new definition of architecture for the future.”28 This period has been given an epic character by previous historians, and, in Curtis’s opinion, for this reason “one must be wary of over- selective treatments,” and have an inclusive approach.29

This part of the book discusses how the ideological roots of the reform aspirations in the modern movement, both in terms of social purpose and of architectural form, were intertwined with a wide range of political agendas. Curtis explains in the introduction to Modern Architecture Since 1900 that the middle part of the book analyses “the

27 Curtis, “Introduction,” 15. 28 Curtis, “Introduction,” 15. 29 Curtis, “Introduction,” 15. 69

Modern Architecture Since 1900: Classificatory Strategies problematic relationship between ideology and modern architecture in the Soviet Union of the 1920s, as well as totalitarian reactions against modernism in the following decade,” in the chapters on ‘Architecture and Revolution in Russia’ and on ‘Totalitarian Critiques of the Modern Movement,’ respectively.30 In this part, Curtis also considers the transformation of classicism in Fascist Italy and in social democracies like Finland and Sweden, and the interweaving of nationalism, internationalism and regionalism in several parts of the Mediterranean, Asia, Latin America and Africa. Curtis observes conflicts in this period which constitute much more than a battle of styles: “modernism challenged the status quo, articulated new social visions and suggested alternative ways of life; it played an active role in the process of modernisation.”31

Part 2 also investigates how branches of the modern movement had been founded in places as diverse as Finland and Britain, Brazil and South Africa, Mexico and Japan by the outbreak of the Second World War. What Curtis refers to as a “second generation,” which includes figures such as Alvar Aalto, Berthold Lubetkin, Giuseppe Terragni and Oscar Niemeyer, “modified seminal ideas to fit new intentions and to deal with entirely different climates, cultures, traditions.” 32 Meanwhile the originators of the modern movement in architecture pursued their own researches, reacting to the political and economic crises of the 1930s with less dogmatic versions of ‘machinism,’ and with more accommodating versions of the ‘natural,’ the vernacular and the ‘primitive.’

Curtis not only added a chapter on ‘International, National, Regional: The Diversity of a New Tradition’ to Part 2, but also reordered and reorganised the second half of its content. His intention was “to emphasise the range and diversity of modern architectural developments between the wars, to underline the various cultural, political and aesthetic agendas of seminal figures like Wright, Le Corbusier, Mies van

30 Curtis, “Introduction,” 15-16. 31 Curtis, “Introduction,” 16. 32 Curtis, “Introduction,” 16. 70

Modern Architecture Since 1900: Classificatory Strategies der Rohe, and Aalto, and to re-evaluate individual architects who never fit period pigeonholes, such as Schindler, Terragni and Mendelsohn.”33

For Curtis, it made more sense to discuss ‘The Continuity of Older Traditions,’ featuring works of architecture built by lesser-known architects between 1910 and 1930, in places as diverse as Prague, Stuttgart, London, Nebraska, New Delhi, Melbourne, Canberra, or Stockholm, after the chapter on Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye. The chapter addresses the themes of “extension, ‘naturalisation’ and cultural adaptation, in short, the entire process of global dissemination” and the foundation of branches of the modern movement in countries such as Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Japan, Brazil, South Africa, Palestine and Mexico in the 1920s and 1930s. 34 Curtis changed the title of the following chapter from ‘Wright and Le Corbusier in the 1930s,’ to ‘Nature and the Machine: Mies van der Rohe, Wright and Le Corbusier in the 1930s.’ It can be argued that this is a clear signal of acknowledging the critical response to Modern Architecture Since 1900 regarding the work of Mies. Finally, he also decided to place ‘The Spread of Modern Architecture to England and Scandinavia’ before his account of ‘Totalitarian Critiques in the 1930s.’ Part 2 ends with the aforementioned chapter on ‘International, National, Regional: The Diversity of a New Tradition.’ Regarding the revision of Part 2, Curtis writes:

It was always an intention of the book to deal with the question of style in a deep sense, rather than abandoning the problem of style altogether as others have done. The first edition already expressed scepticism about the relative superficiality of the categories used in the formulation of a so-called ‘International Style.’ The third edition has gone further to clarify the underlying spatial concepts, mental structures and modes of organisation at work in the architectures of the 1920s. It delves into similarities and differences, generic types and particular variations, elements of personal and period style.35

The third part of the first edition of the book examines the global dissemination of modern architecture from the 1940s to the late 1970s. Curtis frames this global

33 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 692. 34 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 692. 35 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 692. 71

Modern Architecture Since 1900: Classificatory Strategies dissemination by identifying three phenomena; firstly, transplantation, as “modernism was grafted into cultures quite different from those in which it began;” secondly, devaluation, “as symbolic forms were gradually emptied of their original polemical content, and cheapened by commercial interests or state bureaucracies;” and, thirdly, regeneration, “as basic concepts were re-examined or rejected, and as new expressive territories were opened up.”36

As well as the late works of the ageing ‘masters’ of modern architecture, this part of the book considers the gradual modification of earlier Utopian models of urbanism; the emergence of groups of architects such as Team X seeking a less absolutist approach to planning; the development of new “strains” of modernism in diverse national cultures (e.g. Spain, Australia, India, Japan); general themes such as ‘regionalism’ and the reading of urban context; modernism’s adaptation to local climates and cultures in developing countries; building types, like the high-rise apartment block and the glass- box skyscraper; and individual designers such as Louis Kahn, Jørn Utzon, Luis Barragán, Aldo van Eyck, Carlo Scarpa, Alejandro de la Sota, José Antonio Coderch and Denys Lasdun.37

Curtis claims that when the book was first written, in the late 1970s, the literature on the architecture of the years after the Second World War was “sparse and somewhat distorted by an apparent obsession with (mostly illusory) ‘movements.’” 38 In the intervening years between the three editions of the book, Curtis came across several valuable studies of individual architects and building types, which he understands to be more accurate than previous studies. Two chapters are introduced in Part 3 between Curtis’s account of the work of ‘Alvar Aalto and the Scandinavian Tradition’ (‘tradition’ was changed for ‘developments’ in the third edition) and the chapter on Louis Kahn and Monumentality. Firstly, Curtis adds the chapter, ‘Disjunctions and Continuities in the Europe of the 1950s,’ on the European situation in the years of reconstruction

36 Curtis, “Introduction,” 16. 37 Curtis, “Introduction,” 16. 38 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 692. 72

Modern Architecture Since 1900: Classificatory Strategies

“which hopefully compensates for the thin treatment of Italy, Germany, Spain and Scandinavia in the earlier editions,” and, secondly, he includes a chapter on ‘The Process of Absorption,’ which portrays the significant contribution of countries in Latin America and Asia. 39 Some reviewers of the first edition suggested that Modern Architecture Since 1900 was one of the few general studies to broach the problems of modernisation, urbanisation and identity in the “developing world;” the third edition expands upon these themes, notably for India, North Africa and the Middle East.40 This expansion is intimately related to Curtis’s own first-hand experience through extensive travelling which is discussed in the next section on ‘The Story of the Writing of Modern Architecture Since 1900.’

Before moving to the third edition and Part 4, it is interesting to examine the content and main ideas of the addendum on ‘The Search for Substance: Recent World Architecture (1987). Curtis begins the essay by contending that any description of the recent past that relies on ‘-isms’ “runs the risk of blurring together seminal buildings with weaker relatives that simply wore the approved period dress,” and that his approach with the first edition was not as balanced as he had claimed when Mexico and India had been ignored. 41 In his opinion, some of the best works of the six years between editions were built in developing countries, very far from the transatlantic centres where theory was being written. Curtis summarises the mid-1980s as a time of evolution not revolution.

A brief update on the postmodern works introduced in the first edition allows Curtis to confirm his thoughts on the Neue Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart. In the first edition of the book, because the construction process was not finished, he only discussed the project and the model of Stirling’s building, in the second edition he confirms his opinion of the building as “more jocular than profound.”42 The main characters of the addendum

39 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 692. 40 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 692. 41 William J.R. Curtis, “The Search for Substance: Recent World Architecture (1987),” Modern Architecture Since 1900 (London: Phaidon Press, 1987), 389. 42 Curtis, “The Search for Substance…,” 390. 73

Modern Architecture Since 1900: Classificatory Strategies are Frank Gehry’s fragmentation; the high-rise as understood by Norman Foster; the tension between the regional and the international in the work of Japanese architects such as Arata Isozaki and Tadao Ando; the development of the notion of regionalism, etc. Curtis also takes stock of contemporary works in Turkey, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia designed by both local and international architects. In the case of Mexico, he highlights the “lineage of modern architects who have attempted to combine the regional and the international and who have also been concerned with drawing lessons from the numerous layers of the architectural heritage” – a lineage of which architect Teodoro Gonzalez de León forms an important part.43

In India, Curtis emphasises the importance of the recent works, at that time, of Balkrishna Doshi in Ahmadabad, where Curtis was working on a monograph on the architect and where he wrote the addendum and the preface to the second edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900. In India, he had the opportunity to experience Charles Correa’s work, also in Ahmadabad, and Raj Rewal’s work in and around New Delhi, in which Rewal, in Curtis’s opinion, “penetrates beyond the particular historical example to the geometrical and spatial principles that underlie past vocabulary, and tries to make an equivalent for the present day.”44 The same blend of tradition and modernity is identified by Curtis in the work of the Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa, who brings together handicraft and architectural traditions while trying to build “in harmony” with the tropical climate and vegetation.45 As noted in the next section of this dissertation, in the intervening years between editions, Curtis published several monographic studies featuring Teodoro Gonzalez de León, Balkrishna Doshi and Raj Rewal.

In the addendum, Curtis investigates young architects who have understood and extended the forms used by their predecessors, creating new vocabularies. Examples of young architects transforming Louis Kahn’s architectural ideas are Mario Botta in

43 Curtis, “The Search for Substance…,” 396. 44 Curtis, “The Search for Substance…,” 398-399. 45 Curtis, “The Search for Substance…,” 399. 74

Modern Architecture Since 1900: Classificatory Strategies

Switzerland, Anant Raje in Ahmadabad and Rafael Moneo in Spain. About Moneo’s Museo de Arte Romano de Merida (1985), Curtis writes, “the forced theatricality of postmodern classicism finds no place among these grave and sober forms in dim light.”46 He admits: “it has been a guiding theme of this book that a tradition is formed from a chain of inventions.”47 “Certain works of architecture seem to touch a timeless core. To do this they have to emerge from the depths of the mind, giving shape to myths that have a universal dimension.”48 According to Curtis, these architects’ works are examples of this invention, especially those of Carlo Scarpa, whose Brion Cemetery in Italy (1978) closes the addendum and the book, as it comes after the conclusion, in a somewhat abrupt manner.

For the third edition, a fourth part, on ‘Continuity and Change in the Late Twentieth Century,’ is added, which deals with the complex development of world architecture since 1980. As previously discussed, Curtis tries to avoid “the self-inflationary rhetoric of ‘isms,’” and the standard critical postures and largely fictional “movements.”49 Rather, he tries to single out buildings, tendencies and ideas that add to an architectural culture of lasting value.50 Part 4 is intended to be a proposed outline of “a preliminary historical map of the late twentieth century.”51 It explores Curtis’s assertion in the preface to the second edition that lessons learned in the early twentieth century were being extended and transformed to better address the issues of context, region and tradition in many parts of the world. The three entirely new chapters examine a broad range of recent works in countries such as Spain, Switzerland, Finland, France, Japan, India, Australia, the United States and Mexico. Curtis organises the chapters around such general themes as the re-evaluation of the past, the response to local

46 Curtis, “The Search for Substance…,” 402. 47 Curtis, “The Search for Substance…,” 400. 48 Curtis, “The Search for Substance…,” 402. 49 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 692. 50 Curtis, “Introduction,” 16. 51 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 617. 75

Modern Architecture Since 1900: Classificatory Strategies climates and cultures, the celebration of technology, and the re-emergence of abstraction. Curtis writes in the introduction:

It seems that there are several ‘cultures of modernity’ in the recent past, and that these blend together long-term patterns and agendas with contemporary problems and preoccupations. Increasingly, architectural ideas are crossing frontiers, and this part of the book is concerned with the intermingling of new and old, local and universal.52

The buildings he chooses to illustrate the last part of the book were designed by Juan Navarro Baldeweg, Norman Foster, Balkrishna Doshi, Juha Leiviskä and Tadao Ando. In Curtis’s opinion, these architects draw meaning from their respective places and societies, while contributing to a global architectural culture of substance. In addition, Curtis argues in Chapter Three on regionalism that it is between those two realities, regional and global, that these architects succeed in achieving a certain balance. He states that these architects “remind us that modernism in the late twentieth century possesses a complex identity; continuing to aspire to a certain universality, even as it reacts to different territories and traditions; stimulating radical innovation even as it reactivates its own generating principles; inspiring new visions for the future, even as it transforms the past.”53

Conclusion of Modern Architecture Since 1900 The book’s structure reflects Curtis’s formulation of a modern tradition. Part 1 presents multiple traditions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries which were formative for modern architecture – although this is not to say that Curtis investigates the origins of modern architecture only in Part 1, as later in the text, when discussing different architects and buildings, he traces their specific precedents. Part 2 sees these old traditions crystallise into one modern tradition, which is still and, so is presented by Curtis as being, diverse and multiple. Part 3, finally, discusses the most recent developments, disseminations, absorptions and transformation of that modern tradition. In his research on Curtis’s Modern Architecture Since 1900, Hermosilla draws

52 Curtis, “Introduction,” 17. 53 Curtis, “Introduction,” 17. 76

Modern Architecture Since 1900: Classificatory Strategies a beautiful metaphor. For him the book can be summarised in the image of two wide nets, interwoven by different fibres, diverse in their length and width. One of the nets would represent the realm of old traditions, and the other one, the traditions in recent architecture. Hidalgo continues: “the different points of connection between both nets would be the necessary steps from one realm to the next, through a set of names and works that contributed to build the modern tradition.”54

‘Tradition’ is one of the key concepts of Curtis’s conclusion to Modern Architecture Since 1900, which is entitled ‘Modernity, Tradition and Authenticity.’ He begins by claiming that previous historians, “propagandists,” oversimplified the relationship between modern architecture and tradition. 55 Even after the “cataclysmic event” that was the Second World War, most of the early premises of the “heroic period” remained, with its necessary revisions.56 Curtis writes:

This is not to denigrate such figures for a lack of originality: it is rather to emphasise that an inventor’s task may vary according to the point at which he enters a tradition, and to stress that creative individuals and traditions need one another if they are to stay alive.57

It is worth noting that, if Curtis discusses modern architecture in terms of tradition (or traditions) and modern architects as inventors, there is a certain parallelism with the task of the historian – Curtis himself is an inventor, part of the tradition of the writing of history. Curtis regards tradition as diverse and dynamic and architecture as an art. Having said that, tradition, for him, is built from creations or inventions of individual artists of different aspirations, unique buildings with “a considerable regional variety and a very broad spectrum of quality.”58 As for the inventors or modern architects, Curtis urges them to rely on the “intervening chain of discoveries of the modern tradition” and to rethink the past from their own perspective, taking into account

54 Hermosilla, “Lectura del tratado La arquitectura moderna desde 1900: William J.R. Curtis, arquitectura entre tradición e invención,” 10. Author’s translation into English. 55 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 685. 56 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 687. 57 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 687. 58 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 687. 77

Modern Architecture Since 1900: Classificatory Strategies present needs, tasks, techniques, and most importantly for him, meanings.59 Curtis formulation of a modern tradition, its relationship with meaning, symbolic form and authenticity, as drafted in the book’s conclusion, are further explored in Chapter Four of this dissertation and discussed in Chapter Five.

There are interesting additions to the conclusion in the third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900, as Curtis reflects on the possibilities that are still open at the end of the twentieth century. And, in fact, he could be referring to both architects and historians, who can revise and reinterpret core ideas in their practice. Curtis includes ‘universalism’ in his process of revision and expansion of his own work in the third edition. At the time when Curtis was writing, the universalising ambition of the Enlightenment was still evident in the transformative character that he observes in modern architecture. Regarding universalism in the Third World, Curtis writes that “its ‘universalism’ was co-opted by nationalisms and imperialisms although it also served as a refracting prism through which local traditions (some of them with a universality of their own) could be re-examined in the postcolonial world.”60 Curtis’s formulation of universalism will be further explored in Chapter Three of this dissertation in relation to regionalism.

Curtis does not deny the regional component of recent architectural developments, but he warns of the distortions that can be caused by political, and I would add ideological, imperatives of internationalisation, on the one hand; and of regionalism, on the other. For this reason, he urges historians to treat these issues with caution. He claims that “the book has done its best to negotiate these difficulties, and to portray the diverse strands of modernism in all their subtlety and complexity, in space and in time.”61 These diverse strands form the modern tradition that Curtis sets himself the task of mapping around the world, beyond the Western canon, not only in the last decades of the twentieth century, but since the interwar period. Curtis describes a

59 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 688. 60 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 685. 61 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 686. 78

Modern Architecture Since 1900: Classificatory Strategies process by which what he calls ‘modern tradition’ rethinks itself through both texts and actual buildings and projects. This process, for him, encompasses “both an internal inheritance of underlying types, and an active ‘rereading’ of seminal buildings and core ideas.”62 Curtis writes:

There is a sort of accumulation of historical layers as prototypes are reinterpreted through later filters, and as potentials latent within are revealed. The resilience of a tradition is gauged by the capacity of its schemata to go on transforming in time, achieving new connections of myth and meaning, new synthesis of ideas and forms.63

Curtis adds to the conclusion of the 1996 edition his reflections on the way he included recent architectural developments in the revision of the book’s content, with an emphasis on re-examination. As with the re-examination of local traditions in a postcolonial world, modern architecture in Curtis’s narrative entered a new phase in the 1980s, where several of its generative principles were re-examined and re-activated, and where identities and territories were redefined.64 He admits that, as a historian, it is hard to write a conclusion about a process that is still unfolding, and of which he considers himself to be part. Curtis sums up his intention with Modern Architecture Since 1900 as explaining that there is nothing simple or predestined about the development of modern architecture, and presenting its continuities and disjunctions. His intention is rather a pedagogical one.

It is worth noting the change in Curtis’s vocabulary for the conclusion of the third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900. He uses verbs such as revise, re-examine, reactivate, rethink, reread, and reinterpret. As previously discussed in Chapter One of this dissertation, while mapping the development ‘From Modern to Global: A Theoretical Framework,’ they are verbs which appear often in the disciplinary reassessment of both art and architectural history at the end of the twentieth century, including historiographical studies. Indeed, a certain parallelism can be drawn

62 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 688. 63 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 688. 64 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 686. 79

Modern Architecture Since 1900: Classificatory Strategies between the way architects reinterpreted modern architecture and the way historians and historiographers reinterpreted the writing of history.

4. The Story of the Writing of Modern Architecture Since 1900

This section has been written by assembling Curtis’s first-person account as it appears in the essays “A Historian’s Perspective on Modern Architecture,”1 “The History of a History: Le Corbusier at work, the Genesis of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts,”2 and “Remembering Ackerman: Resonances and Reminiscences over Half a Century.”3 In addition, part of the communication between Curtis and the author has been included, as well as references from the Bibliographical Notes at the end of the third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900, and the second edition of Le Corbusier: Ideas and Forms4. The focus is on Curtis’s personal life experiences, which led to, and had an impact on, his thinking and writing/revising process in preparation of the three editions of the book. For this reason, it is written in the first person singular, with my explanatory ‘interjections.’ It is interesting to include in this chronological overview the other publications he worked on, especially in the intervening years between the first and third editions, as they had an impact on the revision of Curtis’s book. The aim is to contrast Curtis’s recollections with the discussion of the critical responses to, and the classificatory strategies of, the book.

The writing of Modern Architecture Since 1900 was at points treacherous. In the preface to the first edition, Curtis states that he was writing the chapter on ‘The Image and idea of Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye at Poissy’ in Beirut, and only “luckily escaped

1 William J.R. Curtis, “A Historian’s Perspective on Modern Architecture.” Transcript. English version of text “La perspectiva de un historiador sobre la arquitectura moderna,” translated by Jorge Sainz and read out by the author in Spanish on the presentation of the translation of the third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900 at the Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, January 2007. WJRC Archive. 2 William J.R. Curtis, “The History of a History: Le Corbusier at work, the Genesis of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts,” in Massilia 2013- Le Corbusier- Ultime Pensées/Derniers Projets- 1960/1965 (Paris and Marseille: Fondation Le Corbusier and éditions Imbernon, 2014), 112-151. WJRC Archive. 3 William J.R. Curtis, “Remembering Ackerman: Resonances and Reminiscences over Half a Century,” in James S. Ackerman: Remembrances, 71-121. James Sloss Ackerman Memorial, Harvard, April 2017. WJRC Archive. 4 William J.R. Curtis, Le Corbusier: Ideas and Forms (London: Phaidon Press, 2015). 80

Modern Architecture Since 1900: The Story of the Writing annihilation.”5 As a result, Villa Savoye is associated in his mind with the sound of gunfire. In addition, the last third of the manuscript was “nearly lost at the bottom of the River Hawkesbury in Australia when a canoe tilted over.”6 From my communication with Curtis, I can add that it happened during a long weekend on his second visit to Sydney in 1980, and that it was a handwritten manuscript. The final chapter on ‘The Traditions of Modern Architecture in the Recent Past’ “was written in a single twenty four hour session in a beach house on the Queensland coast in the spring of 1981 [fall in the southern hemisphere] after which I [he] plunged into the surf as the sun was rising over the sea.”7 This happened during his third visit to Australia, and he still recalls that beach house, “about 70 miles north of Brisbane at a place called Coolum Beach”8 at the Sunshine Coast: “a beautiful white house on stilts with tin roof.”9 Most importantly and according to Curtis, the first edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900 “was written in top secret and discussed with nobody.”10 In January 2007, on the occasion of the presentation of the Spanish translation of the third edition of the book, Curtis observed that it is “linked to many memories connected to the places or writing and rewriting.”11 Apart from Beirut and the aforementioned house in Queensland, Australia, Curtis lists the Peabody Library at Harvard University “with fossils nearby,” and “a silent farm in the Ardèche in southern France with owls hooting at night,” as locations intimately linked in his mind with the writing of the book.12

However, the story of the writing of the book is also the story of how Curtis went from being an undergraduate student in England to a postgraduate student and an early career academic and lecturer in different institutions of the United States. From this

5 Curtis, “Preface to the First Edition,” 7. 6 Curtis, “Preface to the First Edition,” 6. 7 William J.R. Curtis, email message to author, June 03, 2016. 8 William J.R. Curtis, email message to author, March 03, 2016. 9 William J.R. Curtis, email message to author, June 17, 2017. 10 Curtis, email message to author, June 03, 2016. 11 Curtis, “A Historian’s Perspective on Modern Architecture,” transcript of the talk, January 2007. 12 Curtis, “A Historian’s Perspective on Modern Architecture,” transcript of the talk, January 2007. 81 Modern Architecture Since 1900: The Story of the Writing point onwards, this section presents Curtis’s words, with notes by the author in italics explaining the source of the information.

Becoming a Historian Excerpts from “The History of a History: Le Corbusier at work, the Genesis of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts,” 2014, unless specified otherwise.

In the event I was accepted by the Courtauld Institute of Art in 1967 to do a degree in the History of European Art although I knew little about the place or the subject in advance. The Courtauld was principally a research institute for graduates. Undergraduates were expected to follow suit by writing and reading out essays, which referred to primary sources and erudite articles. The history of modern architecture scarcely existed as a subject at the Courtauld Institute but there were occasional lectures by visitors, among them John Summerson and Reyner Banham. I took the time to visit revered works of the 1930s such as Bexhill Pavilion (1934) by Mendelsohn and Serge Chermayeff. The Courtauld basement was well lined with old periodicals such as the Architectural Review dating back to the thirties, but it was the direct experience of a building that steered me towards modern architecture: the hovering white forms of the Royal College of Physicians in Regent’s Park designed by Denys Lasdun in 1960. In the summer term of 1969, I organised two exhibitions on contemporary architecture in the Courtauld Student common room, one on Lasdun, another on the Smithsons, both with accompanying texts.13

Such then were some of the experiences and preoccupations I carried with me when I arrived at Harvard in September 1970. As an incoming Graduate student, I was required to enrol in four courses and chose Zen Art with Max Loehr, the formation of Islamic Art with Oleg Grabar, a seminar on Leonardo da Vinci with James Ackerman and a lecture course on 19th and 20th century architecture and urbanism with Eduard Sekler. Professor Eduard Sekler who was from a Viennese background and who was Director of the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies housed in the Carpenter Center itself. He held a joint appointment with the Graduate

School of Design and among other things taught the core course in the history of

13 For Curtis unpublished introductory texts to both the Lasdun and Smithsons exhibits in student Common Room, Courtauld Institute of Art, May/June 1969, see WJRC Archive. See also Curtis ‘The Royal College of Physicians in Regent’s Park, Denys Lasdun and Partners’, Connoisseur (August 1970): 284-5. 82 Modern Architecture Since 1900: The Story of the Writing

architecture running from Ancient Egypt up to the present in four components. He combined the rigour of a trained art historian with a commitment to modern artistic and architectural culture, a rare mixture. I was quick to realise that there were many links to Germanic and central European culture at Harvard, especially in the history of art and architecture.

After delivering a lecture in the formal lecture series of the school in January 1971, Sekler, who had been in the audience, asked me to see him in his office in Carpenter Center the next day saying that he had something which might interest me. When I arrived, he broached the idea of a serious historical monograph on Le Corbusier’s building. Sekler had collected a few key letters and asked me to look these over and let him know my thoughts on the matter. This was a daunting challenge, but also a golden opportunity.

Looking back at Le Corbusier at Work, I realise that my contributions to the book constituted an apprenticeship in which I developed some of my guiding principles as a historian and gained a deeper understanding of architecture itself. 14 The endeavour left its traces on later works and contributed to an obsession with invention, meaning and the interaction of ideas and forms. The historical text, like the building itself was the result of a process, one combining intensive research, historical thinking and the search for an appropriate literary form. When my parts of the book were first written it was not my intention that they should be considered for a Doctoral Thesis. But by a curious turn of fate, and with the addition of a catalogue raisonné of drawings and a new Introduction (neither included in the book of 1978), that is precisely what my work became, being awarded a PhD in the Fine Arts Department at Harvard University in June 1975.15

During the course of our communication, Curtis referred to his exchanges with Von Moos, contributor to Le Corbusier at work: “Also, between 1972 and 1975 Stanislaus von

14 Eduard F. Sekler and William J.R. Curtis, Le Corbusier at Work, the Genesis of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts (Cambridge, MA.: HarvardUniversity Press, 1978). 15 William J.R. Curtis, The History and Design of Le Corbusier’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University, A thesis presented by William Joseph Rupert Curtis to the Fine Arts Department in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Subject of Fine Arts. Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 1975. 83 Modern Architecture Since 1900: The Story of the Writing

Moos was teaching at the Carpenter Center at Harvard and we discussed modern architecture and Le Corbusier in particular.”16

When I came to this project I was a young scholar, twenty-two years old, who had not studied the history of modern architecture formally but had been exposed to the exacting study of Renaissance painting, sculpture, devotional objects, urban spaces and architecture - even to cutting edge developments in these areas - while still an undergraduate in the University of London. I had already established certain priorities and methods as a historian. In any event, in early June 1975 I joined my colleagues in line in Harvard Yard to receive our degrees, in my case a Harvard Doctorate in ‘Artes Elegantes’ (the amusing Latin translation of ‘Fine Arts.’)

At this same time, Curtis collaborated with the Open University and Tim Benton, and, as a result, he published Le Corbusier: The Evolution of His Architectural Language and its Crystallisation in the Villa Savoye in Poissy (1975) and English Architecture, 1930s (1975).17

In September 1975, my visa was soon to run out, but I received a last minute offer from the Art History Department at Boston University to teach twentieth century North American art and architecture there for the academic year 1975-6. In the spring of 1976 Wellesley College asked me to deliver a lecture course on the entire history of modern architecture.

In “Remembering Ackerman: Resonances and Reminiscences over Half a Century” (2017), Curtis gives more details about going back to Harvard: “In 1976 I moved back to Harvard and taught for six years in the Visual and Environmental Department at Carpenter Center in fall semesters only; the rest of each year I used to write, give lectures, or travel. I organised several expeditions to places as diverse as Greece, Turkey, Morocco, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and India, with a particular interest in Islamic

16 William J.R. Curtis, email message to author, August 31, 2016. 17 William J.R. Curtis, Le Corbusier: The Evolution of his Architectural Language and its Crystallization in the Villa Savoye in Poissy (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1975). English Architecture 1930s (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1975). 84 Modern Architecture Since 1900: The Story of the Writing architecture. The photographs made during these trips became integral to my teaching.”18

In the spring of 1977 Catherine [Curtis’s wife] and I were no longer in the USA, but in Greece at the start of a long Mediterranean journey. Our wanderings that spring took us back to the world of Antiquity – Ancient Greece, Asia Minor, Bursa, Istanbul, and finally Egypt. In January 1978, we attended the presentation in Carpenter Center of the book. Soon after the presentation, I set off on another adventure, this time to the southern Morocco, which led eventually to a study on mud-fortified dwellings of the sub-Sahara.

From 1976 to 1982 taught fall semesters in the Harvard VES (Department of Visual and Environmental Studies) in Carpenter Center itself. Among my teaching responsibilities were core courses such as ‘Towards an Integrated Theory of Form in the Visual Arts,’ inherited from Rudolph Arnheim. I gave it the new title as well as an amplified range, as Arnheim had tended to revolve around Gestalt psychology. The course was intended to train students to see, analyse and interpret the environment at all scales from objects, to buildings, to cities, while introducing them to basic concepts to do with form, meaning, medium, representation, abstraction, style, type, process, ideology etc.

In addition, I taught an array of history courses on subjects as diverse as twentieth century architecture and the Renaissance. Then there was a graduate seminar in theory with the title ‘From Idea to Form,’ which addressed questions to do with invention, process, imagery, iconography and symbolism. There were memorable student interventions by Doreve Nicholaeff on the meaning of spirals, by Thom Mayne on eclecticism and by Alexander Ward on the creative process. Certain perceptions first worked out in the microscopic study of Carpenter Center were thus able to expand and prosper in dialogue with students, and in seminars or lectures of a general philosophic nature which I referred to as ‘parables.’ There is no better way of clarifying one’s ideas than being obliged to communicate them to others.19

18 Curtis, “Remembering Ackerman…,” 88. 19 For descriptions of courses given by Curtis at Harvard University, as Graduate Student in Fine Arts, 1971-5; at Boston University and Wellesley College, as Assistant Professor and 1975-6; at Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University in the VES Department as Assistant Professor, 1976-82, see WJRC Archive and Harvard Course catalogues of the time. For general reflection on design process and interpretation of drawings throughout history 85 Modern Architecture Since 1900: The Story of the Writing

Publishing Modern Architecture Since 1900 The course I taught on ‘Architecture of the Twentieth Century,’ in which Le Corbusier’s role was central was an opportunity to pull together nearly a decade of research and reflection on the subject in a coherent and measured synthesis. The day I handed in the grades, I received a letter from Phaidon Press asking if I might be interested in writing a general book on the history of modern architecture. It was too good to be true and I accepted. This was the starting point for Modern Architecture Since 1900.

In an email sent to the author on February 2, 2017, Curtis provides more details about his relationship with the publisher: “In many ways, the skeleton was established then. I wrote the outline of the book and a trial chapter on Le Corbusier in the 1920s for them in Summer 1979 when I was in London. The contract was signed and the first draft was hand written between January and September 1980, then the second draft between September 1980 and Spring 1981, also by hand and later on transcribed.”20

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Excerpts from “Remembering Ackerman: Resonances and Reminiscences over Half a Century,” 2017, unless specified otherwise. In this text Curtis refers often to James Ackerman as Jim.

Except for Catherine, I said not a word about this project to anyone at Harvard: it was a top-secret operation. Without going into detail, I basically cut the subject into three sections: the emergence of the idea of a modern architecture in the 19th century and developments pre-world war I; the crystallisation of seminal works in the so called heroic years of the 1920s; and the world wide dissemination and transformation of these founding principles over ensuing decades. In other words, I was concerned with the structure of a tradition, the modern tradition, and in this respect, I was certainly influenced indirectly by Henri Focillon (Vie des Formes, 1932) and by George Kubler (The Shape of Time, 1962) but also by Gombrich’s idea of ‘schemata and style.’ Possibly, too my structure reflected subliminally that of Vasari’s

in this period, see for example Curtis, ‘Notes on the Genesis of Architectural Form’, unpublished paper 1977, WJRC Archive. 20 William J.R. Curtis, email message to author, February 2, 2017. 86 Modern Architecture Since 1900: The Story of the Writing

Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, (1550). After all, Vasari also worked with three ‘ages,’ each heralded by a key set of breakthroughs or new paradigms, which shifted the game for followers.

This view of an unfolding tradition deliberately sidestepped the crude zeitgeist determinism of writers like Giedion (Space, Time and Architecture) while also exploring the debts of modern architects to the past. Throughout the book, I kept in mind my ‘integrated theory of design,’ attempting to hold multiple factors in balance. The book terminated with Jørn Utzon’s extraordinary church at Bagsvaerd which I had ‘discovered’ by accident that summer of 1978 when visiting Copenhagen, a work that was firmly in a modern tradition but which succeeded in doing all the things that post-modernists claimed to do but in authentic and timeless forms.

Almost thirty years later, on January 2007, at the presentation of the Spanish translation of the third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900, Curtis reminisced: “I still recall the many years leading up to the writing of the book including discoveries of key buildings, lectures, discussions, visits, which provided the material for reflection. It was the era of postmodernism and I was astonished to see how easily an insubstantial trend could colonise minds of teachers and students. But, this book was not conceived as a defence of tired and cherished notions. On the contrary, it was an attempt at de- mythologizing modern architecture, at saving it from its own myths and apologists, at avoiding the caricatures produced by both enemies and friends, at rendering things in their complexity.”21

In 1981, after the wedding [when Curtis married Catherine] and before leaving Cambridge [Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts], I had decided to give my manuscript to a single reader for an honest assessment, and I deliberately chose an individual whose primary activities were not in the field of modern architecture, but whose ability to judge the intellectual worth and longevity of a text was beyond doubt. Needless to say, all this pointed to Jim, so a day or so before we left for Europe in late June I turned up at 12, Coolidge Hill Road with two large supermarket bags carrying a total of 780 pages of typescript. I explained what this was about and asked him how he felt about reading through the entire book in Barnet, Vermont

21 Curtis, “A Historian’s Perspective on Modern Architecture,” transcript of the talk, January 2007. 87 Modern Architecture Since 1900: The Story of the Writing that summer. He said that he would be delighted to do so. I insisted that he be as critical as he liked: no holds barred. Anyway, after our sojourn in Italy, Catherine and I went to England. I phoned Phaidon Press in Oxford and arranged a meeting with the director Simon Haviland. When I arrived, he stated outright: ‘We think that this book is a winner and that it needs very little more work.’ I disagreed insisting that it probably needed another year's work. Simon replied: ‘But didn’t you give a copy of the manuscript to a well-known historian at Harvard?’ ‘Yes, to James Ackerman.’ ‘Do you have a number for him? Here is the phone.’ So I called the number in Barnet, Vermont. In those days, rural numbers in the USA made a sort of grumbling sound. After several grumbles, Jim answered ‘Ackerman.’ When I said who I was, he asked all about the wedding and then we got to the subject of the book. He said that he thought it was a marvellous piece of work, liable to have a long life and that it needed very little extra work. When I put the phone down, I recounted what I had just heard to Simon who replied: ‘We told you so.’

Jim followed up with an extraordinary letter dated August 28th 1981 and addressed to Simon Haviland. It started out as follows: ‘William Curtis has asked me to put down my reactions to his manuscript entitled Modern Architecture 1900-1975, which I do willingly because I have benefited greatly from our association over the years and because I am enormously enthusiastic about the achievement. I think it is not only immeasurably the finest work covering this field in existence but may very well be the best survey of any field in the history of architecture written since the prime of Nikolaus Pevsner and Siegfried Giedion...’ The letter then continued to discuss the scholarly underpinnings and the wide geographical range: ‘Its historical method is irreproachable; there is no evasion of documentary responsibility... I doubt whether any other publishing historian in his field has encountered such a wide spectrum of buildings at first hand: Curtis has ranged through Africa, the Near East, Asia and Australia, as well as Europe, with an adventurousness quite untypical of his profession.’

The letter then focussed upon the literary quality of the text and its ethical and critical stance: ‘A truly distinctive virtue of the text is that it is admirably written without wasted or obfuscating verbiage and with an assured and easy style. The most distinctive aspect of the book is its critical posture, which is exceptionally open yet absolutely firm in its priorities. He conveys a concept of the symbolic message of

88 Modern Architecture Since 1900: The Story of the Writing

architecture, its role as the carrier of culture that elevates the historical account to a humanistic plane. Yet he is not a fashionable semiologist/structuralist. He perceives architecture as an art; in the genesis of architectural works, he draws attention repeatedly to the significance of structural technology in design. He is the model of the committed humanist in that he combines scientific precision with ethical responsibility and with critical sensibility...’ The letter expanded upon this aspect of a critical stance towards contemporary architecture then stated: ‘In presenting architecture as a culminating achievement of a culture and of the human imagination, Curtis has chosen to maintain much of the traditional idealist critical stance, and in this respect I would have written a different kind of book on the subject. But I say this to demonstrate that one doesn't have to share all the premises of his work in order to admire and learn from it.’

Needless to say, this letter is one of the most treasured documents in my possession. Modern Architecture Since 1900 was published in September 1982 only weeks after I had left Harvard (of my own accord). It became my international passport and opened the way to 'wider latitudes': a much larger world than that of the university.

In the aforementioned talk in Madrid, Curtis further reflects on this idea of the book as his international passport: “The book enjoyed a positive reception from the word go. It crossed frontiers and enjoyed many thoughtful reviews. It won some awards, was rapidly adopted as a basic text in many universities around the world, and was translated into several languages including German, Japanese and of course Spanish. For the author the book was like an international passport and it opened many doors. But it also became part of an identity and corresponded with my decision to guard a degree of distance from academia which so easily falls prey to intellectual fashions.”22

In the CV provided by Curtis to the author, he lists the awards that this book and subsequent publications received: “Curtis has received several prizes and awards in recognition of his scholarship, his critical writings and his role as an educator. The first edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900 was awarded the Alice Davis Hitchcock Medal of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain (October 1984) for making “an outstanding contribution to the study and knowledge of architectural

22 Curtis, “A Historian’s Perspective on Modern Architecture,” transcript of the talk, January 2007. 89 Modern Architecture Since 1900: The Story of the Writing history.” Curtis won both the Book Award (for Modern Architecture Since 1900) and the Critic's Award (for “Principle versus Pastiche, Perspectives on Some Recent Classicisms,” Architectural Review, August, 1984) of the Comité international des critiques d'architecture, 1985. They listed the book as one of the five most significant books on architectural criticism published between 1982 and 1985. He also won a Silver Medal at the World Architectural Biennale, 1989 (for Balkrishna Doshi, an Architecture for India, 1989); and a Historical Monograph Award from the American Institute of Architects, 1997 (for Modern Architecture Since 1900, third edition).”23

During this time, Curtis also organised several exhibitions: one on modern architecture at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, held from 9 September to 26 October 1980, for which he wrote the catalogue, Boston: Forty Years of Modern Architecture;24 another on Le Corbusier at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University from 4 November to 29 November 1981, for which he also wrote the catalogue, Fragments of Invention: The Sketchbooks of Le Corbusier.25Later on, in 1982, after his trips to Australia, again at the Carpenter Center, Curtis organised and wrote the catalogue for the exhibition ‘Forms and Functions of the Australian Aboriginal Spear-Thrower.’26

Towards the third Edition In late 1982, Catherine and I left behind our Boston existence and set off on a grand adventure involving several years of repeated travels through India and South East Asia. I had visited India the first time in spring 1980 and had been transfixed by the experience of sites such as the Tomb of Humayum, Fatehpur Sikri and of course Le Corbusier’s Capitol in Chandigarh. For some time, I had been thinking that, it was time to go beyond western, North African and middle eastern traditions in order to experience and understand some of the primary examples of Buddhist, Hindu and Indo-Islamic architecture. Initially we had a base in Bangkok and from there we set off on several expeditions in Thailand, India and Indonesia travelling very light with only the minimal clothing, sketchbooks, cameras and precious rolls of film. I can say

23 William J.R. Curtis, short CV plus addendum with best book reviews. WJRC Archive. 24 William J.R. Curtis, Boston: Forty Years of Modern Architecture (Boston: The Institute, 1980). 25 William J.R. Curtis, Fragments of Invention: The Sketchbooks of Le Corbusier (Cambridge, Mass.: Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, 1981). 26 William J.R. Curtis, Forms and Functions of the Australian Aboriginal Spear-thrower (Cambridge, Mass.: Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, 1982). 90 Modern Architecture Since 1900: The Story of the Writing

that this was one of the high points of our lives as we covered vast territories and periods in India, all the way from the Buddhist stupa at Sanchi to the Sun Temple at Modhera, from the Elephanta Cave to Le Corbusier’s Assembly Building in Chandigarh, from the stepped wells of Gujurat to the Jain temple at Ranakpur.

In eastern Thailand, we explored tropical wooden vernaculars and discovered Khmer architecture at Phimai as Cambodia itself was still inaccessible and under the rule of Pol Pot. In Java, we visited Borobadour and in Jogjakarta immersed ourselves in then active renaissance of traditional dance. It was a question of learning and absorbing new visual languages of architecture and design at all scales from that of Balinese canoes, to that of Thai temple roofs, to that of Indian lotas (brass water pots). In this visual research, sketching was indispensable as a tool. Beyond individual examples, one gradually absorbed the ‘sub structures’ of diverse traditions, the characteristic types and forms. When we arrived in Ahmadabad in western India, it was above all to visit Le Corbusier's and Kahn's masterpieces there but also to meet Balkrishna Doshi who opened his doors to us. Along with Charles Correa, Raj Rewal and Anant Raje, he was involved in a search for a modern Indian architecture attuned to climate, tradition and culture. Eventually I wrote several texts on architectures of the Indian sub-continent including ones about Kahn’s magisterial Capitol in Dhaka, one on Raj Rewal and a monograph summing up Doshi’s philosophy and architecture: Balkrishna Doshi: an Architecture for India (1988).27 This stay in India was the first of many: the following year we explored southern temple cities and masterpieces in Sri Lanka, and in 1985, I assisted Charles Correa and Raj Rewal in putting together exhibitions on traditional Indian architecture.

During the course of our communication, Curtis gave more details about his work on Raj Rewal. “In fact, at the end of December 1985, I wrote the introduction to the French monography on Raj Rewal published by Editions Monituer, ‘Architecture Moderne, Racines Indiennes: Raj Rewal.’”28

27 William J.R. Curtis, Balkrishna V. Doshi: An Architecture for India (New York: Rizzoli, 1988). 28 William J.R. Curtis, email message to author, February 2, 2017. Reference made to William J.R. Curtis, Raj Rewal (Milan, Paris: Electa Moniteur, 1986). 91 Modern Architecture Since 1900: The Story of the Writing

At the end of the 1980s, Curtis published his very successful Le Corbusier: Ideas and Forms which was very quickly translated into other languages (that same year into Spanish, French and German), and had a second edition published in 2015.29

During the course of our communication, Curtis referred to his publications in the intervening years between editions of Modern Architecture Since 1900: “Remember that by then [his participation in the Regional Seminar sponsored by the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, held at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology in 1985] I had been in and out of India a great deal, also Mexico. I was very involved in those days with the ancient architecture of India, South East Asia and Mexico, and with ways in which lessons from these were being transformed into modern forms.”30

During this time, Curtis wrote about Luis Barragán in Arquitectura Viva in 1988, about Mexican ruins and modernity in MARCO’s catalogue Hechizo de Oaxaca in 1992, and the introduction to a book on Teodoro González de León in 1993. Simultaneously, he looked into Spanish architecture and architects: Carlos Ferrater (1989), Enric Miralles and Carme Pinos (1991), Juan Navarro Baldeweg (1992), Elias Torres (1993).31

I insisted upon a distinction between theoretical ideas and architectural ideas, the latter involving imagination, visual thinking and symbolisation in spatial concepts. In the 1990s (and since, apparently) there has been a danger that dry theorising replaces intelligent and learned insight into the visual and spatial qualities of buildings and urban spaces. Great architecture communicates before it is understood and the relationship between forms and theories is never straightforward. In the same period, broadly speaking the 1990s, I was hard at work on literary projects. In 1994, I published a major monograph, which again drew upon decades of reflection: Denys Lasdun: Architecture, City, Landscape.32 In addition to charting the development of Lasdun’s architecture from the 1930s to the present, this attempted to explain the basic principles, generating ideas and architectural language of this outstanding

29 William J.R. Curtis, Le Corbusier: Ideas and Forms (Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1986) 30 William J.R. Curtis, email message to author, February 2, 2017. 31 William J.R. Curtis, Carlos Ferrater (Barcelona: Gustavo Gilim 1989). Enric Miralles, Carme Pinós: 1988/1991 En construction = Under Construction (Madrid: El Croquis Editorial, 1991). Juan Navarro Baldeweg 1979-1992 (Madrid: El Croquis Editorial, 1992). Elías Torres (Madrid: El Croquis Editorial, 1993). 32 William J.R. Curtis, Denys Lasdun: Architecture, City, Landscape (London: Phaidon Press, 1994). 92 Modern Architecture Since 1900: The Story of the Writing

British architect who was also a close friend and who had also been a mentor. In fact, part of the problem here was to create a sufficient distance from the subject.

In the CV provided by Curtis to the author, he mentions having organised an exhibition on Denys Lasdun: Modernism, Nature, Tradition: The Architecture of Denys Lasdun (European Investment Bank, Luxembourg 1995) (catalogue of same name).33

In 1996, Phaidon also published the third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900 in a thoroughly revised, extended and redesigned version. This gave the book a new life and allowed me to incorporate my own and other people’s discoveries over the years since the first edition of 1982. Needless to say, an inscribed copy was sent to Jim who later told me that he had been intrigued to identify ways in which the book had evolved since he read the first edition manuscript in 1981. Such an operation is risky: one needs to alter the body while holding onto the essential spirit of the original work. On occasion, I discussed this issue with Jim even wondering why he had not updated his books on Michelangelo and Palladio in a similar fashion.

In the aforementioned talk in Madrid, Curtis shared further details on the rewriting process. He writes: “Writing the third edition was hard as it involved reconsidering many of my assumptions as a historian. But it was also an opportunity to improve the book in any number of ways. Phaidon Press, under the new ownership of Richard Schlagman, gave priority to the project. I was lucky to gain from superb picture research, from the editorial skills of Bernard Dod and from the refined book design of Isambard Thomas. Beyond these obvious changes, there were many less visible adjustments throughout the book. I realized that I had oversimplified the contribution of Mies van der Rohe, that I had not said enough about the extraordinary quality of Erich Mendelsohn, that I had said next to nothing about the role of countries like Spain and Portugal. Over a decade had gone by since I had written the first version of the book and it was necessary to integrate both my own researches and those of other people. A book like this is a working hypothesis, which requires adjustment in the face of new discoveries and insights. But it is also a totality with a unity of its own. The aim in writing subsequent editions is to modify the body without losing the essential spirit.

33 Curtis, short CV plus addendum with best book reviews. WJRC Archive. 93 Modern Architecture Since 1900: The Story of the Writing

The writing of history involves both reason and imagination and all propositions have to be submitted to sceptical analysis. Theories play some role but a good book, like a good building, is never just the demonstration of an a priori position. There is a special chemistry which occurs in the process of writing itself. And even when some points are proved wrong a work of depth continues to carry its messages for a long time to come.”34

After the publication of the third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900 Curtis worked on Modern Architecture, Mythical Landscapes and Ancient Ruins and published his own photographic work.35

Between 2011 and 2014 I undertook a major revision of Le Corbusier: Ideas and Forms in an extended and totally redesigned second edition. Here again it was a delicate balancing act which also involved the insertion of much new material, the addition of five chapters and the inclusion of 150 of my own photographs for I was ever more active as a photographer. The book came out in early 2015 and, of course, Jim was one of the first people to receive a copy. At the end is an entirely new section entitled ‘Principles and Transformations’ containing four of the new chapters: ‘The Realm of Architectural Ideas;’ ‘The Genesis of Forms;’ ‘The Unique and the Typical;’ and finally ‘On Transforming Le Corbusier.’

I was amused as well to read the following [in an autobiographical interview with James Ackerman in the 1990s]: “The most prolific person that worked with me, or I should say worked alongside, because I don’t claim that I influenced him very much- -he just was around, and not too evident at that--was William [J. R.] Curtis, who writes on contemporary architecture and has been a freelancer and has made a living out of writing books. He wrote a textbook on contemporary architecture [Modern Architecture since 1900] which is excellent, a book on Le Corbusier [Le Corbusier’s Ideas and Forms], and a book on a contemporary Indian architect [Balkrishna Doshi: An Architecture for India].” Many years later, in April 2013, I gave a talk at the Boston Society of Architects to mark the 50th anniversary of the opening of Le Corbusier’s

34 Curtis, “A Historian’s Perspective on Modern Architecture,” transcript of the talk, January 2007. 35 William J.R. Curtis, Modern Architecture, Mythical Landscapes and Ancient Ruins (London: John Soane’s Museum, 1997). William J.R. Curtis, Structures of Light: Photographs by William J.R. Curtis (Helsinki: Alvar Aalto Academy, 2007). 94 Modern Architecture Since 1900: The Story of the Writing

Carpenter Center. I chose as the title: ‘The History of a History: Le Corbusier at Work. The Genesis of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts.’ Both Jim Ackerman and Eduard Sekler were in the front row and I thanked them both publicly for the interest they had shown in me as a young and rather wayward student in the early 1970s when I had written my first book and established my identity as a historian.

To conclude, this chapter contrasts the opinion of the scholars reviewing Modern Architecture Since 1900 with Curtis’s recollections of his aims and intentions with the book and of his personal experience during those years. Furthermore, the content of this chapter helps to discover discrepancies between Curtis’s account of the writing of the book and the reading and interpretation of Modern Architecture Since 1900 exposed in this dissertation. On the one hand, some of these discrepancies can be clarified by focussing on the extensive timeline provided by Curtis and presented in the last section of this chapter. While Stanislaus von Moos emphasises the importance of Harvard in Curtis’s training, the author of Modern Architecture Since 1900 claims to have navigated the institution in an independent way. While Mark Jarzombek refers to Eduard Sekler as “a member of Curtis’s doctoral committee at Harvard University,” and co-author of the monography on the Carpenter Center, Curtis claims the authorship of most of the content of the book. 36 As this chapter has shown, it was not until after its preparation, that James Ackerman suggested that Curtis’s research on Le Corbusier’s building deserved to be awarded a doctoral degree.

In addition, among other reviewers, Von Moos and Samuel B. Frank begin their texts on Modern Architecture Since 1900 by mentioning Curtis’s review of Architettura contemporanea (1976) by Manfredo Tafuri and Francesco Dal Co and Modern Architecture: A Critical History (1980) by Kenneth Frampton and by hinting at a possible cause-effect relationship. It is worth noting that in 1981, by the time this book review was written and published in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Curtis had finished the writing of his own book. Therefore, it is not accurate to imply that Curtis’s intentions and aims with this book were a reaction against the flaws he finds in that previous historiography. However, it is feasible to

36 Mark Jarzombek, The Psychologizing of Modernity: Art, Architecture, and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 30. 95 Modern Architecture Since 1900: The Story of the Writing argue that, at the time when Curtis was writing the book’s introduction or the preface to the first edition, he wanted to emphasise his interest in the notions of form, expression and meaning, which, in his opinion, had been neglected by previous historians. The idea of how Curtis may have reacted to previous approaches to history is explored in Chapter Five of this dissertation.

On the other hand, other discrepancies are related to Curtis’s methodological approach. Almost every scholar who mentions Curtis’s Modern Architecture Since 1900 refers to his formalist approach to architecture. Some have traced his emphasis on form and questions of style back to the principles formulated by both Heinrich Wölfflin articulated in Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe: das Problem der Stilentwicklung in der neueren Kunst (1915) and Rudolf Wittkower in Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism (1949). When confronted with these possible influences on his work, Curtis claims:

I had a very rigorous formation in Renaissance studies at the Courtauld Institute of Art London University between 1967 and 1970 and that I was part of a ground breaking group of students examining context and that the last thing we were interested in was 'Wölflinnian formal analysis'. (…) I have always been interested in matters of form and meaning but not at the expense of hosts of other considerations. As for Wittkower, I wrote a highly critical piece about his work when I was in my third year at the Courtauld.37

37 William J.R. Curtis, email message to author, August 31, 2017. 96 Regionalism: Critical Responses

Chapter Three_ William J.R. Curtis and Regionalism

This chapter investigates William J.R. Curtis’s approach to the notion of regionalism and to broadening the geographical scope of what he considers to be modern architecture across the three editions of Modern Architecture Since 1900. The aim is to highlight the differences between editions, and thus demonstrate the significance of the changes Curtis made in the major revision of the content prior to the publication of the third edition of the book. Firstly, I will present and discuss the references to regionalism made by the historians and theorists who reviewed the different editions. Secondly, I will study the differences between the three editions in Curtis’s account of two countries outside central Europe and the United States: Turkey, as an example between Europe and Asia, and Greece, as part of the European periphery. I chose to look at these countries because Curtis’s account of them show a clear development between editions of the book. Thirdly, I will look at Curtis’s discussion of Australian modern architecture because it is, similarly to Japanese, Mexican or Brazilian, an example of a certain ‘completeness’ in Curtis’s account since the first edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900. Finally, I will contextualise Curtis’s definition of ‘authentic regionalism’ in the context of the different approaches to regionalism framed through events and essays published and held mainly in the 1980s.

1. Critical Responses to Curtis’s Approach to Regionalism

Some of the historians and theorists who reviewed the different editions of Modern Architecture Since 1900 made specific reference to the way that Curtis broadened the definition and scope of what had been previously considered to be modern architecture, presenting its development in countries outside central Europe and the United States. However, their analysis focuses on the development of Curtis’s approach to historiography and understanding of key notions such as traditions and authenticity, largely ignoring the significant increase in the number of countries that he includes in the book. Once again, it is necessary to recall Curtis’s aim to address what previous historians had neglected: Curtis claims that “the historiography of modern architecture has reflected a Western bias and continues to do so. This is not to

97 Regionalism: Critical Responses dispute that the primary inventions of modernism occurred mostly in Europe and the United States. But it is to suggest that insufficient attention and credit have normally been given to the contribution of places remote from the points of origin.”1

The first idea that can be extracted from the critics’ analysis of Modern Architecture Since 1900 is the uniqueness of Curtis’s approach when writing both the first and the third edition of the book. In his 1984 review, Peter Serenyi acknowledges that “no textbook on modern architecture before this one included chapters on the eclectic trends of the 1920s and 1930s, and on the innovative buildings of such countries as Egypt and India of the late 1960s and 1970s.”2 On the occasion of the publication of the second edition, Peter Blundell Jones welcomed the breath of coverage of Curtis’s book, and linked it back to Curtis’s aim of addressing precisely what previous histories lacked. Blundell Jones observes that Curtis’s corrections to his predecessors are pertinent, “filling some lacunae of the older histories and tracing the post-war dissemination of Modernism far and wide.”3

Most reviewers note that Curtis focuses “less on the theoretical roots of modern architecture than on its emergence and ensuing development.”4 However, they also point at some of the shortcomings that result from Curtis’s focus on the development of modern architecture. For instance, Stanislaus von Moos declares the chapter on ‘Modern Architecture and Developing Countries since 1960’ among the most interesting in the first edition, “although here the limitations of the author’s idiosyncratically aesthetic point of view are most clearly felt.”5 Even if he does not go into detail on those limitations, Von Moos, a specialist on Le Corbusier refers further on to Curtis’s insistence on formal analysis and his resistance to political or philosophical ideas in architectural discourse, which he sees as preventing balanced art historical procedure. In his review, also of the first edition, Tom Heath discusses the

1 William J.R. Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900 (Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1996), 635. 2 Peter Serenyi, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians vol 43, no. 3 (October 1984): 274. 3 Peter Blundell Jones, “Curtis’s Corbussian Bent,” review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, Architects’ Journal vol 187, no. 22 (June 1988): 79. 4 Curtis, Modern Architecture since 1900, 14. 5 Stanislaus von Moos, “Revising Modernist History: The Architecture of the 1920s and 1930s (Summer),” review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, Art Journal vol 43, no. 2 (summer 1983): 208. 98 Regionalism: Critical Responses

‘continuity’ rather than the ‘development’ of the modern tradition and agrees that the theme of the book is pluralism in the twentieth century.6 Heath praises Curtis’s selection of architecture in developing countries and the recent past as “impeccable.”7 In contrast, Peter Serenyi sees a positive outcome of Curtis’s stress on the development of modern architecture. In his opinion, “the author strikes a new kind of balance in dealing with his subject.”8

Despite Curtis’s effort at inclusion, and the presence in his narrative of Japan, Australia and some developing countries, Paul Olivier recognises that in the first edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900 the historian portrays modern architecture as mainly [North] American and European. Regarding those other countries, and similar to Heath’s remarks on the pace, Olivier notes “the signs of hasty writing and insufficient familiarity with the nations concerned is very evident in his brief summaries.”9 Other reviewers disagree with Olivier’s position. For example, Jorge Sainz believes that Curtis examines in detail, not briefly, “the impact caused by modern Western ideas on other cultures, especially on those of the so-called Third World.”10 Furthermore, Martin Pawley begins his 1983 review by pointing out that Curtis “wrote Modern Architecture Since 1900 all over the world.”11 As has been discussed thoroughly in the section ‘The Story of the Writing of Modern Architecture Since 1900’ in Chapter Two of this dissertation, Curtis was familiar with and had first-hand experience with the architects and buildings of the countries he introduces in his narrative.

Inevitably, some reviewers mention the notions of ‘tradition’, ‘identity’ and ‘authenticity’ when referring to the development of modern architecture outside of central Europe and the United States. In the opinion of Samuel B. Frank, in the last chapter of the book Curtis shows how in the previous twenty years from the 1960s to

6 Tom Heath, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, Architecture Australia vol 73, no. 5 (July 1984): 26. 7 Heath, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900, 26. 8 Serenyi, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900, 274. 9 Paul Oliver, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, The Oxford Art Journal vol 5, no. 2 Architecture (1983): 56. 10 Jorge Sainz, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, Arquitectura (Revista del Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Madrid) vol 266, no. 8 (May-June 1987): 8. Author’s translation into English. 11 Martin Pawley, “Fish are Jumping,” review of Modern Architecture: A Critical History” by Kenneth Frampton and Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, The Architectural Review vol 174, no. 1041 (November 1983): 6. 99 Regionalism: Critical Responses the early 1980s there was confrontation between “the disparate traditions of developing countries and a revived urge toward regional identity in Europe and the United States.”12 Frank highlights how Curtis uses the concepts of modernity, tradition, and authenticity against postmodernism.13 But it is Serenyi who provides the most detailed review of the way Curtis’s frames his ‘authentic regionalism’ in the book, which features in the next sections of this chapter. Serenyi writes in his review:

In his treatment of regional developments, the author deals with the question of authenticity most convincingly in connection with the architecture of the developing countries. Curtis rightly believes that two kinds of architects are capable of creating an authentic architecture for these nations: the broadly educated native-born and those Westerners who have either a profound structural or cultural-religious link with the region. He singles out Hassan Fathy of Egypt and Balkrishna Doshi of India mong the native-born and Frei Otto and Denys Lasdun among Westerners as architects who have achieved authenticity in their work.14

On the whole, the reviewers’ references to regionalism are as varied as their responses to Curtis’s book overall, as presented in Chapter Two of this dissertation, in the section on ‘Critical Responses to the three Editions of Modern Architecture Since 1900.’ Having said that, these historians and theorists point at interesting issues that are further explored in this chapter, namely the absence of most non-Western world from previous histories and its presence in Curtis’s book, and the relevance of Curtis’s definitions of tradition, modernity, identity and authenticity in his understanding of regionalism. My discussion of the chosen examples, Turkey, Greece and Australia, revolves around these key concepts and their impact in Curtis’s narrative of the development of modern architecture, not only at the end of the twentieth century.

12 Samuel B. Frank, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis and Modern Architecture and Design: An Alternative History by Bill Risebero, Journal of Architectural Education vol 36, no. 4 (summer 1983): 30. 13 Frank, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 and Modern Architecture and Design: An Alternative History, 30. 14 Serenyi, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900, 275. 100 Regionalism: Turkey and Greece in Modern Architecture Since 1900

2. Turkey and Greece in Modern Architecture Since 1900

Turkey in Modern Architecture Since 19001 In the first edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900 ‘Istanbul’, not ‘Turkey’, appears in the Index. There are two references regarding Istanbul in two different chapters, and they both address the figure and work of Le Corbusier: the first appears in the chapter on ‘Le Corbusier’s Quest for Ideal Form’, when referring to his voyage d’Orient through Italy, Greece, and Asia Minor, and the second appears in the chapter on ‘Form and Meaning in the Late Works of Le Corbusier’, when discussing the Parliament Building in Chandigarh. Turkey, in the first edition of Curtis’s book, appears mainly as inspiration in the work of Le Corbusier at different stages of his career; there is no mention of any Turkish modern architect or modern building. It is not until the third edition of book that Sedad Hakki Eldem and his work are mentioned in the context of a ‘universalising’ modernism. As a result, from the first to the definitive edition of the book, there is a shift in the understanding of the position of Turkey in Curtis’s account of the development of modern architecture, from seeing this country as merely a source of inspiration to seeing it as an example of the struggle to reconcile modernity and national identity.

Le Corbusier’s long journey of 1911 was a search for the immutable or perennial values of architecture and resulted in incisive thumbnail sketches. According to Curtis in the first edition of the book, Le Corbusier’s sketches of traditional architecture – including the mosques in Istanbul and Turkish vernacular buildings – helped him “to lock images in his memory.”2 Le Corbusier’s attitude towards the past and tradition goes beyond the copying of forms to an attempt “to cut through to the anatomy of past architecture, to reveal principles of organisation and to relate plan shapes to the dynamic and sensuous experience of volumes in sequence and in relation to setting.”3 Both a Turkish traditional wooden interior and Sinan’s Mosque of Suleyman in

1 The research on Turkey was presented at ARCHTHEO’ 15 IX Theory and History of Architecture organised by DAKAM (Eastern Mediterranean Academic Research Center) held 5-7 November 2015 in Istanbul, Turkey. It was published as: Macarena de la Vega, “Turkey in Modern Architecture Since 1900,” in ARCHTHEO’ 15 IX Theory and History of Architecture Conference Proceedings, ed. DAKAM (Istambul: DAKAM Yayinlari, 2015), 520-529. 2 William J.R. Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900 (Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1982), 105. 3 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 106. 101 Regionalism: Turkey and Greece in Modern Architecture Since 1900

Istanbul would raise his interest and would blend with his impression of Greek and Roman ancient architecture “to become part of a rich stock of forms – the stuff of the later Le Corbusier’s imagination.”4 Turkey appears again in the chapter on ‘Form and Meaning in the Late Works of Le Corbusier.’ Curtis writes:

The choice of these forms far transcended utilitarian concerns (in fact, the solution was never entirely practical); they arose rather from the architect’s aim of creating a sort of modern equivalent to the dome – an emblem of state authority and rule. Among the early sketches, there were some showing the Chandigarh stack alongside a section of the dome of the imperial church of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, and others showing the sun streaming down through the top in a manner inevitably recalling the Roman Pantheon.5

In the second edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900, it is again ‘Istanbul’ that appears in the alphabetical Index, not ‘Turkey.’ Given that the content of the book remains unchanged, there are again two references to Turkey in the aforementioned chapters dedicated to the work of Le Corbusier. However, in the addendum ‘The Search for Substance: Recent World Architecture (1987),’ the Turkish modern architect Sedad Hakki Eldem is now mentioned in reference to modern architecture in developing countries. Among other buildings, Curtis thought “of the work of the Turkish architect Sedad Hakki Eldem, in particular of his Social Security Complex (1970) in Istanbul which adjusts the concrete frame to the cadences of the wooden house vernacular.”6 The addendum shows the beginning of an interest in ‘substance’ or ‘authenticity’ as Curtis updated his account of modern architecture for the second edition, published in 1987. However, the great task of reorganisation undertaken by Curtis in preparation for the third edition of the book can be understood as an attempt to go beyond mere additions and updates towards a more ‘authentic’ overall view of the development of modern architecture in other parts of the world.

The Turkish modern architect Sedad Hakki Eldem appears in the third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900 in reference to the struggle to reconcile modernity and national identity. Turkey is part of Curtis’s conceptualisation of ‘International,

4 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 106. 5 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 280. 6 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 394. 102 Regionalism: Turkey and Greece in Modern Architecture Since 1900

National, Regional: The Diversity of a New Tradition’, where he discusses modern architecture in Switzerland, Italy, Spain, France, Tunis, Algeria and Greece. Eldem’s thought and work are, according to Curtis, the result of rejecting “both a superficial Orientalism of applied domes and arches, and a thoughtless importation of the International Style. He wished instead to give a new life to basic Turkish traits but in a widely applicable modern architectural grammar based upon reinforced-concrete construction.”7 Curtis interprets Eldem’s works in the 1930s as oscillating between national and international models, and he understands it in the context of broad cultural dilemmas of the Turkish Republic. Turkey, as other countries in the non- Western world, had to search for a “sound balance between the forces of modernisation and secularism on the one hand and the weight of Ottoman and Islamic traditions on the other.”8 Not only the picture of Eldem’s work in the Taslik Coffee House in Istanbul, but also his ideas published in 1939 are used by Curtis as the Turkish example of the conflict between tradition and modernity in the non-Western world:

Although the same new architectural attitudes and elements are adopted and applied by many different nations, when it comes to ideas and ideals, they all look for ways of maintaining, developing and expressing their own identities. And for this they look back to tradition, they commit themselves to a new ideal or they try to synthesise the two.9

The oscillating process of Eldem’s work results in a ‘universalising’ modernism, with a reference to local tradition, which is described in the chapter on ‘Modernity, Tradition and Identity in the Developing World.’ In the third edition, Curtis includes an image of the Social Security Complex in Istanbul built between 1962 and 1970. According to him, this building exemplifies how “Sedad Hakki Eldem devoted his life’s work to the formation of an authentic Turkish style blending national and international elements,” blending reinforced-concrete standardised elements and local timber frames.10 Curtis brings the importance of the context, a hill of traditional wooden houses, into his analysis of how Eldem responds “to the dense scales and textures of the context while

7 William J.R. Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900 (Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1996), 381. 8 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 381. 9 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 381. 10 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 578. 103 Regionalism: Turkey and Greece in Modern Architecture Since 1900 maintaining a coherent form.”11 However, the main issue, as pointed out in the chapter’s title, is identity and how Eldem’s work represents Turkish identity going beyond the play with traditional images and showing a deeper understanding of the past.

Greece in Modern Architecture Since 190012 In the first edition of the Modern Architecture Since 1900 there are four references to Greece as a source of inspiration for non-Greek architects. As in Turkey’s case two references address the figure and work of Le Corbusier; the first appears in the chapter on ‘Le Corbusier’s Quest for Ideal Form’, when referring to his voyage d’Orient through Italy, Greece and Asia Minor, and the second appears in the chapter on ‘The Unité d’Habitation at Marseilles as a Collective Housing.’ The third reference addresses Louis Kahn, in the chapter on ‘Louis I. Kahn and the Challenge of Monumentality’, and the last discusses Alison and Peter Smithson, in ‘Architecture and Anti-architecture in England.’ Surprisingly, Greece is also mentioned as influencing Alvar Aalto, but this does not appear in the index until the third edition. Conversely, the reference to Kahn’s Greek influence disappears from the index in 1996, but not from the main text. In addition to two references to Aalto’s work, the third edition has two new references to Greece, which appear in the chapter on ‘International, National, Regional: The Diversity of a New Tradition’, and in the chapter on ‘Disjunctions and Continuities in the Europe of the 1950s.’

Thus, similar to Turkey, in the first edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900 Greece appears mainly as inspiration. There is no mention of any Greek modern architect or modern building. It is not until the third edition of the book that Dimitris Pikionis and his work are mentioned in the context of a ‘universalising’ modernism. As with Turkey, from the first to the definitive edition of the book there is a shift in Curtis’s understanding of the position of Greece in the development of modern architecture,

11 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 578. 12 The research on Greece was presented at the 6th Annual International Conference on Architecture organised by ATINER (Athens Institute for Education and Research) held 4-7 July 2016 in Athens, Greece. It was published as Macarena de la Vega, “Towards Authenticity: Greece in Modern Architecture Since 1900,” Athens Journal of Architecture vol 3, no. 1 (January 2017): 7-20. 104 Regionalism: Turkey and Greece in Modern Architecture Since 1900 from seeing it as a source of inspiration for modern architects to an example of the struggle to reconcile modernity and tradition.

Le Corbusier’s sketches of traditional architecture drawn during his long journey of 1911 – including the white cubic dwellings of the Greek coast– helped him “to lock images in his memory.”13 As with Turkey, in the first edition of his book, Curtis points out Le Corbusier’s attitude towards the past and tradition goes beyond the copying of forms, and that Greek, together with Roman and Turkish impressions became part of his imagination.14

But the greatest impression was made by the Acropolis at Athens. Curtis observes how Le Corbusier visited the Parthenon every day, sometimes for hours, sketching it from many angles. He was impressed by the strength of the underlying idea, by the sculptural energy, by the precision of the forms (even then he compared the Parthenon to a ‘machine’) and by the relationship to the site and the far distant views of mountain and sea. In Curtis’s opinion, there was something about the ceremonial procession over the rising strata of rock which Jeanneret, the young Le Corbusier, never forgot. The Parthenon gave him a glimpse of an elusive absolute which continued to haunt him.15 Curtis reiterates how, at the time he was working on the Unité d’Habitation at Marseilles the memories of Greece were still in his mind: “this little acropolis of resounding silent objects in light seems set up to celebrate a healthy balance between the mental and the physical.”16

In addition to Le Corbusier, other modern architects were impressed by Greek classic architecture, and this was recorded by Curtis in the first edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900. In the early 1950s Louis Kahn stayed at the American Academy in Rome and travelled through Greece and Egypt. In Curtis’s opinion, “his sketchbooks of this period suggest he was trying to get back to basics – to probe the central meanings of architecture.”17 Later on, in the early sixties, the “processional character”

13 William J.R. Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900 (Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1982), 105. 14 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 106. 15 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 105. 16 William J.R. Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900 (Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1996), 284-286. 17 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 310. 105 Regionalism: Turkey and Greece in Modern Architecture Since 1900 of the Economist Cluster’s walkway designed by Alison and Peter Smithson “was evidently inspired by a visit to Greece.”18

As previously mentioned, even if it does not appear in the index, Greece is also mentioned in a chapter on the work of Alvar Aalto in the first edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900. Firstly, Curtis discusses the Town Hall in Säynätsalo in terms of egalitarianism and involvement. In his opinion, the curved profile of the benches “recalled Aalto’s sketches of the mouldings in Greek theatres” and the rectangular state chamber for council meetings was inspired by “ancient Hellenistic cities such as Miletus or Priene.”19 Curtis describes the building as casual and civic, not monumental, and as somewhere between the rural and the urban. He writes: “In Aalto’s private terms it drew together the Greek democratic city in its ruined shape with the scraped glacial contours of the north.”20 Secondly, Curtis writes that the Helsinki University of Technology in Espoo had a source of ‘laws’ in nature, and was evidence of Aalto’s interest in the relationship between the intellectual and the sensual in Greek ancient architecture.

But whereas for the Swiss [Le Corbusier] the Parthenon was the prime example (a ‘pure creation of the mind’), for Aalto the chief inspiration lay in the way the Greeks arranged their urban sites with amphitheatres, stadia, and ceremonial platforms linked by paths and routes. It was an ‘irregular’ order of this kind – in which there was, nonetheless, a harmony of buildings, landscape and the spirit of place – that Aalto managed to evoke in his drawings of antique ruins, especially Delphi, and that he attempted to translate into his own architecture and urban designs. It may be that the final touchstone for the far shape which so obsessed him was the Greek amphitheatre, fractured and eroded by the time.21

In the third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900, Curtis looks at the modern architecture of Greece, along with that of other countries, in a discussion of regionalism, universalism and the development of modern architecture in parts of the world other than North America and central Europe. When discussing the relationship between modernity and tradition, Curtis claims that the forms of modern architecture

18 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 320. 19 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 457. 20 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 457-458. 21 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 461. 106 Regionalism: Turkey and Greece in Modern Architecture Since 1900 were more likely to marry with local traditions where modern architects had found some source of inspiration in those traditions, as was the case with Greek ancient architecture. What Curtis characterises as ‘Mediterraneanism’ and ‘Hellenism’ in some of Le Corbusier’s works in the twenties influenced Greek architects who rejected revivalism and embraced modernism before the decade ended. They attempted to root the new international language “in the social habits, spatial patterns and landscape of their own country. Analogies between the cubic white volumes and flat roofs of modern architecture and the vernaculars of the Greek islands were not so hard to make.”22

Curtis highlights the work of Dimitris Pikionis in the elementary school on Lycabettus Hill in Athens and the experimental school in the north Greek city of Thessaloniki as an example of this marriage in the 1930s. Stamo Papadaki (Stami in Curtis’s book) and Aris Konstantinidis are referred to as “Greek architects who wished to seek out some common ground between a modernist simplification and popular roots.”23 According to Curtis, Pikionis’ work around 1950 and, more generally, Greek architecture, together with Spanish and Portuguese architecture, are examples of “more ‘culturally specific’ readings of peasant forms.”24 In Pikionis’ work at that time, with its aesthetic of fragments and traces, Curtis finds a method, if not form, similar to Scarpa’s, both architects showing an acute sensitivity to the genius loci.25 The pavilion next to the Church of St Dimitris Loumbardiaris below the Acropolis in Athens, in Curtis’s opinion, consolidated Pikionis’ “research into the supposed origins of Greek Mediterranean culture by seeking out correspondences between the basis of classicism (visualised through a species of primitive hut) and the archetypes of the house.”26 The Philopappou Hill in Athens in 1950-7 incorporated bits of ruins, cyclopean slabs of rock and crude chippings in a pattern of varying textures, rhythms and intensities; according to Curtis, Pikionis wished to explore an archaic and timeless sense of space.

22 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 380. 23 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 380. 24 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 482. 25 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 482. 26 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 482. 107 Regionalism: Turkey and Greece in Modern Architecture Since 1900

In brief, Curtis does not include works of modern architects from Turkey or Greece in his account of the development of modern architecture until the third and definitive edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900.

Towards Universalism Regionalism, as it is explored in the last section of this chapter, was not a new notion at the time when Curtis was writing his book. In the 1930s, it was the early historiography of modern architecture setting the aims and objectives of modern architecture itself through their writing. In the third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900, Curtis blames early histories and historians for formulating a ‘misunderstood’ account of modern architecture. Alberto Sartoris, Emil Kaufmann, Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Philip Johnson, Walter Curt Behrendt, Nikolaus Pevsner, Lewis Mumford and Sigfried Giedion built genealogies and lineages for modern architecture relying mostly on their personal preferences and theories about history, as was his case, one could argue: “Inevitably the early accounts reproduced some of the rhetoric that modern architects themselves used to promote themselves and defend their own work; inevitably too they reflected the biases, allegiances, even geographical situation of their authors.”27 Giedion’s writings at this time are harshly criticised by Curtis for having ignored regionalist or classicizing influences in the formation and development of the work of the so called modern masters.

By reflecting on, and rethinking, the notion of regionalism, and by considering ‘universalism’ a more accurate way to refer to modern architecture, and its understanding in diverse countries throughout the world, Curtis already did – or at least attempted to do – what Esra Ackan was asking of scholars in 2002, as discussed in Chapter One of this dissertation: namely, to construct a new understanding of universality and to find universally shared values that represent everyone and everything worldwide.28 Curtis writes:

It is not unreasonable to posit a ‘universalizing’ aspect to modernism in this period, so long as one strips away the Western bias and progressive

27 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 372. 28 Esra Akcan, “Critical Practice in the Global Era: The Question Concerning ‘Other’ Geographies,” Architectural Theory Review vol 7 no. 1 (February 2002): 37. 108 Regionalism: Turkey and Greece in Modern Architecture Since 1900

assumptions which lurk behind this formulation, and so long as one also takes into account national and regional histories with their own logic and momentum. In the 1930s there was a species of ‘cross-fertilisation’ in which modern architecture was drawn into a variety of local agendas, and in which regional preoccupations were also given an international stamp. Sometimes the new simply collided with the old; sometimes there was mutual transformation. Modern forms made a break with what had gone immediately before, but they also allowed the substructures of national or regional cultures to be understood in new ways.29

As discussed in this section, in the first edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900 (1982), fifty years after the first accounts of modern architecture, and despite the specific aim of completing the account of the development of modern architecture, Curtis ignores, or fails to include, the work of Dimitris Pikionis and Sedad Hakki Eldem, as well as modern architecture in Greece and Turkey more generally. It was not until the definitive edition of the book that he provided readers and students with a more complete account of the development of modern architecture beyond the Western perspective, placing authenticity and a sense of universalism at the core of his research. However, this is not the case with every country outside of the Western canon of central Europe and the United States. As will be demonstrated in the next section, Curtis’s account of modern architecture in Australia, among other countries like Japan, Mexico and Brazil, was already relatively complete in the first edition of Modern Architecture Since 190o.

3. Australia in Modern Architecture Since 19001

Compared to the additions and modifications of other post-colonial examples, there is only a subtle difference in Curtis’s account of Australian modern architecture between the first and the third editions of Modern Architecture Since 1900. Even in the third edition the main reference to modern architecture in Australia is reserved for the Sydney Opera House, though thoroughly complemented with the discussion of the

29 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 372. 1 The research on Australia was presented at 4th International Conference of the EAHN (European Architectural History Network) held 2-4 June 2016 in Dublin, Ireland. It was published as Macarena de la Vega, “Australia in Modern Architecture Since 1900,” in Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference of the European Architectural History Network, ed. by Kathleen James-Chakraborty (Dublin: UCD School of Art History and Cultural Policy, 2016), 295-301. 109 Regionalism: Australia in Modern Architecture Since 1900 work of Harry Seidler, Peter Muller, Peter Johnson, Rick Leplastrier and Glenn Murcutt. The next section investigates the impact of Curtis’s own experiences on his account of Australian architecture in Modern Architecture Since 1900.

Changes between Editions In the first edition ‘Australia’ appears twice in the index: there is one reference to ‘Sydney’, and there are four references to the ‘Sydney Opera House.’ The opera house is mentioned in the addendum to the second edition as a clear influence on Fumihiko Maki’s Municipal Gymnasium in Fujisawa. In the definitive third edition, there are no changes in the references to the opera house, and there are several new references to ‘Australia.’ In the chapter of the first edition of the book entitled ‘Modern Architecture in the U.S.A: Immigration and Consolidation’, Australia is considered, together with India, as an example of a country whose “modern architecture had to begin from scratch,”2 or “virtually from scratch.”3 According to Curtis, some countries, including Australia, had received “bastardised and stereotyped” images, and many of the “standardised emblems of modernisation,” from the United States after the war as proof of the international victory of modern architecture.4 Australia appears for the second time in the chapter, ‘The Problem of Regional Identity’ together with countries in Latin America and Japan, where, around 1960, “transformations, deviations and devaluations of modern architecture had found their way,” and not the orthodoxy of the International Style.5 Curtis relates these experiences to a ‘modern regionalism’ which had been imported from the west coast of the United States, citing domestic strategies in California in the first edition; a reference which is made clearer in the third edition when he discusses the Case Study Program.6

Before moving on to Harry Seidler, Curtis briefly mentions Walter Burley Griffin as introducing ‘Wrightian’ influences to Australia, and discusses the particularities regarding the aboriginal population and the debates on the problem of an Australian

2 William J.R. Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900 (Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1982), 258. 3 William J.R. Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900 (Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1996), 397. 4 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 396. 5 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 491. 6 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 505. 110 Regionalism: Australia in Modern Architecture Since 1900 cultural identity. First, it is noteworthy that Curtis changes the word ‘indigenous’ in the first edition (p. 258) to ‘Aboriginal’ in the third edition (p. 503), and that he uses the word ‘tension’ to refer to an Australian tradition (or lack thereof) complicated “by the relatively recent arrival of Europeans and by the fact that the Aboriginal population expressed its ideas through other means than permanent buildings.”7 ‘Indigenous’ has a broader meaning, whereas the use of ‘Aboriginal’ shows a better understanding of the Australian context and its specific social circumstances. Second, Curtis considers Australia to be one of the countries asserting themselves after colonialism, like some Third World countries where regional architectural tendencies frequently ended up allied to nationalism.8 As a result and in Curtis’s opinion, the problem of an Australian cultural identity made its appearance in the architectural debate and was not solved by the international influences after the Second World War.

Curtis presents Harry Seidler as responsible for introducing universalizing ideas and imitations of eastern American architectural language to Australia as a result of his cosmopolitan education and training. Seidler makes merely slight adjustments to this language, which in the author’s opinion is evidence of his uncompromising stance and strong modernist position. This is one of the many critical judgements presented by Curtis in the first edition of the book that are suppressed in the third edition. Curtis substantiates his criticism by citing Paul Rudolph, who, like Seidler, was part of the Graduate School of Design at Harvard, and, like Curtis, was also one of the critics theorising regionalism at that time. Curtis refers to the fact that, in Rudolph’s opinion, Seidler’s House is “the Harvard house incarnate transferred to Sydney without any modification whatsoever.”9 In his own essay on regionalism, Rudolph posits:

It is difficult to believe that it would not have taken on a new significance if the principles which formed its prototypes were better understood. Regionalism is one way toward that richness in architecture which other movements have enjoyed and which is lacking today.10

7 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900,503-04. 8 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900,504. 9 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900,504. 10 Paul Rudolph, “Regionalism in Architecture,” Perspecta vol 4 (1957), 13. 111 Regionalism: Australia in Modern Architecture Since 1900

Curtis briefly mentions Peter Muller and his ‘modern regionalism’, Peter Johnson and his brutalist ideology and William Lucas when referring to the casualness of a new suburban way of life in Australia. William Lucas appears in the first edition together with Neville Gruzman as examples of architects working from Wright’s philosophy. In the third edition, this reference to Gruzman is removed, while Ruth Lucas’s name is added alongside her husband’s in the caption describing their Lucas House. According to Curtis, their work embodied an attempt at producing a new Australian architecture. In the third edition, the chapter is renamed ‘The Process of Absorption: Latin America, Australia, Japan’, deleting the reference to regionalism and identity. Curtis introduces the notion that, at that time, Australian modern architecture ran from internationalism to a ‘species of regionalism’, and that urban society in the country – like that in Latin America but unlike that in Japan – had a more automatic affinity with the Western understanding of modernity.

The Sydney Opera House is, according to Curtis, more a result of the Scandinavian tradition and its influence on Jørn Utzon’s design than a product of Australian architecture. The main description and analysis of the building appears in a chapter that in the three editions of Modern Architecture Since 1900 is called ‘Alvar Aalto and the Scandinavian Tradition.’ Here Curtis focusses more on Utzon’s design than on the actual result, giving more importance to the aims behind the section than to Arup’s structural solution. There are three main ideas in Curtis’s discussion of this iconic building: its originality, its symbolism and its significance. Firstly, the opera house is considered a prototype, and given its newness it is regarded, as are most original works of art, as having few sources or analogies. Secondly, Curtis agrees with Philip Drew in Third Generation and with Utzon himself, in considering the building to be a modern cathedral, consecrating its symbolism to a “supremely important national art.”11 Thirdly, the choice of this building as an icon of the architecture of the second half of the twentieth century was, according to Curtis, in a sense premature. At the time that this choice was made by Sigfried Giedion and other historians, it was not clear how buildable Utzon’s design was. Curtis wrote:

11 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 469. 112 Regionalism: Australia in Modern Architecture Since 1900

Long before this [becoming an Australian national icon], the Sydney Opera House had become part of the folklore of modern architecture. Sigfried Giedion published the design in late editions of Space, Time and Architecture, and conferred upon Utzon the mantle of the great tradition.12

According to Giedion, one of the aims of the third generation of modern architects was the transformation of ancient monumentality. It does not come as a surprise, then, that the next reference to the opera house appears in the chapter on Louis I. Kahn and the ‘challenge’ of monumentality, where it was classed together with Hans Scharoun’s Philharmonie in Berlin as an example of abstractions of classicism that created a new monumentality. In the chapter on ‘Crises and Critiques in the 1960s,’ Curtis understands the opera house together with Kenzo Tange’s Japanese town halls, as new civic monuments. Curtis ends his first edition in 1982 with a reflection on the Sydney Opera House as a powerful image, and he finishes the third part in the third edition in the same way, showing no change in his position. Even in 1996, Curtis writes that the opera house exemplifies the opposition and coalescence of different layers of polarity – rational and organic, supporting and supported, stable and dynamic – adding “however, imagery is not overplayed and is supported by form. Form in turn arises directly from a simple structural means attuned to serve ideas.”13

Finally, in the last chapter of the first edition, entitled ‘The Traditions of Modern Architecture in the Recent Past’, Curtis includes a detailed account of Romaldo Giurgola’s entry to the competition for a new Australian Parliament building in Canberra (1980). Curtis describes the project as “a virtual inventory of contemporary preoccupations” and focusses his interest on Giurgola’s gesture of “blending the building with its context.”14 Curtis presents the building as having an “appealing collagist aspect.”15 Interestingly, the reference to the Parliament building competition is removed from the revised chapter on ‘Pluralism in the 1970s’ in the third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900.

12 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 469. 13 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 613. 14 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900 (1982), 382. 15 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900 (1982), 382. 113 Regionalism: Australia in Modern Architecture Since 1900

Apart from the aforementioned differences between the three editions of the book regarding Australia, there are two main additions to the content of the third edition which relate to Burley Griffin and Glenn Murcutt. Burley Griffin’s plan for the new capital city was “an organic conception blending a non-authoritarian monumentality with a dispersed garden city,” while Newman College in Melbourne was “a hybrid of modern skeletal thinking, abstracted Gothic motifs, and vaguely geological metaphors.”16 It is interesting how Curtis places Burley Griffin’s work in the early chapter on ‘The Continuity of Older Traditions’, identifying his relation to Wright and the Prairie School, and then again in a later chapter on ‘The Crystallisation of Modern Architecture Between the Wars’, even though the work he refers to is prior to the First World War. It is a chapter which adds rare examples from Europe, the United States, India and Australia to Curtis’s discourse.

At the other end of the twentieth century, Curtis includes Australia in his account of ‘The Universal and the Local: Landscape, Climate and Culture.’ It is necessary to understand that Curtis wrote the book in the midst of the debates on post-modern architecture and approaches to history. One of the aims of Curtis’s book was to demonstrate that modern architecture is not the rootless phenomenon that previous historiography, with its Western bias, has presented it as. It is relevant for him to convey that modern architects did not reject history and tradition and that there were modern architects outside of Europe and the United States. The interaction between the international and the regional, between modernity and tradition in the postcolonial world is a great example of the importance of roots.

Regionalism was a notion, Curtis wrote in 1996, which did no justice to the developments it tried to characterise, as it could imply a sense of provinciality or periphery. That is why Curtis uses the expression ‘blend of different universalisms’, implying a new polarity between the regional and the universal. Examples of these ideas are, on the one hand, the Australian domestic architecture of the 1970s and 1980s and the work of Rick Lepastrier (whom Curtis met and with whom he discussed Australian architecture in the early 1980s), and on the other, the response to different

16 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 299. 114 Regionalism: Australia in Modern Architecture Since 1900 climatic zones given by Glenn Murcutt and Murcutt’s notion of ‘legible landscape’ that links him back to the Aboriginal Australians.17

Landscape is the key not only to understanding Murcutt’s architecture but also to framing Australian architecture within a tradition that includes Aboriginal Australia – the Outback mythology. Curtis writes:

Before the arrival of the colonialists, the Aboriginal population of Australia had made shelters from the most minimal materials (...). In this largely nomadic culture, the landscape itself (both visible and invisible) had supplied a monumental framework and an extended hold of meanings. (...) In the mid-twentieth century a certain mythology of the ‘outback’ was developed by the largely urban population settled around the image of a temporary shed, often with a timber veranda and a tin roof.18

It appears that Curtis had, at the least, problems ‘locating’ the content about Australia in the first edition of the book, both thematically and chronologically. However, as has been shown, even having visited the country, Curtis focusses his attention on the work of immigrant architects and on the import of modern forms. His general reflections on regionalism, universalism and landscape are supported by brief descriptions of a few examples. But what is even more interesting is how his brave judgments of Australian complexities in the search for a national identity were suppressed when preparing the definitive edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900. Despite these shortcomings, Curtis’s account of Australian modern architecture is the most complete of the historiography of modern architecture to this day.19

A Universal Tradition To sum up, regardless of if we are referring to Curtis’s general discourse, his account of Australia in the different editions of Modern Architecture or his notion of authenticity, the key concepts that draw his ideas together are tradition and universalism. Modern architecture is for Curtis a tradition, and with this definition the dichotomy between modernity and tradition disappears.

17 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 640. 18 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 505. 19 I explore this issue further in Macarena de la Vega, “A Tale of Inconsistency: The Absence and Presence of Australia in the Historiography of Modern Architecture,” Fabrications vol 28, no. 1 (February 2018): 47-76. 115 Regionalism: Australia in Modern Architecture Since 1900

It is also important to remember that Curtis characterises this modern tradition as a phenomenon which embraces transformation. Curtis includes post-colonial or Third World countries in his account of modern architecture by discussing the process of absorbing and then transforming tradition. What tradition is there to be found in Australia? On the one hand, Curtis admits that Australian architecture needs to begin from scratch and that architects have been searching for a new Australian architecture. On the other hand, this was done in a land that combined Aboriginal traditions with imported influences, and, even if his account of Australia makes sense within the book’s general discourse and Curtis’s understanding of regionalism, the examples he chose that may not be ‘authentic’ enough, since they are mostly representative of the imported tradition, in the case of Harry Seidler, or of a foreign tradition, in the case of the Sydney Opera House.

Tradition is transformed everywhere in the world, not only in the post-colonial world. Curtis’s argument defends the modern tradition in architecture as a universal phenomenon that brings together Europe, the United States and the rest of the world. That way he solves an undesirable consequence of the use of the notion of regionalism. Regionalism implied a periphery from a ‘metropolis’ or centre embodied in the Western tradition. And, why was not Australia at that time considered a clear example of regionalism? It could be that Australia’s automatic affinity with the Western understanding of modernity resulted in it being less ‘regional’ than India, Kuwait or Bangladesh. However, these differences are not as relevant when the dichotomy between international and regional disappears as a result of the notion of universalism. And this is how, between 1982 and 1996, Curtis went from the search for an ‘authentic’ regionalism to framing his account of the development of a universal tradition, which will be further discussed in the next section. However, this conception was hardly new.

As early as 1922, Marcello Piacentini – an Italian architect – rejected the use of international and vernacular as opposed qualifiers for architecture, and Curtis later claimed his refection of the opposition of modernity and tradition. Curtis writes:

‘It involves’, he [Piacentini] says, ‘basically resolving the debate between impersonal, international, standardised architecture and localised vernacular architecture. Are the two tendencies really antithetical? Is it 116 Regionalism: Australia in Modern Architecture Since 1900

possible to arrive at a vision of sane architecture, which will be neither old nor new, but simply true?’ I think that it is worthwhile to reflect on that specially given a certain style of thought, which insists on opposing modernity to tradition. This opposition arises from a false understanding of both ideas. The best within modernism can be profoundly rooted in tradition; and the best in tradition is to do with a dynamic process of rethinking certain central kernel ideas.20

In the tradition of the historiography of modern architecture, modernity and its expression in architecture, were presented as aiming for a certain internationalism. Likewise, regionalism has been understood from a historiographic point of view as linked to tradition and the vernacular. Curtis empowers the notion of universalism with the aim of returning to architectural principles, to the basic values. And, in doing so, he dissolves the debate between modernity and tradition and between the international and the regional. In understanding the development of modern architecture as a ‘universal’ tradition, Curtis may have found the balance he aimed for.

The writing of Modern Architecture Since 1900 could be considered a ‘universal’ task, as previously discussed in Chapter Two of this dissertation. In the case of Curtis’s account of Australian modern architecture, it was a task grounded in first-hand experience, and, as a result, in the use of varied and complete sources. In the case of the opera house, he uses Giedion and Drew’s account of the third generation as a starting point and also bases his interpretation in Utzon’s own writings.21 For a general treatment of the arrival of modern architecture in Australia he proposes Goad and Willis’s ‘triumvirate’: John Maxwell Freeland’s Architecture in Australia – A History (1968), Donald Leslie Johnson’s Australian Architecture 1901-51: Sources of Modernism (1980), and the numerous writings of Robin Boyd on the Australian environment.22 “This is not to suggest that such historiographical methodology is inherently flawed. Instead the problem lies in the fact that these histories continue to form the backbone of interpretation of architectural history in Australia” – and also the backbone of the

20 Curtis, “Regionalism in Architecture,” 73. 21 Jørn Utzon, “The Sydney Opera House,” Zodiac 14 (1965), 49. 22 John Maxwell Freeland, Architecture in Australia – A History (Melbourne/Canberra/Sydney: FW Cheshire, 1968). Donald Leslie Johnson, Australian Architecture 1901-51, Sources of Modernism (Sydney, 1980). 117 Regionalism: Australia in Modern Architecture Since 1900 account of Australia in architectural historiography, as this essay has shown.23 To understand the ideas behind the houses in Sydney area and how they reflect a concern with ‘place’ and ‘identity’ Curtis endorses Jennifer Taylor’s An Australian Identity: Houses for Sydney 1953-1963 and a paper published in Transition by Winsome Callister.24 Curtis’s source on Burley Griffin is James Birrell.25 And, finally, he also recommends Fromonot’s and Drew’s work on Murcutt. For useful observations on the Sydney milieu of the 1970s, Curtis refers the reader to ‘Australie’, a special issue of L’Architecture d’Aujourd'hui edited by Fromonot in 1993, and to Leon Paroissien’s and Michael Griggs’s Old Continent, New Building: Contemporary Australian Architecture (1983).26 Sadly, there are no notes in reference to Burley Griffin’s plan for Canberra or to Giurgola’s plan for Parliament House, and thus, no mention of sources.

Curtis still has very vivid memories of his three visits to Australia between 1980 and 1981. During his first visit he gave several lectures, including in Canberra. During his second visit he taught at the University of New South Wales while working “hard” on the manuscript of Modern Architecture since 1900. “The last third of the manuscript was nearly lost at the bottom of the River Hawkesbury in Australia when a canoe tilted over”.27 In his third visit, Curtis gave the Power Lecture in several cities, and taught for six weeks at Queensland Institute of Technology (now Queensland University of Technology) where he met Tom Heath, Professor and Head of School of Architecture at QIT. Moreover, he finished writing the last chapter of Modern Architecture, which concludes with a reference to the Sydney Opera House, as previously mentioned, in a beach house in Coolum Beach, 70 miles north of Brisbane. He recalls it being the result of a single twenty-four hour sitting, and when it was finished he “rushed into the waves and the surf as the sun was rising out of the Pacific... true creation myth.”28 Therefore,

23 Philip Goad and Julie Willis, “A Bigger Picture: Reframing Australian Architectural History,” Fabrications vol 18, no.1 (June 2008): 18. 24 Jennifer Taylor, An Australian Identity, Houses for Sydney 1953-1963 (Sydney, 1972). Winsome Callister, “Dealing with the ‘Sydney School’: Perspectives on Australian Architecture in the 1950s and 1960s,” Transition (September 1987): 6-12. 25 James Birrell, Walter Burley Griffin (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1974). 26 Françoise Fromonot, ed., “Australie,” L’Architecture d’Aujourd'hui, no. 285 (February 1993). Leon Paroissien and Michael Griggs, Old Continent, New Building, Contemporary Australian Architecture (Sydney: David Ell Press, 1983). 27 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900 (1982), 6. 28 William J.R. Curtis, email message to author, March 11, 2016. 118 Regionalism: Australia in Modern Architecture Since 1900 it can be stated that the absence of more built examples of authentic Australian architecture is not the result of lack of knowledge or experience, but may be a result of the broader aims of the book. It is also true that some of these examples may be too urban to fit the discourse of landscape and universalism.

Despite these remarks, Curtis provides a comprehensive narrative of Australian architecture throughout his discourse on the development of modern architecture. Although he visited Australia while working on the manuscript of the first edition, and not while re-working on it, his understanding of Australian modern architecture deepened between 1982 and 1996, between the editions of the book. In addition to this, a relevant outcome of his research is the development of his own thinking, from his ideas on ‘authentic’ regionalism in the early 1980s to his definition of universalism.

4. Contextualising Regionalism between the 1970s and the 1990s1

Framing Regionalism(s) The decade of the 1980s was key to the framing of the notion of ‘Regionalism’, because of a series of events and publications. The term ‘critical regionalism’ was first introduced by Alexandre Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre in the essay “The Grid and the Pathway,” published in Architecture in Greece in 1981.2 In 1982 Curtis published Modern Architecture Since 1900 including a chapter on ‘The Problem of Regional Identity.’ In 1983 Peter Buchanan published “With Due Respect: Regionalism” in The Architectural Review.3 In June 1983 the Royal Australian Institute of Architects (RAIA) organised the conference ‘The City in Conflict’ in Sydney, looking at cities as buildings, as politics and as history. Charles Correa and Demetri Porphyrios, among others, defended their positions, and Kenneth Frampton “propounded critical regionalism.”4 Also in 1983,

1 Part of this research on contextualising regionalism was presented at the 34th International Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, held 6-8 July 2017 in Canberra, Australia. Published as “Revisiting Quotations: Regionalism in Historiography,” Quotation: What does History have in Store for Architecture Today, Proceedings of the 34th Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, edited by Gevork Hartoonian and John Ting, 125-134. Canberra: SAHANZ, 2017. 2 Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre, “The Grid and the Pathway: An Introduction to the Work of Dimitris and Susana Antonakakis,” Architecture in Greece, no. 15 (1981), 164-178. 3 Peter Buchanan, “With Due Respect: Regionalism,” The Architectural Review, 1035 (May 1983). 4 Dinah Fisher, “The City as Culture,” Architecture Australia vol 72, no. 5 (September 1983): 72. 119 Regionalism: Context Between the 1970s and the 1990s

Frampton published his essays on critical regionalism: “Prospects for a Critical Regionalism” and “Towards a Critical Regionalism,” and only two years later, in 1985, he added a chapter on ‘Critical Regionalism: Modern Architecture and Cultural Identity’ to the second edition of his book Modern Architecture: A Critical History.5 1985 was also the year when the Regional Seminar sponsored by the Aga Khan Award for Architecture was held at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, with the participation of Curtis and Frampton, among others.6 In 1986 Curtis published “Towards an Authentic Regionalism,” and 1989 was the year in which Frampton participated in the first international Colloquium on Critical Regionalism at Pomona University where he already re-visited the notion.

The regional seminar sponsored by the Aga Khan Award for Architecture held at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology in 1985 raised several interesting issues. Firstly, some authors, without fully defining ‘regionalism’, move directly to proposing classifications or categories within regionalism – that is, more categories, more labelling. They followed in the footsteps of Harwell Hamilton Harris who in 1954, as quoted by Frampton in his Critical History, differentiated between a Regionalism of Restriction, practiced in New England, and a Regionalism of Liberation, practiced in California.7 For example, Suha Özkan, in the introduction to the seminar’s proceedings differentiates between two approaches to ‘vernacularism’ – a conservative one and an interpretive ‘neo-vernacularism’ – and what he calls ‘modern-regionalism’, which are materialised with different degrees of success. According to Özkan, “the line which separates a solemn, praiseworthy regionalist achievement from a worthless pastiche or a potpourri of the past is very thin and delicate.”8 In his paper, Habib Fida Ali makes another classification. He argues that “when we talk of regionalism as a source of inspiration we must make the distinction between regionalism as an ideology opposed

5 Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History (London: Thames and Hudson, 1980). Frampton, “Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance,” in The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Post- Modern Culture, ed. Hal Foster (Seattle: Bay Press, 1983). Frampton, “Prospects for a Critical Regionalism," Perspecta vol 20 (1983). 6 Robert Powell, ed., Regionalism in Architecture (Singapore: Concept Media/ The Aga Khan Award for Architecture, 1985). 7 Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History, 320. 8 Suha Özkan, “Regionalism within Modernism,” in Regionalism in Architecture, ed. Robert Powell (Singapore: Concept Media/The Aga Khan Award for Architecture, 1985), 14. 120 Regionalism: Context Between the 1970s and the 1990s to universalism and regionalism as an objective analysis which focusses on specific demands on architecture.”9 There seems to be a lack of consistency in some discourses, with some authors using the notions of ‘internationalism’ and ‘universalism’ interchangeably, and others seeing nuances between them.

And, secondly, theorists reflect on the idea of whether regionalism, like identity, is something you look for, or something you need to find a way to express. The idea of countries and cultures which have undergone colonisation searching for an identity does sound like a Western cliché or imposition. This issue was raised at the panel discussion chaired by Frampton on spontaneous architecture, or architecture without architects. Shamim Ara Hassan asked the participants this question: “I also wonder whether regionalism is something which is to be consciously strived for or is it something which grows into the architecture of a region without any conscious effort.”10 Hasan-Uddin Khan put it in other words in relation to the idea of identity, of these countries knowing already who they are: “I don’t think we need to look for regional architectures but we do need to find ways and means that express some of these feelings within us through the built form.”11

Three years later, in 1989, several scholars from Europe and the United States – with four exceptions, from Israel, Mexico, Japan and Australia – gathered for the first international Colloquium on Critical Regionalism at Pomona; especially relevant for my discussion here is the participation of Lefaivre, Tzonis and Frampton. Apart from a theoretical discussion, the meeting explored different ‘paradigms in practice’, different case studies, and, interestingly, the applications of critical regionalism to education in architecture. Two main ideas emerged from this meeting: firstly, these scholars considered critical regionalism to have “re-emerged today”12 and to be worthy of being

9 Habib Fida Ali, “Regionalism as a Source of Inspiration for Architects,” in Regionalism in Architecture, ed. Robert Powell (Singapore: Concept Media/The Aga Khan Award for Architecture, 1985), 92. 10 Kenneth Frampton, “Session II: Panel Discussion,” in Regionalism in Architecture, ed. Robert Powell (Singapore: Concept Media/The Aga Khan Award for Architecture, 1985), 70. 11 Frampton, “Session II: Panel Discussion,” 70. 12 Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre, “Critical Regionalism,” in Critical Regionalism: The Pomona Meeting Proceedings, ed. Spyros Amourgis (Pomona: College of Environmental Design, CSP University, 1991), 3. 121 Regionalism: Context Between the 1970s and the 1990s

“re-visited;”13 secondly, there was significant use of the term ‘defamiliarisation’, understood as a strategy or process used by critical regionalism to strengthen the particular when emphasizing context, sensitivity to the environment, history and culture.14 According to Lefaivre and Tzonis, critical regionalism ‘defamiliarises’ and “turns buildings into objects with which to think” and create a renewed sense of place.15 It seems that by the time regionalism was framed, and re-visited, it was already being criticised, even by its own advocates. As Gevork Hartoonian points out in his recent critique of critique of regionalism in architecture, Tzonis criticised Frampton’s position in “authoritative words” for misusing the concept.16

In spite of these events and publications, theorists struggled to formulate a unified definition of regionalism in architecture, resulting in multiple interpretations. Some of them defined regionalism in terms of what it is not; for example, Paul Rudolph states as early as 1957 that “‘climate control’ is not regionalism.”17 In 1958, Harris, whose distinction between a regionalism of restriction and one of liberation is quoted by Frampton in Modern Architecture: A Critical History, claims that “regionalism is ‘a state of mind.’”18 In the different seminars and colloquiums of the 1980s, some authors turned to ‘dividing’ regionalism into different classifications. This multiplicity of definitions has been criticised as causing the notion of regionalism to lose its meaning and becoming a ‘catchword’ or ‘slogan.’ Shortly after critical regionalism was re-visited and had arguably re-emerged in the 1989 Pomona Colloquium; it was already the object of fierce criticism; already in 1996, critical regionalism was defined by Jane M. Jacobs as “a revisionary form of imperialist nostalgia.”19

13 Kenneth Frampton, “Critical Regionalism Revisited,” in Critical Regionalism: The Pomona Meeting Proceedings, ed. Spyros Amourgis (California: College of Environmental Design California State Polytechnic University, 1991), 34-39. 14 Spyros Amourgis, “Introduction,” in Critical Regionalism: The Pomona Meeting Proceedings, ed. Spyros Amourgis (Pomona: College of Environmental Design, CSP University, 1991), ix. 15 Tzonis and Lefaivre, “Critical Regionalism,” 3-4. 16 Gevork Hartoonian, “Critical Regionalism: Whatever Happened to Autonomy,” Fusion 4 (August 2014): 2, accessed February 3, 2017, http://www.fusion-journal.com/issue/004-fusion-the-town-and-the-city/critical- regionalism-whatever-happened-to-autonomy. This is an updated and revised paper originally published as “Critical Regionalism Reloaded,” Fabrications 16, 2 (December 2006): 122-139. 17 Paul Rudolph, “Regionalism in Architecture,” Perspecta vol 4 (1957): 19. 18 Keith L. Eggener, “Placing Resistance: A Critique of Critical Regionalism,” Journal of Architectural Education vol 55, no. 4 (May 2002): 235. 19 Jane M. Jacobs, Edge of Empire: Postcolonialism and the City (London: Routledge, 1996), 14-15. 122 Regionalism: Context Between the 1970s and the 1990s

Authentic Regionalism In the chapter of the first edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900 entitled ‘The Problem of Regional Identity’, Curtis presents a chronology of different approaches to the subject of regionalism in modern architecture. In his opinion, there are differences depending on when certain countries ‘received’, or imported, modern architecture, and also on the attitude of the country towards modernity and tradition, and the relationship between the two, which at that time influenced the quality of the resultant architecture. For instance, Curtis observes pluralism and transformation in many parts of the world in the late 1940s and 1950s; however, according to him, there was a shift in attitude by the early sixties, when it became more usual to export straightforward forms to provincial centres. Curtis writes, “it was as if the steel and concrete rectangular frame, the air-conditioner and the property developer conspired to reject national traditions overnight,” which led to what he calls the ‘international corporation style.’20 As Curtis explains, this style’s bland buildings and its rejection of local tradition produced a strong reaction which characterises the 1970s.

It is obvious from Curtis’s remarks that regionalism is intimately related to the attitude towards modernity and tradition held not only by architects, but also by the society at large. What he denominates ‘international corporate style’ is the result of a straightforward exportation of the modern frame structure, among other features, without an understanding of – or even consideration of – the underlying architectural principles of the tradition of the importing countries. Curtis constantly mentions these ‘principles’ and ‘kernel ideas’ when discussing regionalism as part of a tradition which needs to be kept alive and rethought, but does not list them in depth or detail. The negative connotation Curtis gives to the frame structure in the ‘international corporate style’ is the result of its misuse and misunderstanding.

Even if Curtis insists on a balance between tradition and modernity, this is not easy to achieve. Brazil and Mexico in Latin America and Japan and Australia in the Asia Pacific region are the countries where Curtis finds tensions between the new and the old: there is ‘class’ tension in Mexico and Brazil, where architects cannot build without the

20 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 337. 123 Regionalism: Context Between the 1970s and the 1990s support of the wealthy minority; tension in Japan where the relationship with the West and its architectural ideas and influence has been ambivalent; and tension between two different traditions in Australia – the white Australian culture and the culture of the ‘indigenous’ population (as previously discussed in this chapter). Through the selected examples of frame structures in these countries, Curtis seems to imply that finding the balance between modernity and tradition needs the architect’s engagement. He asks, “should one accept the avowed universality of modern design and bow down before it: or should one perhaps seek some fusion between the best of the old and new, of native and foreign?”21

Curtis’s formulation of regionalism around 1985 is presented in the same terms as the account of the development of modern architecture in Third World countries that he was preparing for the subsequent editions of Modern Architecture. Curtis places the notions of modernity, tradition, identity and authenticity at the core of his research. At that time, identity was being re-interpreted as a result of a new general human order in relation to the territory, a new understanding of politics, new beliefs – in short, as a result of new cultural paradigm. Post-colonialism, secularisation and the new self- confidence of non-Western countries had an effect on the architecture – as on any other artistic and cultural product – of not only those countries but also on Western countries. In Curtis’s opinion, regionalism is not a marginal phenomenon affecting only Third World countries, but a universal one, and thus needs to be subject to an analysis based “on a sound philosophical basis. (...)Nonetheless I [Curtis] feel there is a requirement for cleaning up the house of ideas and for laying the basis for theory.”22

Having characterised regionalism as hazy, Curtis tries to shed some light on the notion, defining it in terms of a balance between or hybrids of struggling realities: urban and rural, industrial and artisan, the ‘uprootedness of the metropolis’ and peasant values, modernity and tradition, imported international and indigenous, transient and immutable. An architect who wants to produce an authentic regionalist work of architecture, according to Curtis, acknowledges these dichotomies from an

21 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 331. 22 William J.R. Curtis, “Regionalism in Architecture Session III,” in Regionalism in Architecture, ed. Robert Powell (Singapore: Concept Media/The Aga Khan Award for Architecture, 1985), 73. 124 Regionalism: Context Between the 1970s and the 1990s understanding of the new conditions of universal interchange and interdependence which already characterised the world in the 1980s. He claims that there is more than one way to read local tradition, but regionalists attempt to see the type, the general rule, the originating principle. An architect who wants to produce an authentic work of architecture, then, would absorb the generating principles and structures of the past, go beyond the surface and incorporate the “memories, myths and aspirations that give a society coherence and energy.”23 Having done that, the next step would be to give form to those principles and aspirations in a building which provides an ‘authentic’ expression. Curtis defines this process in terms of cultural excavation, and, going back to his definition of authenticity, it is through this process that the architect would produce buildings that had a certain timeless character, fusing old and new, traditionalism and industrialisation, and come up with pattern languages and common usages or vernaculars of the past.

Just as traditionalism is a reaction against loss of continuity, so regionalism is a restorative philosophy in favour of supposed raw harmony between people, their artefacts and nature. Regionalism is not likely to appeal to the blatant technocrat, nor to the parvenu who recalls that working in fields for twelve hours a day in exchange for virtually nothing may not be the ideal life. Regionalist yearnings are especially appealing to sensitive intellectuals who are troubled by the fragmentation that seems to come with industrialisation, but who also wish to maintain the mobility, complexity of viewpoint and even wealth that industrialism affords.24

According to Curtis, regionalists understand the past, which is tradition, in terms of layers: layers of inventions superimposed and layers that can be unravelled to see how, on the one hand, the vernacular has been transformed by the foreign and, on the other, how the foreign has been adapted to the existing. Curtis introduces an interesting nuance in his discussion adding the possibility of transformation – present also in Modern Architecture Since 1900. By fusing new and old, the new is transformed by the old and the old transformed by the new. And, again, the challenge is to maintain the trend introduced by Curtis and find the right balance between local, national and international. And how do you achieve the balance? As aforementioned,

23 William J.R. Curtis, “Towards an Authentic Regionalism,” in Mimar 19: Architecture in Development, ed. Hasan- Uddin Khan (Singapore: Concept Media, 1986), 24-31. 24 Curtis, “Regionalism in Architecture Session III,” 74. 125 Regionalism: Context Between the 1970s and the 1990s

Curtis chooses not to provide a checklist to detect authenticity in architecture, but claims that “‘authentic regionalism’ stands out against all hackneyed and devalued versions of culture, whether these come from the international economic order, from nationalist propaganda, or, more recently, from pan-Islamic clichés.”25

In Curtis’s argument the modern, urban, transient and imported is embodied in the 1980s understanding of the tradition of the International Style. It is worth emphasizing that Curtis uses the notion of tradition also when discussing the International Style. He argues that traditional structures, once understood and interiorised by the architect, and not manipulated, could be blended with only the best of the modern tradition, not with the worst. His judgment can be understood as both a defence of modern architecture and a critique of the arbitrariness and superficiality of postmodernism. He claims that a rigorous understanding of the past and the vernacular is the path towards a non-arbitrary architecture.

It seemed as if the concrete frame and the air-conditioner were together conspiring to demolish local identity from architecture altogether. Understandably such buildings have been targeted as instruments of neo- colonialism and urban destruction, the opposite of traditional values of any kind. This may be true, but the answer does not lie in just changing the historical clothes of industrial buildings or in just pretending that modernisation will go away. Nor will anything of lasting value be created if Third World architectural beliefs simply pick up the latest fashionable tricks from the United States and Western Europe. Post-modernism is part of the disease, not the cure since it reduces the problem of tradition to a trivial manipulation of signs and references and since its trendy aestheticism masks a cynical and reactionary cultural stance.26

What is the result of this fusion of old and new, rural and urban, etc.? For Curtis the result is the ‘true’, the ‘authentic’, and he explains clearly what authentic regionalism is not: it is not a mere copy of vernacular or a pastiche of national cultural stereotypes. In forgetting about the problem of style, the regionalist would achieve an authentic work of architecture which translates immutable principles into a thoroughly modern approach and which will be added to the stock of cultural memories and will be modern and ancient at the same time. According to Curtis, the regionalist would

25 Curtis, “Regionalism in Architecture Session III,” 74. 26 Curtis, “Towards an Authentic Regionalism,”26. 126 Regionalism: Context Between the 1970s and the 1990s search for basic values and types well-suited to locale and to climate, and this does not necessarily imply regression or nostalgia.27 However, it is not only about buildings and local conditions, but also about articulating the philosophy which would address the transformation “from rural and traditional to modern and imported. The former need preserving, or, when new commissions emerge, re-invigorating; the latter need to be ‘regionalised’ but at a level that is much deeper than stylistic or ornamental adornment.”28

It is through his notion of ‘authentic’ regionalism and the blending or fusion of old and new that Curtis shifts from seeing the architecture of non-Western countries as a source of inspiration to seeing it as part of the tradition of an authentic modern architecture. As the term ‘tradition’ is used by Curtis to refer to both the regional and the international, in a way the dichotomy between tradition and modernity disappears. Instead of opposing modernity and tradition, the local, national and international, he advocates for finding a balance between them, incorporating the best of each, and understanding the ways they transform each other, reinvigorating tradition and ‘regionalising’ the modern and imported. Curtis locates the authentic regionalists in the Middle East, Africa and some parts of Asia, in architects and countries visited by him and neglected by previous historians. Curtis criticises the trend of thought which opposes the two notions, claiming that “the best within modernism can be profoundly rooted in tradition; and the best in tradition is to do with a dynamic process of rethinking certain central kernel ideas.”29 These ‘kernel ideas’ are, for Curtis, architectural principles that refer to an architectural value system, rather than a political or ideological one. This is one of the main differences between his and Frampton’s discourses on regionalism.

Critical Regionalism Kenneth Frampton’s formulation of critical regionalism has some similarities to Curtis’s authentic regionalism. During the 1980s, both Frampton and Curtis published the first editions of their histories of modern architecture and their research on the

27 Curtis, “Regionalism in Architecture,” 74. 28 Curtis, “Towards an Authentic Regionalism,” 25. 29 Curtis, “Regionalism in Architecture Session III,” 73. 127 Regionalism: Context Between the 1970s and the 1990s notion of regionalism. However, the ways they introduced the subject in their narratives of modern architecture, again, differ. While Modern Architecture: A Critical History was published before Modern Architecture Since 1900, it was not until its second edition, revised and enlarged (1985) that Frampton included a chapter on critical regionalism.

In a recent lecture, Frampton mentions the significance of Ricœur’s essay “Universal Civilisation and National Cultures” in his own approach to the notion of ‘critical regionalism’ introduced by Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre in 1981.30 Ricœur’s essay, recommended to him by Dalibor Vesely, admittedly influenced Frampton in bringing together recent architectural examples and contemporary theories. To open the chapter on critical regionalism, Frampton reuses a very long quotation (459 words, excerpted here):

The phenomenon of universalisation, while being an advancement of mankind, at the same time constitutes a sort of subtle destruction, not only of traditional cultures, which might not be an irreparable wrong, but also of what I shall call for the time being the creative nucleus of great civilisations and great culture, that nucleus on the basis of which we interpret life, what I shall call in advance the ethical and mythical nucleus of mankind. The conflict springs up from there. (...)Thus we come to the crucial problem confronting nations just rising from underdevelopment. In order to get on to the road toward modernisation, is it necessary to jettison the cultural past which has been the raison d’être of a nation?... Whence the paradox: on the one hand, it has to root itself in the soil of its past, forge a national spirit, and unfurl this spiritual and cultural reivindication [sic] before the colonialist’s personality. But in order to take part in modern civilisation, it is necessary at the same time to take part in scientific, technical, and political rationality, something which very often requires the pure and simple abandon of a whole cultural past. (...)We are in a tunnel, at the twilight of dogmatism and the dawn of real dialogues.31

30 Kenneth Frampton, “A conversation with Kenneth Frampton: Can there be a Global Architectural History today?” CCA lecture at the Paul Desmarais Theater, delivered on April 6, 2017, accessed May 11, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRWp5AqAZjs. 31 Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History (London: Thames and Hudson, 2007), 313. Also found in Frampton, “Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance,” in The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Post-Modern Culture, ed. Hal Foster (Seattle: Bay Press, 1983), 16. Also in Frampton, “Prospects for a Critical Regionalism," Perspecta vol 20 (1983): 148. All quoted from: Paul Ricœur, History and Truth (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1965), 276-277. 128 Regionalism: Context Between the 1970s and the 1990s

Frampton refers to an “anti-centrist consensus” among the factors responsible for the emergence of Regionalism. This is clearly illustrated in the chosen examples: the idiosyncratic Catalan culture of Barcelona in the 1950s, Alvaro Siza’s work in Porto and Tadao Ando’s work in Osaka (rather than Tokyo). Frampton presents the work of these architects as a result of their peripheral character, as part of a ‘provincial culture’, which has the capacity to be critical and resist the ‘destruction’ and ‘conflict’ identified by Ricœur in the opening quotation. Frampton lists many more examples in Italy, Greece, the United States and Mexico, and uses them to demonstrate the importance of place and local materials, tactile and topographic form. Other countries in Latin America are also mentioned, although merely by name and the name of one or two architects. The fact that, apart from Mexico and Japan, the examples which Frampton discusses most thoroughly are located in Europe or the United States is evidence of the Western bias from which Curtis tries to distance himself.32 Curtis even connects this Western bias with the introduction of ideology into the narratives of modern architecture written by Frampton and other “historians who are happy to announce their Marxist affiliations; but then one recalls that Marx too had an extremely Europocentric view.”33

While Curtis develops his discourse on regionalism in subsequent essays, Frampton’s chapter, ‘Critical Regionalism: Modern Architecture and Cultural Identity,’ is the result of his previous research on the subject; the content of this chapter had already been published in 1983 in Perspecta as “Prospects for a Critical Regionalism.” The list of seven “features, or rather attitudes” 34 of critical regionalism found at the end of the chapter is a summary of the content of Frampton’s “Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance,” also published in 1983. These points are based on the paradox formulated in Ricœur’s opening quotation and are presented in the form of binary oppositions of terms, a characteristic of post-colonialist discourse: world versus regional values, placelessness versus place, typology versus topography,

32 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900 (1996), 635. 33 William J.R. Curtis, review of Modern Architecture by Manfredo Tafuri and Francesco Dal Co and Modern Architecture: A Critical History by Kenneth Frampton, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians vol 4, no. 2 (May 1981): 168. 34 Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History, 325. 129 Regionalism: Context Between the 1970s and the 1990s tectonic versus scenographic, tactile versus visual, and optimised versus mediated technology. According to Frampton, these features and attitudes need to be understood in the light of the fall of the avant-garde and the negative consequences of progress, which is characteristic of his Marxist approach to the history of modern architecture. It can be seen that Frampton’s discourse on regionalism developed rapidly from the descriptive and theoretical to a more systematic approach. “From ‘prospect for’ to ‘towards’ a critical regionalism; Frampton outlined six themes reflecting on both historical and contemporary issues.”35

Before the end of the 1980s, Frampton revisited critical regionalism in the international Colloquium on Critical Regionalism at Pomona. Keeping the tectonic character of architecture in mind, Frampton argued for opposing universal technology and for resisting “the space endlessness of the megalopolitan development.”36 Conscious that his points had been interpreted as categorical opposites, he defended them as “points of dialectic interaction” leading to an architecture of resistance. In Frampton’s opinion, “such a resistant architecture presupposes the recognition of a particular form of culture politic, or, at the very least, the dependence of cultural and political practice on a set of underlying ethical and spiritual values.”37

In the third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900, Curtis states his opinion of the formulation of ‘critical regionalism.’ In his opinion, “the regionalist discourse of the early 1980s even served up some of the old wine of National Romanticism in new bottles, but with the bitter taste of nationalism removed.”38 Curtis notes how several of the architects considered to be modern masters, and several strands of modern architecture, had already been cultivating for more than fifty years the local values and images for which Frampton now advocated.

35 Gevork Hartoonian, “Critical Regionalism: Whatever Happened to Autonomy,” Fusion 4 (August 2014), accessed February 3, 2017, http://www.fusion-journal.com/issue/004-fusion-the-town-and-the-city/critical-regionalism- whatever-happened-to-autonomy. This is an updated and revised paper originally published as “Critical Regionalism Reloaded,” Fabrications 16, 2 (December 2006): 122-139. 36 Frampton, “Critical Regionalism Revisited,” 37. 37 Frampton, “Critical Regionalism Revisited,” 38. 38 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 637. 130 Regionalism: Context Between the 1970s and the 1990s

This brief overview shows that there are some similarities (more than these authors – or at least Curtis – would like to admit) and differences in Curtis’s and Frampton’s discourses on regionalism. Both authors understand regionalism in architecture as the result of an attitude which they first ‘draft’ for architects, and then judge or value in their buildings. For Curtis this attitude is related to an ‘architectural value system’ and for Frampton, with ‘ethical and spiritual values’; both authors describe this attitude in a very vague way, but apply it when analysing certain recent developments in architecture. While Frampton sees this attitude as being in opposition and resistance to the effects of ‘internationalism,’ globalisation, and liberalism in a post-colonial world, Curtis urges authentic regionalists to acknowledge – and even, accept – “that conditions alter drastically and that the present world is one of increasing inter-change and inter-dependence.”39 While Frampton searches for opposition and resistance, Curtis aims to find dialogue and balance. In summary, these narratives resemble not a different regionalism or a different modern architecture, but their authors’ general approach to the history of architecture around 1980.

Historicising Regionalism(s) Lastly, the conclusion of this section is grounded in one the idea behind one quotation used by both Frampton and Curtis in their formulations of regionalism: Paul Ricœur’s paradox between civilisation and cultures. It is used by Frampton to introduce the chapter on ‘critical regionalism’ in Modern Architecture: A Critical History as well as his previous research papers on the topic, and by Curtis when he refers to the dilemma of the ‘developing world’ in the chapter on ‘Modernity, Tradition and Identity in the Developing World’ added to the third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900 (1996). Curtis only quotes: “This is the paradox: how to become modern and return to sources; how to revive an old, dormant civilisation and take part in universal tradition.”40 Subsequent criticism suggests that Frampton’s frequent reference to Ricœur’s essay “Universal Civilisation and National Cultures,” “made evident the postcolonial underpinnings” of his work around 1980.41 Curtis briefly uses Ricœur’s quotation in his

39 Curtis, “Towards an Authentic Regionalism,” 25 and “Regionalism in Architecture Session III,” 74. 40 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900 (1996), 578. 41 Eggener, “Placing Resistance: A Critique of Critical Regionalism,” 234. 131 Regionalism: Context Between the 1970s and the 1990s formulation of authentic regionalism; therefore, the same could be said, to a smaller degree, of Curtis’s discourse.

Sibel Bozdoğan argues that, in spite of “introducing his book with the terminology of postcolonial criticism, Curtis still adopts some of the very same categories that are questioned by postcolonial theory.”42 Bozdoğan bases her criticism in a superficial analysis of the title of a chapter in the third edition of Curtis’s book, ‘Modernity and Tradition in the Developing World.’ It is true that the binary opposition between the linear models of history, developed versus developing, is present in his discourse, and that these terms are “no longer tenable as identifiers of postcolonial and non-Western [sic] trajectories in the twentieth century.”43 However, she argues that Curtis’s discourse still operates with the binary opposition of modernity versus tradition, and, as thoroughly discussed throughout this chapter, Curtis does not oppose modernity to tradition.

The general discourse of regionalism in architecture has been criticised for being imposed on developing countries in the post-colonial period. Already in 1985, Paul Rudolph was advocating for regionalism to fuse with the great architectural models of the twentieth century, and not to be something “superimposed from outside.”44 Following on from Harris’ definition of regionalism as ‘a state of mind’, a definition which was quoted by Frampton, Keith Eggener argued that the literature on critical regionalism lacks precisely this attention to the state of mind. “By heeding the voices of those responsible for building a particular culture, architects among many others, rather than imposing formulas upon them, we might come to understand better the richness of internal, local discourses in their full range and complexity.”45 Even if both Frampton and Curtis advocate for regionalism as a way to avoid arbitrariness in architecture, their own judgements and analyses can be criticised as being arbitrary. Given the importance of ‘attitude’ in their formulations of regionalism, what are

42 Sibel Bozdoğan, “Architectural History in Professional Education: Reflections on Postcolonial Challenges to the Modern Survey,” Journal of Architectural Education vol 52, no. 4 (May 1999): 209. 43 Bozdoğan, “Architectural History in Professional Education,” 209. 44 Paul Rudolph, “Regionalism in Architecture: Session I,” in Regionalism in Architecture, ed. Robert Powell (Singapore: Concept Media/The Aga Khan Award for Architecture, 1985), 45. 45 Eggener, “Placing Resistance: A Critique of Critical Regionalism,” 235. 132 Regionalism: Context Between the 1970s and the 1990s

Frampton’s and Curtis’s own personal attitudes when addressing the relevant issue of including other countries in the narrative of modern architecture?

Tzonis and Lefaivre contend that there are good reasons not to draw “checklists of physical design criteria of how to be a critical regionalist.”46 Despite this, Frampton gives a list of features or attitudes which should be seen as examples of critical regionalism in architecture, and Curtis describes, not in the book but in his subsequent papers, the attitudes he looks for before granting an architect the label of an authentic regionalist. In his critique of Frampton’s fiction of place, Paul Walker uses an image that can also be used to characterise Curtis’s position: “All these different hands have been dealt from the same rather limited pack of shuffled cards. They constitute a single game, a single universal argument.”47 Both Curtis and Frampton drafted their positions, assumed them thoughtfully and disseminated them in a series of rather repetitive essays published around 1985.

In the third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900, Curtis criticises the use (or reuse) of the term regionalism in the early 1980s. He argues that Liane Lefaivre and Alexander Tzonis’ “1981 essay, critical regionalism designates a group of architects whose work sought to formulate an alternative to the postmodernist simulation of historical forms.”48 Likewise, Frampton used it to criticised postmodernist reduction. For Curtis, “what Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre called a ‘critical regionalism’ seemed to imply an anxious recognition that most folk and vernacular traditions were irretrievably lost, but that some modern manoeuvre must be set (or reset) in motion to retrieve old knowledge at a distance.”49 According to Curtis, modern masters and several trends of modern architecture were doing what they advocated since 1930s.50 Curtis advocates for buildings which respond “intelligently to climate, place, memory and landscape, without ignoring social and technological change” regardless of where

46 Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre, “Critical Regionalism,” in Critical Regionalism: The Pomona Meeting Proceedings, ed. Spyros Amourgis (Pomona: College of Environmental Design, CSP University, 1991), 22. 47 Paul Walker, “Kenneth Frampton and the Fiction of Place,” in Shifting Views: Selected Essays on the Architectural History of Australia and New Zealand, ed. Andrew Leach, Antony Moulis and Nicole Sully (St. Lucia, QLD: University of Queensland Press, 2008), 77. 48 Hartoonian, “Critical Regionalism: Whatever Happened to Autonomy,” 1. 49 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 636-637. 50 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 637. 133 Regionalism: Context Between the 1970s and the 1990s they are built, and which “penetrate beyond the obvious features of regional style to some deeper mythical structures.”51

The balance between modernity and tradition that Curtis proposes can be regarded as a vague attempt to go beyond the oppositions of Frampton’s and others’ post-colonial discourse of regionalism. Curtis acknowledges that tradition, like modernity, is complex, and that “most vernaculars are in fact hybrids of indigenous and imported types and these types also change and adapt.”52 Recent studies have looked at reinterpreting tradition in the same way Curtis attempted to; for example Janet Abu- Lughon proposes to transform tradition, a static concept, into ‘traditioning’, which she sees as more active and better suited to referencing traditional environments that were never isolated.53 The concept of ‘traditioning,’ “implies that while traditions may draw on the past, they are ultimately created in the present for present needs. She [Abu- Lughon] also warns against the concept of ‘tradition’ being used to reinforce or maintain ‘traditional’ forms of dominance.”54

It has been shown how the discussion of regionalism and universalism gave Curtis the perfect excuse to address a gap he detected in recent histories. In his opinion, Manfredo Tafuri and Francesco Dal Co’s Modern Architecture said “little or nothing (...) about either industrial or rural vernaculars, and next to nothing about the crucial problems of the ‘developing countries,’” and in Frampton’s case “one gets not a glimmer of the dramatic changes occurring in the Middle East, Africa and South East Asia.”55 In the 1980s there was good reason to look to regionalism as a strategy to broaden the scope of the historiography of modern architecture, as “one way toward that richness in architecture” which had been lacking for some time.56

51 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 637. 52 Curtis, “Towards an Authentic Regionalism,” 25 and “Regionalism in Architecture Session III,” 74. 53 Quoted in Carl O’Coill and Kathleen Watt, “The Politics of Culture and the Problem of Tradition: Re-evaluating Regionalist Interpretations of the Architecture of Geoffrey Bawa,” in Architecture and Identity, ed. Peter Herde and Erik Wegerhoff (Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2009), 484. 54 O’Coill and Watt, “The Politics of Culture and the Problem of Tradition…,” 484. 55 William J.R. Curtis, review of Modern Architecture by Manfredo Tafuri and Francesco Dal Co and Modern Architecture: A Critical History by Kenneth Frampton, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians vol 4, no. 2 (May 1981): 168. 56 Rudolph, “Regionalism in Architecture,” 13. 134 Regionalism: Context Between the 1970s and the 1990s

As this section has demonstrated, Frampton’s and Curtis’s discourses on regionalism, or regionalisms, were being theorised – one could argue even imposed – and introduced to the histories of modern architecture simultaneously. The lack of historical distance between these two historians writing, in the 1980s, about regionalism in the architecture of the late 1970s, is undeniable. However, it is only now, in 2017, that Frampton admits that, in Modern Architecture: A Critical History he “left out a big part of the world.” He says that “in the last revision [which he is preparing for publication this year] I do not want to present a Eurocentric world: architecture in China, India or Africa is also part of the planet.”57 Will he link the notion of critical regionalism to examples from these countries? It could be inferred from Frampton’s words that one of the issues raised in this paper, whether regionalism should be ‘illustrated’ with examples from or outside Europe and the United States, will be further clarified in this new edition of his history. However, Frampton may drop the notion of regionalism, which he recently referred to as “embarrassing term” and focus on writing a global history of architecture.58

The theories on regionalism, or the “many reiterations of the theory,” are regarded today as multi-faceted: “it does not stand as a singular theory or practice to be dominant.”59 In conclusion, while revisiting the notion of regionalism, this chapter has attempted to historicise the development of Curtis’s understanding of the notion, firstly, by discussing the critical responses to Curtis’s formulation of regionalism in the different reviews of Modern Architecture Since 1900, and, secondly, by analysing the differences in Curtis discourse on regionalism between the three editions of the book, using the examples of Turkey, Greece and Australia. And, finally, this chapter has attempted to historicise the development of Curtis’s understanding of regionalism by putting it in context with other contemporary definitions and conceptualisations of the notion, especially critical regionalism.

57 Anatxu Zabalbeascoa, “Kenneth Frampton: ‘Los rascacielos no son arquitectura, solo dinero’”, El Pais Semanal (March 10, 2017), accessed March 14, 2017, http://elpaissemanal.elpais.com/confidencias/kenneth- frampton/?id_externo_rsoc=FB_CC. 58 Frampton, “A conversation with Kenneth Frampton: Can there be a Global Architectural History today?” 59 Nima Zahiri, Omid Dezhdar and Manouchehr Foroutan, “Rethinking of Critical Regionalism in High-Rise Buildings,” Buildings vol 7, no. 4 (January 2017): 2. 135 Regionalism: Context Between the 1970s and the 1990s

I would like to conclude by arguing that by understanding regionalism as an object worthy of historical analysis, the idea has lost its critical capacity today – an argument that applies to both critical and authentic regionalisms. As Hilde Heynen very recently observed, “we should question whether we can get along in architectural history and theory with the categories we have used thus far.”60The same could be said of modernism and modernity. And that is precisely what Curtis did when defining regionalism: he redefined modern architecture and modernity as a universal tradition. Already in 1984, Hasan Uddin Khan, participant in the Aga Khan regional seminar, praised Modern Architecture Since 1900 as a book of particular interest to Third World readers “because it looks at development in non-Western architectures and the impact of Western architecture on developing countries… This book, seriously written, represents a significant attempt to understand emerging architecture (some in developing countries) within the mainstream of architectural thinking.”61

60 Hilde Heynen, “Modernity and Modernities. Challenges for the Historiography of Modern Architecture,” in Conceiving our Modernity: Perspectives of Study on Chinese Modern Architectural History, 2015, 20-34. Proceedings of the 1st Symposium of Chinese Modern Architectural History and Theory Forum. 61 Hasan Uddin Khan, Mimar, 1984. Quoted from William J.R. Curtis short CV plus addendum with best book reviews. WJRC Archive. 136 Postmodernism: Critical Responses

Chapter Four_ William J.R. Curtis and Postmodernism

This chapter explores William J.R. Curtis’s charting of postmodernism and the later phases of development of modern architecture in the twentieth century across the three editions of Modern Architecture Since 1900. The aim is to highlight the differences between editions, and thus demonstrate the significance of the changes Curtis made in the major revision of the content prior to the publication of the third edition of the book. Firstly, I will present and discuss the references to postmodernism made by the historians and theorists who reviewed the different editions. Secondly, I will review the differences between the three editions in Curtis’s account: from his early and preliminary impressions gathered in the late 1970s, to their confirmation in the early 1990s. Thirdly, I will look at Curtis’s discussion of the lack of validity of the debate on postmodern versus modern architecture and of the significance of tradition. Finally, I will contextualise Curtis’s definition of postmodernism in the context of the different approaches presented by well-known scholars in the intervening years between editions, including Frampton’s account of the late twentieth century in Modern Architecture: A Critical History (1980).

1. Critical responses to Curtis’s Approach to Postmodernism

Most theorists and historians who reviewed the three editions of Modern Architecture Since 1900 agree that Curtis’s account of the recent past is a valuable contribution. However, some are more positive about it than others. For Samuel B. Frank, Curtis handles rather well the shift from historian to critic, and “uses modernity, tradition, and authenticity as revealing lights to shine upon the empty pretensions of postmodernism.”1 For Brett Donham, to give an account of the recent past is a “dangerous occupation.”2 In his review of the third edition, Jorge Sainz praises the last part of the book for its “brave” critical approach, given that most historians prefer to allow enough time to elapse and enable them to discern between consolidated

1 Samuel B. Frank, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis and Modern Architecture and Design: An Alternative History by Bill Risebero, Journal of Architectural Education vol 36, no. 4 (summer 1983): 30. 2 Brett Donham, “Revisionist Modernism,” review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, Progressive Architecture vol 65, no. 5 (May 1984): 185. 137 Postmodernism: Critical Responses innovations and transitory fashions;3 in his opinion, it also “reflects the author’s increasing tendency to combine historical investigation and criticism of the present.”4 Tom Heath also emphasises Curtis’s rejection of the “historical folklore” that leads historians to avoid writing about the recent past.5

Despite the flaws that he identifies in the book, Peter Serenyi points out that “no prior textbook on the subject has focused so strongly on the notion that the architecture of the present, as that of the past, is art, and that it deserves the same kind of scholarly treatment as the architecture of the past.”6 It is an interesting remark given that Serenyi was one of the reviewers who criticised, though not harshly, Curtis’s criteria of judgement and its lack of rigorous theoretical foundation, as discussed in Chapter Two of this dissertation.

According to Heath, Curtis rightly understands the central problem of the period charted in Part 3 of Modern Architecture Since 1900. In his opinion, Curtis’s selection of works of the recent past is “impeccable,” as is the case with his account of the problem of regional identity or architecture in developing countries.7 He points out how in these last chapters of Part 3, Curtis opens up historical and critical issues rather than settling them, which is especially so of the final chapter ‘The Traditions of Modern Architecture in the Recent Past.’ Martin Pawley agrees with this idea that Curtis opens new doors for interpretation, at a time when architectural thought was characterised by a state of confusion.8 Von Moos writes that the last chapter of the book and its introductory note are, for him, “among the more useful recent writing about postmodernism,” although he admits that he does not share all of Curtis’s

3 Jorge Sainz, “Arquitectura moderna: última edición,” review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, Arquitectura Viva, no. 49 (July- August 1996): 73. Author’s translation into English. 4 Sainz, “Arquitectura moderna: última edición,” 73. Author’s translation into English. 5 Tom Heath, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, Architecture Australia vol 73, no. 5 (July 1984): 26. 6 Peter Serenyi, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians vol 43, no. 3 (October 1984): 276. 7 Heath, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, 26. 8 Martin Pawley, “Fish are Jumping,” review of Modern Architecture: A Critical History” by Kenneth Frampton and Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, The Architectural Review vol 174, no. 1041 (November 1983): 6. 138 Postmodernism: Critical Responses judgements.9 In his review, Von Moos mentions the role of tradition in Curtis’s discourse, and Curtis’s formulation of a certain continuity in the architecture of the twentieth century, as the ideas he found most interesting in his work. For him, the way Curtis’s emphasis on the idea that every allegedly new architecture is related to past experiences is related to his remark that there is some modern “pedigree” in postmodern strategies such as quotation, allusion and mimicry. 10 Indeed, it was part of Curtis’s aim to avoid the oversimplified definitions of modern architecture that were so characteristic of architectural journalism at that time, as thoroughly discussed in the next sections of this chapter.

Both Heath and Donham highlight the continuity drawn by Curtis between the immediate past and the present, between modern and postmodern architecture. As discussed in Chapter Three of this dissertation with regard to regionalism, traditions are built and transformed, though not changed in a revolutionary way, and that is the case with the emergence of both modern and postmodern architecture. In Donham’s opinion, Curtis lays down “such a thorough and principled definition of the true spirit of modern architecture that he can with confidence assess recent work and say which work is in the mainstream, or, as he puts it, is a continuation of the ‘strands’ of history.”11 Heath points out in his review of Modern Architecture Since 1900, Curtis acknowledges that change has taken place, but the notion that it is revolutionary change is firmly rejected. Heath summarises Curtis’s approach in what he considers to be the conclusion of the book: “that current rhetoric has, ignorantly or deliberately, failed to understand the variety of the past, substituting gross caricatures of both theory and practice; in doing so it has, again perhaps deliberately, blurred or effaced the continuity of the immediate past with the present.”12 Having said that, what if Curtis is failing to understand the variety of the present, and presenting a gross caricature of postmodernism?

9 Stanislaus von Moos, “Revising Modernist History: The Architecture of the 1920s and 1930s,” review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, Art Journal vol 43, no. 2 (summer 1983): 208. 10 Von Moos, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900, 208. 11 Donham, “Revisionist Modernism,” 185. 12 Heath, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, 26-27. 139 Postmodernism: Critical Responses

Serenyi accuses Curtis, in his treatment of postmodernism, of not only disregarding his aim to present the subject with a dispassionate distance, but, even worse, exemplifying “those very traits that the architects of postmodernism ascribe to the modern movement: being antihistorical and disregarding architectural content.”13 He writes that “the final chapter, which traces ‘The Traditions of Modern Architecture in the Recent Past’ reveals the basic conservatism of his position; William Curtis is not a dependable guide to those paths which may lead to a new authentic architecture in the closing years of the century.”14 Blundell Jones agrees with Oliver in considering Curtis’s methodological approach to be tacitly conservative.15

As is further discussed in this chapter, Curtis’s critique of postmodern architecture is based on its lack of meaning or authenticity. In his review, Oliver highlights that, in spite of his interest in meaning, there is no indication that Curtis is aware of recent studies in semiology and he is “swiftly dismissive of ‘linguistic analogies’ in a single end-note.”16 The case of authenticity is not dissimilar, and, for Oliver, it is a “vaguely defined concept (…) by which architects are appraised or dismissed.”17 In the words of Richard Pommer, authenticity is Curtis’s “imaginative touchstone,” which rarely fails him, and he adds: “so much for a method.”18 However, what some critics read as signs of methodological weakness, others see as signs of strength. According to Andrew Mead, what give this history its strength, are two things in particular: “the relatively extended treatment Curtis gives to certain key works, allowing him to develop his argument by attention to specifics and to explore several levels of meaning; and his marked distaste for ‘-isms’ in place of ‘authenticity.’’19

Notwithstanding Curtis’s assessment of postmodernism, he can rightly be called a postmodern historian of modern architecture. His view of Pevsner,

13 Serenyi, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900, 276. 14 Paul Oliver, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, The Oxford Art Journal vol 5, no. 2 Architecture (1983): 56. 15 Peter Blundell Jones, “Curtis’s Corbussian Bent,” review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, Architects Journal vol 187, issue 22 (June 1988): 79. 16 Oliver, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, 55. 17 Oliver, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, 55. 18 Heath, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, 26. 19 Andrew Mead, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, Architects’ Journal vol 204, no. 10 (September 1996): 51. 140 Postmodernism: Critical Responses

Giedion, and Hitchcock is not unlike the post-modern architects’ view of Gropius, Mies, and Le Corbusier. Moreover, his emulation of scholarly methods used by historians of such traditional fields as Renaissance or Baroque architecture is analogous to the admiration of post-modern architects for traditional architecture. Above all, like the postmodernists, Curtis views architecture not merely as a response to functional need but rather as a symbolic and mythic representation of a culture.”20

The reviewers of the subsequent editions of Modern Architecture Since 1900 raised other interesting issues regarding postmodernism and Curtis’s account of the recent past. In his review of the second edition, Blundell Jones claims that Curtis’s disdain for the post-modern in favour of the modern, “won many friends” for the book.21 In his review of the third edition, Andrew Mead acknowledges that Part 4 and its three chapters show Curtis’s attempt at the most difficult task for the historian, to shift into the role of critic and provide a judgement on the recent past. Given that it is only three chapters, Mead understands that even if they read like a rapid tour d’horizon, they substantiate Curtis’s belief that “‘the epic adventure of Modernism is clearly not over,’ that its central themes and ideas are interpreted and expressed anew.”22 Regardless of whether they share his opinion or not, Meads, Donham and Heath consider Curtis’s charting of what he calls the modern tradition, which is discussed in depth in Chapter Five of this dissertation, and its continuity throughout the twentieth century to be rigorously grounded.

The scholar Hans van Dijk agrees in highlighting Curtis’s formulation of a modern tradition in ‘Dutch Modernism and Its Legitimacy.’ Van Dijk explains how Curtis understands history as unfolding in a number of gradually developing traditions. He emphasises the importance that Curtis gives to buildings, to great masterpieces, because of their effect; “they can end traditions, bend them and summon new ones into life.”23 Van Dijk adds that the assimilation, imitation and amendment of these works can explain more of architectural history, and its writing by Curtis, than the

20 Serenyi, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900, 276. 21 Blundell Jones, “Curtis’s Corbussian Bent,” 79. 22 Andrew Mead, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, Architects’ Journal vol 204, no. 10 (September 1996): 50. 23 William J.R. Curtis, email message to author, June 16, 2017. Quoted from Hans van Dijk, “Dutch Modernism and Its Legitimacy,” in Architectuur in NederlandJahrbock 1991-1992 (Amsterdam, 1992). 141 Postmodernism: Critical Responses verbal construction with which they are presented or criticised. In his opinion, that is why Curtis does not understand modern architecture as arising out of avant-garde polemics or demising in the early 1990s. At that time, architecture was not at the beginning or end of an era, rather than in “the middle of the multiform tradition of the modern.”24

2. Mapping Postmodernism in Modern Architecture Since 1900

In the introduction to the third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900, Curtis reflects back on his first impression of postmodernism and the way he presented it in 1982. He writes:

‘Postmodernism’ emerged with its arbitrary recipes and quotations, and was soon accompanied by a collection of revivalisms and mannerisms in which any period of the past was game. When the introduction to the first edition of this book was written in 1981 it stated: ‘Modern architecture is at present in another critical phase, in which many of its underlying doctrines are being questioned and rejected. It remains to be seen whether this amounts to the collapse of a tradition or another crisis preceding a new phase of consolidation.’ Despite the rhetoric about the ‘end of an era,’ postmodernism proved to be ephemeral. In reality there was yet another reorientation in which certain core ideas of modern architecture were re- examined but in a new way.1

This section, like the section on regionalism in Chapter Three of this dissertation, explores the differences in Curtis’s account of postmodernism between the three editions of Modern Architecture Since 1900. In the first edition, all references to postmodernism appear in the last chapter, ‘The Traditions of Modern Architecture in the Recent Past,’ highly praised by the reviewers of the book. Curtis organises his argument typologically and begins the chapter by discussing examples of social housing and office buildings built in the early 1970s. The first reference to postmodernism appears when Curtis moves on to skyscrapers, in general, and those of Philip Johnson, in particular. Curtis writes of Johnson’s supposedly “wholesale” rejection of the modern glass box: “In fact Johnson had done little more than stick

24 Curtis, email message to author, June 16, 2017. 1 William J.R. Curtis, “Introduction,” in Modern Architecture Since 1900 (London: Phaidon Press, 1996), 16. 142 Postmodernism: Mapping in Modern Architecture Since 1900 some historical quotations on to a standard office space: most of what was called ‘Post- modern’ tended to be cosmetic.”2 (This reference is maintained in the third edition, p. 597).

The chapter continues with a discussion of museums, which in the 1970s offered a rich variety of architectural approaches, comparing Renzo Piano and Richard Roger’s Pompidou Centre in Paris (1974), Louis Kahn’s Kimbell Art Museum in Texas (1972), and Landgon, Wilson and others’ Getty Museum in California (1974). Before the end of the chapter, Curtis analyses different proposals presented to international competitions, including James Stirling’s proposal for a museum in Stuttgart (1977), Michael Graves’ project for the Fargo-Moorhead Cultural Centre (1978) and Romaldo Giurgola’s proposal for the Australian Parliament building in Canberra (1980).

Through his critical stance in the conclusion, and as is the case with authentic regionalist architects, Curtis has a recommendation for postmodern architects who attempt to turn back to earlier phases of history to support their work. In his opinion, not everybody can revive an earlier style without the work resulting in pastiche. Curtis writes to the postmodern architect that “he must rethink the past in terms of present- day tasks, techniques and meanings. Along the way he may discover that superficial mimicry of past forms is really no better than skin-deep modernity and that past forms had their own reasons for being, most of which no longer apply.”3 Curtis develops his understanding of the notion of pastiche in subsequent research papers published during the 1980s, which are discussed in the next section.

Curtis reflects on his own conclusion in the first lines of the 1987 addendum, written six years after he wrote the first version of the final chapters of the book. He stands proud of having predicted that the debate between modernism and postmodernism would not contribute to understanding the architectural situation of the early 1980s. For Curtis, “the issue then is not so much Modern versus Post-modern as principle versus pastiche: the notion of authenticity outlined in the conclusion continues to hold

2 William J.R. Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900 (Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1982), 374. 3 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 387. 143 Postmodernism: Mapping in Modern Architecture Since 1900 good.”4 Curtis criticises the various attempts to revive classical forms during the early 1980s for having indulged in games of quotation and irony, which resulted in superficial realisations. Despite these brief remarks on postmodernism at the beginning of the addendum, the rest of the text is devoted to what he considers to be relevant architectural examples throughout the world, especially outside of the Western canon.

In the third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900, the first reference to postmodernism appears in the introduction. Curtis discusses the arbitrary quotations of postmodernism at its emergence, which were “soon accompanied by a collection of revivalism and mannerisms in which any period of the past was game.”5 Curtis considers his own judgement, in the first edition, of postmodernism as an “ephemeral” phenomenon, to have been proven in the intervening years.6 In the main text of the third edition, the last chapter of the third part is devoted to Curtis’s discussion of ‘Pluralism in the 1970s.’ As part of that pluralism, “the phenomenon called, loosely, ‘Post-modernism’ relied upon an obvious reuse of the past; but it did not have an exclusive tenure of tradition, and the re-examination of history took several paths, some of them extending discoveries already made in earlier modern architecture.”7 Therefore, in Curtis’s opinion, postmodernism was not only transient, but also showed a certain continuity with modernism, an opinion which he also justifies with reference to the postmodern use of modern design strategies such as fragmentation, collage and planarity.

One of the main points of Curtis’s critique of postmodernist is what he considers to be their attitude towards modernism, which they “reduced to a simplified demonology.”8 The target of the postmodernist animus emerged as a composite caricature combining ‘functionalism,’ simple forms, truth to structure, mute imagery and a belief in the Zeitgeist.”9 Curtis also criticises their critique of modern architecture for being

4 William J.R. Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900 (Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1987),389. 5 William J.R. Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900 (Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1996), 16. 6 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 16. 7 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 589. 8 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 602. 9 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 602. 144 Postmodernism: Mapping in Modern Architecture Since 1900 superficial for “shooting at intellectual bodies which were already dead.”10 Postmodern experiences were not only the result of a new design fashion or superficial play, but also signs of the loss of confidence in the social and architectural project of modernity. Curtis acknowledges the existence of a public mood of dissatisfaction with bad modern buildings, which was reflected in what he calls ‘wholesale rejection,’ avoiding fine distinctions. Curtis considers this new mood “traditionalist,” and not too worried about rigor, and argues that it “often degenerated into eclectic candyfloss.”11 Curtis continues by referring to postmodernism as “one of a number of revisionist tendencies which came to the fore from the mid-1970s onwards; ostensibly, these too were in favour of aesthetic and symbolic enrichment.”12 In the notes, Curtis identifies David Watkin’s Morality and Architecture (1977), a book he harshly reviewed for the Journal of Society of Architectural Historians, as exemplifying these revisionist tendencies.

Curtis is also deeply critical of the theoretical aspect of the postmodern approach to architecture, which he sees as having no clear proposal. In his critique, Curtis refers often to the linguistic characteristics of postmodernism, and the shift toward understanding architecture “as a system of ‘signs.’” 13 He disagrees with the idea that a multivalence of meaning plays part in architecture, and that buildings can be understood as communication devices. For Curtis, postmodernism, like New Brutalism in the 1960s, “was more a vague cluster of aspirations (or, at any rate, rejections) than a blueprint for a clear-cut style.”14 This is a judgment that Curtis had already made in the first edition, and which he maintained in the early 1990s after the realisation of most of postmodern proposals, as is the case with postmodern theoretical production.

It seems contradictory, given that Curtis sees postmodernism as lacking theoretical substance, that part of his account in Modern Architecture Since 1900 focusses on theoretical approaches and proposals. He criticises the lack of concern for expressive authenticity in Charles Jencks’ “book on the subject of Post-Modern architecture” –

10 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 602. 11 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 604. 12 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 602. 13 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 602. 14 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 602. 145 Postmodernism: Mapping in Modern Architecture Since 1900 which, given the time he was writing and his reference to it elsewhere in the notes, is probably The Language of Post-Modern Architecture (1977).15 According to Curtis, the buildings chosen to illustrate Jencks’ book “shared a tendency towards superficiality which took earlier architectural precedents as a sounding board for references and quotations, but for little more.”16 Traditionalism and “nostalgic revenge” are the terms Curtis uses to introduce Léon and Robert Krier’s formulation of Urban Space in Theory and Practice (1975), whereas Curtis regards Colin Rowe’s and Fred Koetter’s Collage City (1978) as more sophisticated. Curtis sees an almost automatic respect for the existing context (sometimes verging on mimicry), in what he suggests calling the postmodern idea of the city.17 All in all, for him, the late 1970s is a period of a “changing intellectual atmosphere.”18

Curtis summarises his account of the architecture of the 1970s by acknowledging the existence of a variety of beliefs and of several strands of a modern tradition that “continued to extend in a vigorous way” – postmodernism being one of the several concurrent tendencies of those years.19 He considers it relevant to end his cross-section of the decade “with two works conceived outside the realms of fashionable doubt, that were indisputably ‘modern’ yet steeped in the past; that were concerned with matters of form without sacrificing human meaning; that articulated complex feelings and ideas without forgetting the tectonic presence of construction.” 20 Those two works are Carlo Scarpa’s Brion Tomb at San Vito d’Altivole in the Veneto (1969-1978) and Jørn Utzon’s Bagsvaerd Church outside Copenhagen (1969 and 1978).

There are a few references to postmodernism in Part 4 on ‘Continuity and Change in the Late Twentieth Century,’ in the third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900, but mostly they appear in Curtis’s discussion of what came after. He considers that most postmodern obsessions were on the wane, and that most of its paradigms lost their hold, by the mid-1980s. Curtis introduces deconstructivism into his account of

15 Charles Jencks, The Language of Post-Modern Architecture (New York: Rizzoli, 1977). 16 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 602. 17 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 608. 18 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 603. 19 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 610. 20 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 610. 146 Postmodernism: Mapping in Modern Architecture Since 1900 the architecture of the recent past thus: “a new abstraction that had been waiting in wings while postmodernism carried out its brief performance gradually insinuated itself as the prevalent mode, sometimes in minimalist forms, sometimes in works which made new claims on the interpenetrating section, the dynamic diagonal or the plan made up from fragments set in a field of space.”21

Curtis also refers briefly to postmodernism when dealing with architecture in the 1980s in different countries. For instance, he refers to the “slight though sensationalist” impact of postmodernism with the example of the Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill’s work around Paris and Montpellier.22 The case of Finland is also of interest, where modern architecture was so associated with national identity that postmodernism “only made a slight impact.”23 The American architect Steven Holl is, for Curtis, an example of holding out against the fashions of, first, postmodernism, and then deconstructivisim, by “pursuing lines of thought and feeling that drew together personal interpretations of modern ‘mentors’ with a close concentration upon mythical, poetic and tactile aspects of architecture.”24 Apart from the aforementioned, Curtis considers postmodernism to be already out of the picture by the mid-1980s.

In the 1982 edition, and regarding the crisis of modernism, Curtis refers the reader to Manfredo Tafuri’s Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development (1976) as a probing critique of the avant-garde although from a somewhat confused Marxist standpoint. 25 He also mentions Charles Jencks’ “The Rise of a Post-Modern Architecture” (1975) as a trial run of the ideas he later published in the book The Language of Post-Modern Architecture (1977). Curtis refers to David Watkin’s Morality and Architecture (1977) as exemplifying right-wing ideological criticism, the severe limitations of which he pointed out in his review of the book for the JSAH. Colin Rowe and his Collage City feature in Curtis’s explanation of the figure/ground urban analysis

21 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 662. 22 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 672. 23 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 674-675. 24 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 677. 25 William J.R. Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900 (Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1982), 419. 147 Postmodernism: Mapping in Modern Architecture Since 1900 method; in Rowe’s work he sees the influence of Popper’s ideas on the role that pre- existing theories, and deduction, play in invention.26

Surprisingly, Curtis does not add that many new references regarding postmodernism to the third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900. The few additions include Heinrich Klotz’s The History of Postmodern Architecture (1988), and some of Curtis’s own publications such as ‘Principle versus Pastiche: Perspectives on Some Recent Classicisms’ (1984), further discussed in the next section of this chapter. Klotz’s book becomes a source for Curtis’s understanding of Aldo Rossi and Hans Hollein, among others. For “ruminations on the modern project,” Curtis recommends Jürgen Habermas’ writings on the incomplete project of modernity, and to explain neo- conservatism he refers the reader to Mary McLeod’s seminal essay on “Architecture and Politics in the Reagan Era: From Post-Modernism to Deconstructivism,” which are discussed in the final section of this chapter.27

3. Postmodernism, Modernism and Authenticity

According to Curtis in the course of our communication, his critique of postmodernism began in polemical lectures given at Harvard around 1979 and 1980, and then “emerged in a string of articles,” which are explored in this section, where he made the distinction between superficial transfers of the past and deeper transformations.1 This string of articles is written in the intervening years between the first and third editions of Modern Architecture Since 1900, using a more polemical language. For example, in the book, Curtis refers to Colin Rowe’s approach as “more sophisticated” than that of “the Kriers” (as he calls the brothers from Luxembourg), whereas he describes their work in terms of “puckish cynicism” in one of the aforementioned articles.2 The difference in the language is even more obvious when he claims, in a 1984 article, that “the architectural present – or that version portrayed by

26 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 420. 27 William J.R. Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900 (Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1996), 716. 1 William J.R. Curtis, email message to author, February 2, 2017. 2 William J.R. Curtis, “Principle versus Pastiche: Perspectives on some Recent Classicisms,” The Architectural Review vol 176, no. 1050 (August 1984): 18. 148 Postmodernism, Modernism and Authenticity magazines and university pundits – is bedevilled by numerous ills: a bland technocracy; disregard for human meanings in architecture; a narcissistic preoccupation with architectural language as an internal system; a superficial concern with past motifs rather than past principles.”3 It is precisely this dichotomy between a superficial or a deep understanding of the past what shapes his discussion of the modernism/postmodernism debate and his proposal of authenticity and monumentality as an antidote to the uselessness of that debate.

The Modernism/Postmodernism Debate In 1983, right after the publication of Modern Architecture Since 1900, and with the notion of authenticity in mind, Curtis begins exploring the idea that postmodernism is nothing more than a superficial and recent “propaganda,” which distorts the role of modernism. 4 This is an argument that he explores in several of his critical essays (the most relevant of which will be thoroughly discussed in this section), despite claiming in those same articles that the “squabbles between ‘post-modern’ and ‘modern’ tend to have limited critical value precisely because they oversimplify the relationship between invention and precedent.”5 For him, both sides of the debate are guilty of not differentiating between pastiche and principle. He argues that the debate is detrimental to the quality of criticism that historians or critics offer to their readers: that it is just as bad “to assert that an assemblage of concrete Doric columns or coloured plywood pilasters is somehow automatically superior to a building using pilotis or steel frame stanchions, or to assert the exact opposite,” if there is no attention being paid to principles instead of fashion.6 Despite the fact that he seems to place himself above the debate, I would argue that he is part of it, clearly advocating for modernism and against postmodernism

3 William J.R. Curtis, “Modern Architecture, Monumentality and the Meaning of Institutions: Reflections on Authenticity,” Harvard Architecture Review, no. 4 (1984): 65. 4 William J.R. Curtis, “Authenticity, Abstraction and the Ancient Sense: Le Corbusier’s and Louis Kahn’s Ideas of Parliament,” Perspecta vol 20 (1983): 194. 5 Curtis, “Authenticity, Abstraction and the Ancient Sense…,” 182-183. 6 Curtis, “Principle versus Pastiche...,”11. 149 Postmodernism, Modernism and Authenticity

Before moving on to the actual arguments, it is worth noting the way Curtis describes the debate itself: as “tedious,”7 “a customary battle of caricatures,”8 which can (and should) be avoided. In 1989, he describes it as “misleading” and degenerating quickly into a confrontation of caricatures which lacks historical accuracy.9

Even if Curtis claims to reject the modernism/postmodernism debate, he repeatedly resorts to this polemical dichotomy when writing his account of architecture in the 1970s and 1980s. He repeatedly argues for the need to make distinctions, to differentiate between pastiche and principle, or between superficial pastiche and authentic synthesis, which, in his writings, correspond to postmodernism and modernism, respectively. At a time when architects were looking for something new, Curtis proposes that a new style cannot be based on the arbitrariness that, according to him, is characteristic of postmodernism. For instance, when he argues that innovation consists of finding new relationships in pre-existing patterns, he makes it clear that a “forceful new bond of form and content” is different from “a merely beguiling collection of parts that have undergone no profound redefinition of meaning, no revitalisation of expression.” 10 The distinction is also made between architects working in the 1970s and 1980s: Renzo Piano’s museum for the Menil Foundation in Houston is, for Curtis, a building that “extends earlier solutions without mimicking their style,” while Richard Meier’s critique of modern architecture results in examples of “a somewhat arbitrary character like merely pleasant exercises in formal manipulation.”11 In both cases, Curtis emphasises the understanding that these architects have of the past.

In giving a critical account of the intervening years between the three editions of Modern Architecture Since 1900, Curtis believes that it is necessary to differentiate between different approaches to the past: between “powerful arrangements arising from the penetration of the inner life and structure of past forms,” and “a thin,

7 Curtis, “Principle versus Pastiche...,”11. 8 Curtis, “Principle versus Pastiche...,” 11. 9 William J.R. Curtis, “Contemporary Transformations of Modern Architecture,” Architectural Record vol 177, no. 7 (June 1989): 108. 10 Curtis, “Principle versus Pastiche...,” 13. 11 Curtis, “Contemporary Transformations of Modern Architecture,” 111. 150 Postmodernism, Modernism and Authenticity illustrative pastiche, lightly adorned with historical jokes and ironies.”12 For Curtis, Wright’s Unity Temple, Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye, and Kahn’s Dacca Parliament are examples in which the link to the past is strong, making it present, and making these works, in turn, transcend: “Timeless but of its time.”13 Curtis believes that future generations can still learn from modern buildings like Villa Savoye, the Robie House or the Kimbell Museum, which, still in the 1980s and in his opinion, “articulate deeply held beliefs about the human condition” and “possess the sort of symbolic pregnance [sic] that guarantees longevity.”14 As Curtis understands it, profound works of architecture are those that become part of a certain stock of architectural ideas and principles that architects working at that time could absorb. 15

As with Curtis’s formulation of an authentic regionalism, and Paul Ricœur’s quotation, the modernism/postmodernism debate presents a paradox that needs to be solved with a certain balance: “How, in an increasingly industrialised world, to avoid both the anomie of meagre functionalism, and the bogus ‘remedy’ of saccharine revivalism? How to transform lessons from history in a way that is appropriate on many levels from the organisational to the ornamental? How to achieve authenticity rather than following the easy road of the ersatz?”16 Again, and as with regionalism, Curtis’s tone is prescriptive: what architects should avoid, and what they should aim for.

The recent ‘rediscovery’ of the past can often be faulted on the grounds that it fails to achieve symbolic depth, that its craft is inelegant, its detail obtuse, that it is formally feeble and lacking in lasting resonance. There is more to history than wearing it on your façade; more to Classicism than tossing around columns, keystones and colossea.17

Again, Curtis bases his judgement on the postmodern understanding of the past, on a symbolic depth, or resonance – criteria that, as discussed in the section on ‘Critical Responses to the Three Editions of Modern Architecture Since 1900,’ he first drafts, and

12 William J.R. Curtis, “Modern Transformations of Classicism,” The Architectural Review vol 176, no. 1050 (August 1984): 48. 13 Curtis, “Modern Transformations of Classicism,” 48. 14 Curtis, “Contemporary Transformations of Modern Architecture,” 117. 15 Curtis, “Contemporary Transformations of Modern Architecture,” 110. 16 Curtis, “Modern Transformations of Classicism,” 48. 17 Curtis, “Modern Transformations of Classicism,” 48. 151 Postmodernism, Modernism and Authenticity then considers whether a work of architecture fulfils or not, without a strong theoretical foundation. However, there are other keys that help ground his argument about the understanding of the past, such as geometry, proportion and abstraction. In Curtis’s opinion, the past is devalued by attempts at Classicism in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when architects worked in a language in which they were not trained and which craftsmen were not suited to realise.18 In 1989, Curtis’s use of language regarding this idea is even more polemical when he writes: “Little wonder that recent architecture smacks so often of visual glut, arbitrariness, and trashy confectionery. The past is aped and distorted into grimacing shapes but nothing long-term is supplied.”19 Again, in a prescriptive tone, Curtis urges postmodern architects, so concerned with a remote past, to “stop pretending that the past 80 years have not existed.”20

In addition, and even if Curtis claims to reject the use of ‘-isms,’ he repeatedly resorts to them in his own writing, especially in the essays discussed in this section. In “Principle versus Pastiche: Perspectives on some Recent Classicisms” (1984), Curtis uses labelling terms as the titles of some sections, although not all the titles are labels as is the case in Frampton’s Modern Architecture: A Critical History, which is discussed in the next section. In “Principle versus Pastiche,” there are sections labelled ‘Macaronic Classicism’ and ‘Pop Mannerism,’ among other titles. At different points in the texts published in the 1980s, he uses identifiers such as ‘eclecticism,’ ‘classicism,’ or even ‘Saccharine Historicism,’ as well as ‘traditionalist’ or ‘preservationist’ to refer to some architects.

In Curtis’s opinion, recent architectural theorists’ understanding of semiology (yet another label, despite not being an ‘-ism’) reduces architectural meaning to a mere sign and ignores symbolism, which “may infuse a form or space with meaning and give expressive force and numinous presence.”21 In “Contemporary Transformations of Modern Architecture” (1989), he continues using the aforementioned ‘-isms’ and adds ‘contextualism’ and ‘deconstructivism,’ to help classify the work of contemporary

18 Curtis, “Modern Transformations of Classicism,” 48. 19 Curtis, “Contemporary Transformations of Modern Architecture,” 108. 20 Curtis, “Modern Transformations of Classicism,” 48. 21 Curtis, “Modern Transformations of Classicism,” 48. 152 Postmodernism, Modernism and Authenticity practitioners. Deconstructivism is referred to by Curtis as “Constructivist Revival,” where the “original political and ideological content is virtually ignored.”22 As with postmodernism, he refers to contextualism in terms of a mimicking of colours and textures, “a cosy packaging for the yuppie consumption city that helps to calm the nerves of preservationists, but not a vital civic architecture.”23 Not even regionalism is safe from critique, as Curtis argues that, in some cases, cases, where architects just mimic a vernacular, this results in “a sort of easy vacation kitsch done up with Mediterranean arches, thatched roof, or whatever.”24

A Criterion of Authenticity Therefore, Curtis’s disapproval of postmodernism is evident in both the content of the three editions of Modern Architecture Since 1900, and the essays published in the intervening years. This part will investigate what Curtis proposes as an alternative to the postmodern understanding of the past and of history, a proposal which he also developed in the intervening years between editions. It will do so through looking at the notions of authenticity and monumentality in Curtis’s discourse.

Having established what for him is the uselessness of the modernism/postmodernism debate, Curtis proposes that authenticity should be the focus of the discussion of the architecture of the 1980s. As was the case with regionalism in Chapter Three of this dissertation, Curtis’s formulation of authenticity “implies the search for probity, the blend of old and new, the search for a lasting symbolic interpretation of the social sphere.”25 However, Curtis’s advocacy for blending the new and the old, fusing tradition and modernity, not only applies to modern architecture in developing countries, but also to countries where the ‘Western’ architectural canon had originated. Moreover, it applies to architecture throughout the twentieth century,

22 Curtis, “Contemporary Transformations of Modern Architecture,” 111. 23 Curtis, “Contemporary Transformations of Modern Architecture,” 113. 24 Curtis, “Contemporary Transformations of Modern Architecture,” 114. 25 Curtis, “Modern Architecture, Monumentality and the Meaning of Institutions…,” 66. 153 Postmodernism, Modernism and Authenticity because, for Curtis, architectural quality has no ideological, temporal or territorial frontiers.26

As discussed in Chapter Three of this dissertation, Curtis gives no clear definition of what authenticity is. He claims that authenticity is that “nebulous quality which confers symbolic and formal vitality on even a well-worn formula.”27 However, he admits that there is no simple checklist given the fact that there can be no consensus over artistic excellence.28 Even if Curtis argues for the lack of critical utility of the modernism/postmodernism debate, authenticity helps him to differentiate or make the distinction between genuine and fake, principle and pastiche, and, evidently, between modern and postmodern. However, authenticity is not the only nebulous category used by Curtis in his own modernism/postmodernism dialectic. He uses a sense of “intuitive appropriateness” to emphasise the distinction between genuine fusion and concoction or replication: between superficial and manipulated pastiche, which lacks any bond between form and content, and “the vital expression of a deeply felt idea.”29

It is possible to discern a certain definition of authenticity by looking at what Curtis regards as authentic works of architecture. The historian admits to being tempted by the idea of suggesting some essential values of architecture as a medium used by ‘works of principle’ regardless of their period. Also, he argues that, regardless of their period, authentic works are characterised by a ‘temporal depth’ which allows them to resonate with the present circumstances and needs. Authentic works do so, according to Curtis, because they overcome convention and propose a “more lasting and more universal symbolism.”30

In Curtis’s opinion, his use of authenticity as a classification criterion avoids the critical dangers he sees in stressing “communal aspects of style” over the special synthesis of

26 William J.R. Curtis, “Transformation and Invention: on Re-reading Modern Architecture,” The Architectural Review vol 221, no. 1321 (March 2007): 36-40. Original essay written by Curtis in February 2007, 3, WJRC Archive. 27 William J.R. Curtis, “Authenticity, Abstraction and the Ancient Sense: Le Corbusier’s and Louis Kahn’s Ideas of Parliament,” Perspecta vol 20 (1983): 183. 28 Curtis, “Authenticity, Abstraction and the Ancient Sense...,” 184. 29 Curtis, “Authenticity, Abstraction and the Ancient Sense...,” 184. 30 Curtis, “Authenticity, Abstraction and the Ancient Sense...,” 183. 154 Postmodernism, Modernism and Authenticity the individual work. 31 For Curtis, there is a mythical dimension in the artist’s mind, which through a deep work of synthesis produces authentic works.32 According to Curtis, for architecture, communication is only possible after that conscious work of synthesis between modernity and tradition, between new and old. Regarding the relationship between period and personal styles, Curtis writes:

If the authentic symbolic form has a certain indivisible character, something similar is true of its relationship to personal and period styles: it blends together a number of stylistic strata from the past into a new and irreducible amalgam. Focillon has astutely written that the principle underlying a work of art is not necessarily contemporary with it: the imagination obeys no simple linear chronology and refuses to be trapped by a single time slot.33

Curtis positions Le Corbusier’s Parliament Building at Chandigarh (1953-63) and Louis Kahn’s Parliament at Dhaka (1962-1970) as clear examples of his argument. On the one hand, both are works of maturity that rely upon Le Corbusier’s and Kahn’s architectural principles and languages; and on the other, both are works profoundly rooted in Eastern and Western monumental traditions. Curtis argues for the need to understand them beyond the surface, and, hence, to unearth “the transforming power of authentic style.”34 Curtis’s discussion challenges the aforementioned false dichotomy between modernity and tradition. In the case of Le Corbusier’s Parliament in Chandigarh and Kahn’s building in Dhaka, he argues that “their prodigious power and authenticity rely on a convincing response to the contemporary world and on a restatement of age-old principles simultaneously.”35 The importance that he gives to the notion of invention in his process of selecting and classifying relevant architects and buildings for Modern Architecture Since 1900 is discussed in Chapter Two of this dissertation.

Curtis’s assessment of the parliament buildings in Chandigarh and Dhaka, exemplifies not only his formulation of authentic works of architecture, but also his approach to

31 Curtis, “Authenticity, Abstraction and the Ancient Sense...,” 183. 32 Curtis, “Authenticity, Abstraction and the Ancient Sense...,” 183. 33 Curtis, “Authenticity, Abstraction and the Ancient Sense...,” 183. 34 Curtis, “Authenticity, Abstraction and the Ancient Sense...,” 184. 35 Curtis, “Modern Architecture, Monumentality and the Meaning of Institutions…,” 83. 155 Postmodernism, Modernism and Authenticity monumentality. His position can be understood as a reaction against postmodernism’s superficial understanding of the past, evident in the different variations on and approaches to classicism. The period between 1950 and 1975 is, for Curtis, a time of social change: transformations of architectural vocabulary: new fields of exploration of abstract formal expression, structural technique, and symbolism: and a new kind of relationship between building and setting, in which modern architecture “took on some of the cultural roles of the established order.”36 Furthermore, he insists that monumentality is a matter of a lasting or transcending presence, of authenticity, rather than of the size or scale of the buildings. For Curtis, the situation of architecture in the 1980s showed a “present obsessed with transient imagery, the trash of consumerism, fake theorising and formalistic tricks generated on the computer.”37 This problematic situation, according to him, should remind everybody of the serious aims that architecture pursues, which, in turn, can become the solution to arbitrariness.

Curtis supports the following idea: the best modern monuments are deeply rooted in tradition. 38 According to him, in the 1980s, postmodernism used the historical misconception that modernism is an “anti-historical monster,” to serve “the purpose of inflating recent revivalist exercises.”39 In the essays on authenticity and monumentality published in the intervening years between editions and discussed in this section, Curtis uses the expressions ‘caricature of history,’ ‘postmodernist dogma,’ ‘conventional wisdom,’ and ‘ritual incantation’ to describe the postmodernist assumption that abstraction in modern architecture means rejecting the past. He argues for modern abstraction, which “may become a device through which the artist enters the past on a number of levels simultaneously and then transforms its lessons into an authentic form in the present.”40 Postmodern architects, in Curtis’s opinion, avoided understanding and learning from the variety of responses individual modern architects give to the problem of precedent and context. He writes:

36 Curtis, “Modern Architecture, Monumentality and the Meaning of Institutions…,” 65. 37 Curtis, “Transformation and Invention: on Re-reading Modern Architecture,” 36. 38 Curtis, “Modern Architecture, Monumentality and the Meaning of Institutions…,” 66. 39 Curtis, “Principle versus Pastiche…,” 11. 40 Curtis, “Authenticity, Abstraction and the Ancient Sense...,” 182. 156 Postmodernism, Modernism and Authenticity

It is a peculiar irony of the recent past that all the talk about meaning has produced so little architecture of profound content; that the obsession with form has led to so little truly three-dimensional coherence; that the cult of history has brought back so little wisdom from the past.41

As the book reviewers pointed out, it is ironic that Curtis does not recognise in his own attitude towards postmodernism, the same problematic that he describes in the case of postmodernism towards modernism. Curtis’s own stylistic preferences prevent him from acknowledging any quality or authenticity in postmodernism. Curtis provides the reader with a monolithic view of postmodern architecture based in the notions of arbitrariness and pastiche, while defending the existence of a certain continuity in architectural tradition throughout the twentieth century.

The essay “Modern Architecture, Monumentality and the Meaning of Institutions: Reflections on Authenticity” (1984) is the result of a talk that Curtis gave “at Harvard in Fall 1981 in congress at the Graduate School of Design on ‘Monumentality and the City’ with [Romaldo] Giurgola and Philip Johnson in front row.”42 In his talk, Curtis “attacked openly” Johnson and Michael Graves, who was also present, as well as faculty members of the Harvard Graduate School of Design “who were playing the postmodern game, including the then chairman Harry N. Cobb who should have known better.”43 At the end of the essay published in Harvard Architectural Review, Curtis lists his reflections on Monumentality in nine points. Despite writing in the paper that “it was only after the symposium that I realised, with embarrassment, that Giedion’s statements on monumentality had also numbered nine,” in our communication, and after over thirty years, Curtis admits the nine points to be “a wink to Giedion”.44 In “The Need of a New Monumentality” (1944), “Sigfried Giedion saw fit, before the war was even over, to conceive of the possibility of a new monumentality for the post-war world. Typically, he maintained the hope that an avant-garde might be able to read the true complexion of society and discover appropriate collective

41 Curtis, “Modern Architecture, Monumentality and the Meaning of Institutions…,” 82. 42 William J.R. Curtis, email message to author, June 17, 2017. 43 William J.R. Curtis, email message to author, February 2, 2017. 44 Curtis, email message to author, June 17, 2017. 157 Postmodernism, Modernism and Authenticity symbols.” This essay was published in the book of the symposium, ‘New Architecture and City Planning’ edited by Paul Zucker.

‘Meaning’ is central to Curtis’s conclusion to Modern Architecture Since 1900, as it is intimately related to his formulation of authenticity. It is ‘meaning’ that forms contain, as a result of the architect’s personal style and interpretation of the world, which is, in turn, basis of authenticity. Curtis opposes authenticity to fake, having in mind on the one hand, regionalism and its interpretation of tradition, and, on the other, postmodernism and its arbitrariness. For him, authenticity is suggestive of genuineness and probity. What, for Curtis, is an authentic building, transcends conventions, reveals hierarchy of intention and abstraction and cuts through “the customary to reveal new levels of significance,” of meaning.45 Curtis argues that modernity is not really the issue when mapping architecture, especially in the late twentieth century, as it can distract from what really matters, which is authenticity.

When asked about his formulation of authenticity, Curtis refers to the issue of Perspecta 20 where his essay on “Authenticity, Abstraction and the Ancient Sense: Le Corbusier’s and Louis Kahn’s Ideas of Parliament” (1983) was published, and he claims to have “inspired the editors in that direction at a talk I gave at Yale in 1980.”46 Later on in our communication, he insisted on this point, mentioning some “key correspondence with the student editors of Perspecta 20.”47 In the same volume of Perspecta, Frampton published the aforementioned essay “Prospects for a Critical Regionalism.”

One of the main points in Curtis’s critique of postmodernism is its alleged arbitrariness, an issue which is also addressed by several of the other contributors to Perspecta 20. According to Karsten Harries, for instance, to insist that the solution to the problem of arbitrariness in architecture is to define it as an art is to misunderstand the problem, and is related to discussions of the autonomy of architecture. Harries does agree with Curtis that returning to what is essential, to the aforementioned

45 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 689. 46 William J.R. Curtis, email message to author, March 11, 2016. 47 William J.R. Curtis, email message to author, February 2, 2017. 158 Postmodernism, Modernism and Authenticity principles, could solve the problem of arbitrariness in the architecture of the 1970s and early 1980s. He urges architects to try to recover the origins, what is essential, and not so much the past. Instead of authenticity, Harries uses the notion of an architecture that carries conviction which he opposes to the postmodernist “aesthetic play with elements drawn from the past.”48 He introduces an interesting nuance to the discussion by arguing that just because some ideals are constructed more precariously than others, it does not necessarily result in an arbitrary architecture.49 He suggests that not every postmodern building is arbitrary and that not every modern building avoids arbitrariness. Architecture needs to be committed to its present and circumstances, to its tradition and context, to escape arbitrariness, making it an “an ethical problem.”50

Christian Norberg-Schulz, on the other hand, agrees that it is necessary to go back to the things themselves, to what is essential, but argues that this does not solve the problem of arbitrariness. When he wrote this in 1983, architecture practitioners were only at the beginning of proposing a “new architecture of images.”51 Norris Kelly Smith agrees with Curtis in pointing out the importance of the symbolism and meaning behind institutional buildings. Furthermore, he claims that “therein, I am persuaded, is to be found the only basis for an authentic architecture.”52 What Smith calls the postmodern ‘manner’ situates a building’s authenticity in its uniqueness or the architect’s eccentricity, which, for him, is “to embrace madness.”53 In his essay on Le Corbusier’s architecture, Peter Serenyi uses an expression that summarises Curtis’s emphasis on how authentic works transcend its time: “timeless but of its time.”54 In summary, this issue of Perspecta allows a first contextualisation of Curtis’s critique of postmodernism and his formulation of authenticity in the 1980s, which will be expanded in the next section of this chapter.

48 Karsten Harries, “Thoughts on a Non-Arbitrary Architecture,” Perspecta vol 20 (1983): 13. 49 Harries, “Thoughts on a Non-Arbitrary Architecture,” 16. 50 Harries, “Thoughts on a Non-Arbitrary Architecture,” 20. 51 Christian Norberg-Schulz, “Heidegger’s Thinking on Architecture,” Perspecta vol 20 (1983): 68. 52 Norris Kelly Smith, “Architectural Authenticity,” Perspecta vol 20 (1983): 219. 53 Smith, “Architectural Authenticity,” 219. 54 Peter Serenyi, “Timeless but of Its Time: Le Corbusier’s Architecture in India,” Perspecta vol 20 (1983): 118. 159 Postmodernism: Context Between the 1970s and the 1990s

4. Contextualising Postmodernism between the 1970s and the 1990s

The previous sections of this chapter have shown Curtis’s account of postmodern architecture in relation to the notion of authenticity, firstly in the three editions of Modern Architecture Since 1900, and, secondly, in the research papers he published in the intervening years. Regardless of the difference in the use of language, more polemical and unrestrained in the journal articles, Curtis’s position is clear and very negative towards postmodernism throughout his work. As with regionalism, his criticism is based on a set of values or principles that he avoids explaining clearly, and which he, in this case, does not find in postmodern architecture, as opposed to modern or ‘authentic’ architecture. This section features possible definitions of postmodernism by relevant theorists published between the 1970s and 1990s, when Curtis was working on the three editions of the book, who are, in some cases, mentioned by him as sources of his own narrative. More importantly, this section looks at the account of postmodernism in Kenneth Frampton’s Modern Architecture: A Critical History, the other major contribution to the historiography of modern architecture of that time.

Attempts at Defining Postmodernism In her 1989 seminal essay, Mary McLeod understands postmodernism as a diverse and pluralistic movement. She outlines the different attempts at defining it, which at that time already “varied from broad-scale historical periodisation (Fredric Jameson), to philosophical equations (postmodernism as the cultural equivalent of poststructuralism), to specific stylistic trends or intentions, often at odds from one field to another (autonomy and formalism, for example, are seen as modern in one field, postmodern in another).”1 Writing around the same time, Alan Colquhoun states that “the term ‘postmodern’ seems, by turns, empty or tendentious.”2

In Architecture After Modernism (1996), Diane Ghirardo identifies postmodernism as an approach to architecture starting in 1965, initially in the United States. The notion

1 Mary McLeod, “Architecture and Politics in the Reagan Era: From Postmodernism to Deconstructivism,” Assemblage, no. 8 (February 1989): 23-24. 2 Alan Colquhoun, “Postmodernism and Structuralism: A Retrospective Glance,” Assemblage, no. 5 (February 1988): 7. 160 Postmodernism: Context Between the 1970s and the 1990s is, for her, diverse and unstable, and signifies different approaches in different fields. Ghirardo points out that the connotations of postmodernism in architecture changed “considerably” between 1970 and 1995, the time she was writing – and, it is safe to add, between then and today, with the multiple re-readings and reinterpretations of recent years.3 Writing around the same time, Kate Nesbitt uses the term “pluralist” to refer to postmodernism, which she sees as a period, rather than a movement, characterised by “the lack of dominance of a single issue or view point.”4 One of the many ways in which Curtis takes a dismissive stance toward postmodernism in architecture is by referring to it as ‘fashion.’ Nevertheless, Mark Jarzombek argues “that it was precisely as fashion that it enabled intellectuals with different disciplinary backgrounds to participate in the postmodernist processes of theory formation.5

A significant idea that is present not only in the aforementioned essays by Curtis, but also in essays on postmodernism by other historians and theorists published in the intervening years between the three editions of Modern Architecture Since 1900, is that what the majority of postmodern approaches, or ‘currents,’ have in common is their rejection of modern movement. Consequently, these theorists consider postmodern architecture to have operated mainly within the formal realm, resulting in pastiche. In 1984, Hal Foster claims that the way to move beyond certain works of modernism is through critique, rather than pastiche, writing that “yet nearly every postmodern artist and architect has resorted, in the name of style and history, to pastiche; indeed, it is fair to say that pastiche is the official style of this postmodernist camp.”6 McLeod observes that, by rejecting the social engagement of modernism, postmodernism “can be viewed as a return to architecture as a primarily formal and artistic pursuit,” resulting in pastiche.7 Simultaneously, the postmodern simplistic vision of modern architecture resulted in an alleged return to or rediscovery of history.

3 Diane Ghirardo, Architecture After Modernism (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1996), 7. 4 Kate Nesbitt, “Introduction,” in Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture: An Anthology of Architectural Theory, 1965-1995 (New York: Princeton University Press, 1996), 16. 5 Mark Jarzombek, “The Disciplinary Dislocations of (Architectural) History,” in “Architectural History 1999/2000,” ed. Eve Blau, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians vol 58, no. 3 (September 1999): 492. 6 Hal Foster, “(Post) Modern Polemics,” Perspecta vol 21 (1984): 148. 7 McLeod, “Architecture and Politics in the Reagan Era...,” 24. 161 Postmodernism: Context Between the 1970s and the 1990s

Both McLeod and Foster question the return to or rediscovery of history in postmodernism. Interestingly, they both use the expression ‘history of victors’ to refer to the historical periods and styles to which postmodernists return – a history without modernism, Foster adds. For McLeod, the postmodernist reading of the past is reductionist of history itself, and, for Foster, it makes history appear “reified, fragmented, fabricated,” and “highly edited.”8 Foster understands the postmodernist attitude as a reactive reading of modernism, which he argues, in fact rejected historicism rather than history. Foster seems to agree with Curtis that the modernist approach to history (and tradition) intended to transform the past in the present, not to foreclose it.”9

McLeod sees the postmodern rediscovery of history as a “flight from the present.”10 As with most postmodernist main themes, McLeod sees a certain ambiguity in their attitude: it is exhilarating and resigned simultaneously. According to her, “on the one hand, it meant freedom and a chance to recoup lost values; on the other, it suggested that the present was no better than the past, that aesthetic and political choices might be arbitrary.”11 As discussed in the previous section, it is possible to have a reinterpretation of those lost values and principles, of the essential, which does not imply neglecting the present. However, for McLeod, the way in which postmodern architecture alludes to history has more to do with “nostalgia, escape, or enjoyable simulacrum,” with “cartooned exaggeration” or “mannered quotation.” 12 Overall, this postmodern rediscovery results in the denial of history itself, in its scavenging.

Finally, there are other consequences of the postmodern rejection of modernism that McLeod brings forth in her seminal essay. She links the postmodernists’ interest in regionalism and tradition, and their historicist focus, to their rejection of modernism and its universalising tendencies.13 In this case, their attitude is contradictory, in her opinion, rather than merely ambiguous. McLeod argues that the postmodern

8 Foster, “(Post) Modern Polemics,”146. 9 Foster, “(Post) Modern Polemics,” 148. 10 Foster, “(Post) Modern Polemics,” 146. 11 McLeod, “Architecture and Politics in the Reagan Era...,” 34. 12 McLeod, “Architecture and Politics in the Reagan Era...,” 34. 13 McLeod, “Architecture and Politics in the Reagan Era...,” 34. 162 Postmodernism: Context Between the 1970s and the 1990s

“emphasis on style has generally precluded the investigations of sun orientation and ventilation that were of such concern to modern architects.”14 On the other hand, postmodern urban critique rejects the universalising, homogenising and dehumanising proposals for a modern city and “it is in its rejection of the modern movement’s urban vision that postmodernism has probably had its most positive social impact,” according to McLeod.15

However contradictory its generating impulses, postmodernism’s interests in tradition and regional cultures emerged from more than a desire for novelty and spectacle; they embodied a genuine dissatisfaction with the course of modernisation, one that pointed to the failures of technology and artistic novelty as social panaceas.16

Even if hers is a fair point, there would have to be a second step to go beyond that dissatisfaction to articulate a certain balance between tradition and modernisation and technology, for which Curtis advocates. While everyone agrees that postmodernism is, as McLeod describes it, a “the tendency that rejects the formal and social constituents of the modern movement and embraces a broader formal language, which is frequently figurative and historically eclectic,” nobody seems to agree on what it proposes or endorses.17 For Jürgen Habermas, this is even obvious in the chosen term for the movement, as the prefix ‘post’ makes it clear that they want to be differentiated from modernism. For Habermas, the prefix post- expresses an experience of discontinuity and different possible attitudes toward the past that is put at a distance. He seems to agree with McLeod regarding the postmodern abandonment of the present, for which there seems to be no name, and the problems of which have not yet been identified.18

Their lack of a clear theoretical proposal is one of the arguments used by the detractors of postmodernists’ in architecture to fuel the aforementioned debate. For Habermas, it

14 McLeod, “Architecture and Politics in the Reagan Era...,” 36. 15 McLeod, “Architecture and Politics in the Reagan Era...,” 37. 16 McLeod, “Architecture and Politics in the Reagan Era...,” 38. 17 McLeod, “Architecture and Politics in the Reagan Era...,” 24. 18 Jürgen Habermas, “Modern and Postmodern Architecture,” in Architecture Theory since 1968, ed. K. Michael Hays (Cambridge, MA. and London: The MIT Press, 1998), 416. Presented as a lecture at the opening of the exhibition ‘The Other Tradition: Architecture in Munich from 1800 up to Today,’ November 1981; published in a new translation in Habermas, The New Conservatism: Cultural Criticism and the Historians’ Debate (Cambridge, The MIT Press, 1989). 163 Postmodernism: Context Between the 1970s and the 1990s is not as clear as one would think to identify the fronts in this battle. He argues that whoever sets him- or herself out “to continue the uncompleted project of a modernity that is on the skids,” is going to be confronted by various opponents who only have in common their rejection of modernism.19 Now, what the advocates of modernism view as rejection and opposition, postmodernists view as pertinent critique. The debate is just as pointless when pro-modern supporters try to encourage people to continue a tradition they consider “irreplaceable” from a critical perspective, resulting in pro- postmodernists proclaiming the death of modernism.20

Just as McLeod highlighted the value of the postmodern critique of the modern city, Habermas acknowledges how postmodernism in architecture brought some issues forward which had been left unsolved by modern architecture “– that is, the colonisation of the lifeworld through the imperatives of autonomous economic and administrative systems of action.”21 He emphasises that there is something to learn from these opposition movements. Going back to the idea of balance, however, there is no reason why a new architecture could not bring those issues forward, without rejecting its precedents. And, again, as Curtis points out in his writings, some of the postmodern strategies in architecture have their roots in the modern tradition. For Habermas, “traditions live only through such moments” when allegedly opposed approaches find a way to blend, find a certain balance.22

A characteristic of this debate, regardless of whether the point of view being put forward is pro-modernism or pro-postmodernism, is its grounding in dialectical thought. For Fredric Jameson, the identification of opposites is “one of the more annoying and scandalous habits of dialectical thought.”23 He highlights the tendency of this type of argument to reduce both seemingly opposed positions to just two sides of a coin or a common problematic, overlooking the variety present in both. Jameson

19 Habermas, “Modern and Postmodern Architecture,” 418. 20 Habermas, “Modern and Postmodern Architecture,” 418. 21 Habermas, “Modern and Postmodern Architecture,” 425. 22 Habermas, “Modern and Postmodern Architecture,” 425. 23 Fredric Jameson, “Architecture and the Critique of Ideology,” in Architecture Theory since 1968, ed. K. Michael Hays (Cambridge, MA. and London: The MIT Press, 1998), 460. Paper presented at the Institute of Architecture and Urban Studies, New York, 1982; published in Architecture, Criticism, Ideology, ed. Joan Ockman et al. (Princeton Architectural Press, 1985). 460. 164 Postmodernism: Context Between the 1970s and the 1990s explains it in a more familiar language using the following expression: both positions “represent the two intolerable options of a single double-bind.”24 It is apposite to remember here Curtis’s position, which is presented in this dissertation as taking the pro-modern side of the modernism/postmodernism debate, although he himself proclaims the uselessness of the whole debate. Ironically, given Curtis’s defence of variety and inclusiveness in his approach to modern architecture, he seems determined to not be as generous with postmodernism.

McLeod also alludes to another interesting issue in relation to postmodernism in architecture: meaning. While meaning, or more accurately lack of meaning, is one of the main points in Curtis’s critique of postmodernism, for McLeod it is precisely in meaning that postmodern practitioners seek ideological justification.25 However, she points out the difficulties of arriving at a consensus regarding architectural meaning, giving its shifting nature. Therefore, she regards it as problematic when a critic bases his or her analysis on meaning, something that Curtis does when he exposes the distinctions between modern and postmodern, between principle and pastiche, as was discussed in the previous section. McLeod writes:

Architectural meaning is shifting and ambiguous, which inevitably results in ambiguous, and double-edged, political readings. Thus any analysis of architectural ideology must go beyond simplistic labels of good and bad, and must search to discover in this complex matrix instances of both social entrenchment and genuine critique.26

Curtis would argue that he is not concerned with any analysis of ideology, but rather with architectural principles. As is discussed in the section on ‘Mapping Postmodernism in Modern Architecture Since 1900,’ Curtis organises his account typologically, going through types of buildings that were booming at the time he was writing: office buildings, museums, etc. Even if he does mention the socioeconomic circumstances of the late twentieth century, he does not include these in his analysis of the buildings. For McLeod, the fact that the reassessment of modernism occurred in a tight economy, while the emergence of postmodernism resulted from the boom

24 Jameson, “Architecture and the Critique of Ideology,” 460. 25 McLeod, “Architecture and Politics in the Reagan Era...,” 24. 26 McLeod, “Architecture and Politics in the Reagan Era...,” 30. 165 Postmodernism: Context Between the 1970s and the 1990s economy of the early 1980s, needs to be acknowledged.27 She goes one step further and claims that the reason that “contemporary architecture has become so much about surface, image, and play, and that its content has become so ephemeral, so readily transformable and consumable,” is not only due to arbitrariness, or to architects’ lack of ethical commitment.28 With a very pragmatic view, rather than an idealistic one like Curtis’s view, McLeod partially ‘blames’ the postmodernists’ “neglect of the material dimensions of architecture – program, production, financing, and so forth– that more directly involve questions of power.”29 Habermas also contends that postmodernism became an “emotionally loaded outright political battle cry” in the 1970s, a notion or expression which different power groups would use to fit their own agendas.30 He opposes both the neoconservatives, who saw the revival of tradition as a way to fight a subversive modernity, to “radical critics of growth,” who saw in functionalism only the destruction resulting from modernisation.31

In summary, some of the points in Curtis’s critique of postmodernism were drawn from the architectural debate in the intervening years between the three editions of Modern Architecture Since 1900; conversely, some of the points raised by the aforementioned critics and historians were ignored in Curtis’s account. The tone and the depth in their analyses also differ: Curtis’s dismissive tone does not hide the lack of theoretical foundation and judgement criteria in his assessment of postmodernism. In 1984, the year in which Curtis published two essays on recent classicism, Foster urged theorists to go beyond the surface when approaching postmodernism as a historical process: “we need to consider more deeply what (post) modernism might be.”32 And, in addition, he urges the reader to do so while keeping in mind that the issues raised by postmodernism are clear: the status of the subject and its language, and the status of history, its understanding and representation.33 Admitting that at the time he was

27 McLeod, “Architecture and Politics in the Reagan Era...,” 29. 28 McLeod, “Architecture and Politics in the Reagan Era...,” 55. 29 McLeod, “Architecture and Politics in the Reagan Era...,” 55. 30 Habermas, “Modern and Postmodern Architecture,” 417. 31 Habermas, “Modern and Postmodern Architecture,” 417. 32 Foster, “(Post) Modern Polemics,” 153. 33 Foster, “(Post) Modern Polemics,” 153. 166 Postmodernism: Context Between the 1970s and the 1990s writing postmodernism needed to be recognised as “remaining in some kind of parasitic relationship with the extinct high modernism it repudiates,” Jameson urges architects to explore the possibility that a “whole new aesthetic is in the process of emerging.”34

After over thirty years, while Jameson’s possibility is still being explored, and reconsiderations are still being made, some arguments remain. For example, writing in 2014, David Rifkind still insists on defining postmodernism in architecture “as diverse and pluralistic as the theoretical and aesthetic concerns that animated its principle advocates.”35 For Jorge Otero-Pailos, postmodernism in architecture was “both a stylistic movement and an intellectual sea change that germinated in the post-war period, took root in the 1970s, and flourished in the 1980s.”36 In his opinion, it is easier to identify the movement stylistically than to discern its intellectual boundaries. Since the 1980s and still today, there seems to exist a certain agreement that the definition of postmodernism in architecture is, at least, ambiguous. In their catalogue for the 2011 Exhibition ‘Postmodernism: Style and Subversion’ at the Victoria & Albert Museum, Glenn Adamson and Jane Pavitt suggest that it is “not clear what postmodernism was or even if it ever really existed.”37

Szacka regards postmodernism as a “discontinuous entity,”38 characterised by “incoherence and pluralism,”39 which has been rethought in recent years through different lenses. She writes a summary of the recent contributions to the understanding of postmodernism in architecture: It is in these recent readings that some nuances have arisen. For instance, Petit “positions postmodernism not so much as a negation of or a radical break from modernism but as an alternative reading of

34 Jameson, “Architecture and the Critique of Ideology,”460. 35 David Rifkind, “Post-Modernism: Critique and Reaction,” in A Critical History of Contemporary Architecture: 1960-2010, ed. Elie G. Haddad and David Rifkin (London: Ashgate, 2014), 32. 36 Jorge Otero-Pailos, Architecture’s Historical Turn: Phenomenology and the Rise of the Postmodern, (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), xii. 37 Léa-Catherine Szacka, “Irony; or the Self-Critical Opacity of Postmodern Architecture,” The Journal of Architecture vol 19, no. 3 (2014): 457. 38 Szacka, “Irony; or the Self-Critical Opacity of Postmodern Architecture,” 460. 39 Szacka, “Irony; or the Self-Critical Opacity of Postmodern Architecture,” 463. 167 Postmodernism: Context Between the 1970s and the 1990s modern dogma.”40 When Colin Fournier discusses Jencks’ book, The Story of Post- Modernism, he argues that Jencks identifies as contemporary postmodern works buildings which “do not follow the same design philosophy: they lead, on the whole, to simplistic, autonomous, diagrammatic one-liners that have been almost completely stripped of any trace of complexity, multiple coding, symbolic meaning, contradiction, radical juxtaposition, contextual counterpoint, irony and pluralism. In their place, the all too familiar traits of Modernism have been re-injected, in a form that is even more extreme than in the original specimens, and are now being cloned on a global scale.”41

Therefore, Curtis is not the only one who has wanted to see a certain continuity, rather than a clean slate, between what has been considered to be modern and postmodern architecture. This idea of continuity, and Curtis’s formulation of a ‘modern tradition’ is explored in Chapter Five of this dissertation.

Late Twentieth Century for Frampton Before moving on to the final chapter of this dissertation, and as with regionalism, it is interesting to compare the way in which Curtis introduces postmodernism into his historical narrative with the approach of his contemporary undeclared “opponent,” Frampton. For Curtis, “a critical method that relies too heavily upon the notion of movements renders itself incapable of distinguishing buildings of a high order from those that simply wear the acceptable period dress.”42 During the course of our communication, Curtis denied that at any point his book was a reaction against Frampton’s Modern Architecture: A Critical History. This claim is definitely valid in the case of the first edition: by the time Frampton’s book appeared in 1980, or by the time Curtis read it to write his review in 1981, the main body of Modern Architecture Since 1900 was already written. This is demonstrated by the aforementioned letter that James Ackerman wrote to Phaidon Press’ director in August 1981, after having read the entire manuscript of Curtis’s book.43 However, there are judgements and opinions expressed

40 Szacka, “Irony; or the Self-Critical Opacity of Postmodern Architecture,” 462. 41 Colin Fournier, “Reassessing Postmodernism: is the Movement Still Relevant 50 Years on?” The Architectural Review vol 230, no. 1377 (November 2011): 112. 42 Curtis, “Contemporary Transformations of Modern Architecture,” 108. 43 James S. Ackerman, Prof of Fine Arts, Harvard University, Letter to Simon Havilan, Director of Phaidon Press, August 28, 1981. William J.R. Curtis, Letter sent via email message to author, February 21, 2017. WJRC Archive. 168 Postmodernism: Context Between the 1970s and the 1990s in the preface and the introduction that, in my opinion, were aimed at Frampton’s book. Moreover, it can be argued that it is also the case with the 1987 preface, and both the preface and the introduction to the 1996 edition of Curtis’s book. It should be recalled that Curtis wrote the preface to the 1987 edition two years after the publication of the second edition of Frampton’s Modern Architecture (1985), and that the third edition of Frampton’s book appeared in 1992, just as Curtis was finalising his own revision for the 1996 edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900. The publication of a new edition of the book was advertised in 2017, but, to my knowledge, it has not yet been released; therefore, it has not been considered in this dissertation.

A quick overview of the contents of the different editions of Frampton’s Modern Architecture: A Critical History would suggest that he added a new chapter with every new edition, leaving the existing content of the book unchanged. However, the preface to the second edition (1985) draws the reader’s attention to the substantial enlargement of the existing final chapter on ‘Place, Production and Architecture: Towards a Critical Theory of Building’. He even changed the title to one that remained unaltered until the most recent edition: ‘Place, Production and Scenography: International Theory and Practice since 1962.’ He admits in the preface that “inevitably one’s assessment of the recent past alters with a change of perspective,” even if contemporary architecture had not taken any radically new direction during the intervening four or five years.44 And Frampton continues to assess the recent past in the subsequent editions. This section focusses on the aforementioned chapter, ‘Place, Production and Scenography: International Theory and Practice since 1962,’ and its revision in the subsequent editions of the book. Firstly, it presents Frampton’s account of postmodern architecture in the fourth edition of Modern Architecture: A Critical History, the most complete one to date. Secondly, it traces the changes between the first four editions, as with Curtis’s Modern Architecture Since 1900.

Frampton begins Chapter 4, Part III of the fourth edition of Modern Architecture: A Critical History (2007) on ‘Place, Production and Scenography: International Theory

44 Kenneth Frampton, “Preface to the Second Edition,” in Modern Architecture: A Critical History (London: Thames and Hudson, 1985), 7. 169 Postmodernism: Context Between the 1970s and the 1990s and Practice since 1962,’ by highlighting the ambivalent role of the architectural profession since the mid-1960s. Frampton categorises architectural practice and theory in the late twentieth century using a series of ‘-isms.’ Under ‘Populism,’ he discusses new theoretical formulations of the urban environment such as Robert Venturi’s Complexity and Contradiction (1966), Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown’s Learning from Las Vegas (1972), and Colin Rowe’s Collage City (1979). In Frampton’s opinion, what he calls ‘American Populism’ seemed to grow exponentially, and among other examples he discusses Charles Moore’s Piazza d’Italia in New Orleans (1979). For him, Paolo Portoghesi’s architectural section of the 1980 Venice Biennale is the result of the “uncritical absorption of American Populism into the European mainstream.”45

Under ‘Rationalism,’ Frampton classifies the Italian Neo-Rationalist movement, the so- called ‘Tendenza’ which was initiated by Aldo Rossi’s L’architettura della città (1966) and Giogrio Grassi’s La construzione logica dell’architettura (1967). Frampton gives credit to Manfredo Tafuri for being a major influence on the movement with his writings, and points out the interesting fact that most realisations of the Tendenza were built outside of Italy, in the Swiss region of the Ticino.46 The next label, ‘Structuralism,’ is used by Frampton to categorise what he refers to as “the Robert and Leon Krier credo” that function follows form, and their insistence on the cultural importance of place, which found a parallel in the work of Herman Hertzberger.47 Frampton acknowledges the notion of the ‘labyrinthine clarity,’ which is proposed by Dutch Structuralism and Aldo van Eyck with a unifying aim to “overcome the reductive aspect of Functionalism.”48

For Frampton, the works of Foster Associates exemplify ‘Productivism,’ because they place all emphasis on the elegance of production. He defines ‘Productivism’ as a modernist position, and hard to differentiate from the view that “an authentic modern architecture can and should be nothing more than elegant engineering, or certainly a

45 Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History (London: Thames and Hudson, 1980), 293. 46 Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History, 295. 47 Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History, 297. 48 Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History, 298-299. 170 Postmodernism: Context Between the 1970s and the 1990s product of industrial design on a giant scale.”49 Frampton lists four precepts or criteria of ‘Productivism:’ accommodating the building task in an undecorated shed or hangar; maintaining its adaptability by the provision of a homogeneous and integrated network of services; articulating and expressing both the structure and the services following Kahn’s separation of served and servant spaces; and, all-importantly, expressing all component parts as Produktformen, as defined by Max Bill.50 In Frampton’s opinion, the skin or skeleton is the dominant mode of expression, and one of the few basic variables in the Productivist approach.51

Finally, Frampton moves on to ‘Post-modernism,’ discussing how its emergence was announced on a global level by the architectural section of the Venice Biennale of 1980. He agrees with the aforementioned critics and historians that postmodernism is not easy to define in either stylistic or ideological terms. For Frampton, “the fact that it tends to proclaim its legitimacy in exclusively formal – not to say superficial – terms, rather than in terms of constructional, organisational or socio-cultural considerations, already separates it, as modus operandi, from the architectural production of the third quarter of the century.”52 While Curtis claims to observe a certain continuity of modernist strategies in postmodern architecture, Frampton notes the discontinuity of postmodern architecture and the rest of the late twentieth century architecture.

Despite the proclamation of its own legitimacy in formal terms, for Frampton, two things can be said to characterise postmodern architecture: the conscious ruination of style and the cannibalization of architectural form. Frampton describes how postmodernism is evidence of “the tendency of the production/consumption cycle to reduce every civic institution to some kind of consumerism [and architecture to a ‘package deal’ arranged by the builder/developer] and to undermine every traditional quality.”53 In the environment described by Frampton, the architect is reduced to contributing a suitable seductive mask. For example, the development of cities in the

49 Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History, 303. 50 Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History, 303. 51 Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History, 303. 52 Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History, 305. 53 Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History, 306-307. 171 Postmodernism: Context Between the 1970s and the 1990s

United States in the 1970s and 1980s is based on high-rise towers, which “are either reduced to the ‘silence’ of their totally glazed, reflective envelopes or alternatively dressed in devalued historical trappings of one kind or another.”54

Philip Johnson’s AT&T headquarters building in New York and Michael Graves’ Portland Building are a consequence of that development, as well as examples of a certain “dematerialised historicism,” showing an impulse which is scenographic rather than tectonic, as scenographic as the Populist format of Venturi’s decorated shed.55 “In Post-Modern architecture classical and vernacular ‘quotations’ tend to interpenetrate each other disconcertingly,” resulting in unfocused, disintegrated and mixed images.56 For Frampton, Graves has been a symptomatic figure in the development of postmodernism and in his work “the discourse of a ‘dematerialised’ historicism has been self-consciously embraced and virtually mixed at random with modernist fragments.”57 Finally, and still as part of his account of postmodernism, Frampton uses the following ‘-isms’: “Craft Aestheticism” to refer to Hans Hollein, whom he sees as the only postmodern architect showing critical distance, and “Classical-Populism” to refer to James Stirling’s work and his notable Stuttgart Staatsgalerie.58 He refers to Stirling’s conviction, “derived no doubt from modern museum management, that today the museum is not only an edifying institution but also a place of distraction and amusement,” designed to appeal to the man in the street.59

Frampton mentions the repudiation of Frank Lloyd Wright by postmodern architects as clear evidence of the eclipse of Late Modernism in America and of the rejection of what Jürgen Habermas called the “unfinished modern project.”60 Frampton admits that it is difficult to arrive at the fundamental character of the postmodern phenomenon, which can “be acknowledged as an understandable reaction to the pressures of societal

54 Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History, 307. 55 Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History, 307. 56 Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History, 307. 57 Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History, 308. 58 Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History, 308-309. 59 Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History, 309. 60 Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History, 306. 172 Postmodernism: Context Between the 1970s and the 1990s modernisation.”61 He mentions Habermas and his Theodor Adorno Prize address of 1980, to point out that the disruption and disappointments rejected by postmodernism are a consequence of “the speed and rapacity of modern development,” which is a result of modernisation, not modernism.

The last label which Frampton uses to address recent architectural developments is ‘Neo-Avant-Gardism,’ used for the work of The New York Five. In his account of ‘Neo- Avant-Gardism,’ 1983 is identified as a key year, when Rem Koolhaas and Bernard Tschumi openly competed for the commission to realize the Parc de la Villette in Paris as a prototypical urban park for the twenty-first century.62 Similar but not identical ‘Deconstructivist’ strategies were employed by other architects throughout the 1980s, like Frank Gehry, Peter Eisenman, and Daniel Liebeskind.

It is interesting to see how the main figures and buildings discussed in subsequent editions of Frampton’s book were already in the first one, with few exceptions. In the first edition of Modern Architecture: A Critical History (1980), the argument more or less flows from one building, architect or movement to another, without focussing attention on’-isms’: ‘Populism,’ ‘Rationalism,’ and ‘Structuralism,’ in this case. It is in the second edition (1985) that Frampton chooses to fragment his same account of contemporary architecture into labels, adding ‘Productivism,’ to refer to the work of Norman Foster, and ‘Post-Avant-Gardism,’ to refer to the most recent work of Michael Graves, Philip Johnson, James Stirling and Hans Hollein. After discussing their work in these terms, Frampton declares the “triumph” of postmodernism to be “apparent,” however, in spite of this, he warns of the profound consequences of “a reduction in the referential content of form itself.”63 Regarding the debate as to the appropriateness of modern architectural form, Frampton understands it to be “irrelevant” given the worldwide effects of the consequences of modernisation.64

61 Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History, 306. 62 Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History, 312-313. 63 Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History (1985), 311. 64 Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History (1985), 312. 173 Postmodernism: Context Between the 1970s and the 1990s

Surprisingly, Graves, Johnson, Stirling and Hollein are listed in the third and subsequent editions under the label ‘Post-Modernism,’ leaving the formula ‘Neo- Avant-Gardism,’ to analyse the work of the New York Five. In the preface to this third edition (1992), Frampton acknowledges having expanded the bibliography and recast and expanded the text. He writes that Chapter 4 of Part III “has been revised in order to register the latest activities of the neo-avant-garde and to record the more specific recent achievements of the high-tech architects and of that sector we have come to recognise as structuralist.”65

As is the case with Curtis’s book, the aim of this quick overview of postmodernism in the different editions of Frampton’s Modern Architecture: A Critical History is to highlight the difficulty of addressing contemporary developments and including them in historical surveys. The different issues involved in Curtis’s mapping of the late twentieth century and his balancing of the positions of historian and critic are investigated in Chapter Five of this dissertation; at this point, however, it is necessary to highlight the impact of the use of ‘-isms’ in Frampton’s approach, which, at least according to Curtis, is contrary to his own approach. As aforementioned in the section on ‘Classificatory Strategies in the three Editions of Modern Architecture Since 1900,’ Curtis organised his account of the late twentieth century around such general themes as the re-evaluation of the past, the response to local climates and cultures, the celebration of technology, and the re-emergence of abstraction. He claims that, rather than relying upon the usual transient ‘isms,’ he selects “individual buildings and ideas that seem to add to an architectural culture of long-term value.”66

To sum up, it is interesting to see the difficulty theorists had in the historicising postmodern architecture during the 1980s. McLeod argues that Peter Eisenman and other young “neoconstructivists” could be considered “postmodern,” as they propose an alternative reaction to the failings of modernism, and also engage in the debate about meaning and its dissolution – although other categories, like deconstructivist,

65 Kenneth Frampton, “Preface to the Third Edition,” in Modern Architecture: A Critical History (London: Thames and Hudson, 1992), 7. 66 William J.R. Curtis, “Preface to the Third Edition,” in Modern Architecture Since 1900 (London: Phaidon Press, 1996), 10. 174 Postmodernism: Context Between the 1970s and the 1990s are also possible. So, while some of the theoretical essays discussed in this chapter consider deconstructivism to be another of the postmodern currents, together with the historicist/classicist approach, in the case of Curtis’s and Frampton’s histories they are both presented as forms of neo-avant-gardism or neo-modernism. It can be argued that it was premature of Curtis and Frampton to include an account of postmodernism in their historical narratives, that it was too early for it to be accurate or objective.

There is a relevant nuance which both the aforementioned critical essays by various scholars and Frampton’s chapter on architecture in the late twentieth century in Modern Architecture: A Critical History add to the discussion: the effects of socio- political and economic circumstances on architectural practice and theory. These are absent from Curtis’s discourse, or only present as a mere context. This is a foundational issue as it is not only a matter of exposing a certain ideology, but determines the definition of architecture and the way to judge and historicise it. The way in which Curtis criticises postmodernism in Modern Architecture Since 1900, based on criteria such as expression, meaning, authenticity, and essential values or principles, results in a subjective approach which disregards the forces responsible for the material realisation of architecture, beyond the architect’s genius.

I would posit that, as this chapter demonstrates, between the late 1970s and early 1990s, Curtis provides a “unitary explanation” of postmodernism in architecture. It tends to be the case that unitary explanations, “whether positive of negative, have stood in the way of both historical understanding and sound critical evaluation.”67 Surely, although Curtis argues that the idea of a modernism presented in postmodern critique is oversimplified and monolithic, the same could be said of his own reading of postmodernism in architecture. Curtis’s approach to the tasks of history and the role of historian, especially dealing with the late twentieth century, are thoroughly discussed in the following chapter of this dissertation.

67 William J.R. Curtis, “Transformation and Invention: on Re-reading Modern Architecture,” The Architectural Review vol 221, no. 1321 (March 2007): 36-40. Original essay written by Curtis in February 2007, 2, WJRC Archive. 175 Rethinking Curtis: The Task of History and Role of the Historian

Chapter Five_ Rethinking William J.R. Curtis: Between the Modern and the Global in Architecture

Modern Architecture, 1900-1975 could have been the title of Curtis’s book. It was the working title at least during the summer of 1981 when James Ackerman read the manuscript and wrote his support letter to Phaidon Press’s director.1 1975 was most probably the realisation date of the most recent buildings included in the first edition, which he was writing from 1978. However, Modern Architecture Since 1900 is a title that not only allows the revision and update of the content, but also relates to Curtis’s understanding of modern architecture and its history. As Peter L. Laurence points out, “the very title of William J.R. Curtis’s Modern Architecture Since 1900 emphasised the continuity of modern architecture into the present.”2 In the third edition of the book, and looking back at the period between 1900 and 1995, Curtis sees traditions, or several strands of a tradition, which gradually overrun “the inheritance of attitudes and vocabulary” of the nineteenth century, transforming and being transformed in global terms by different national and regional traditions.3 The continuity within modern architecture outlined by Curtis could be considered relevant today in the light of recent proposals for alternative periodisations of cultural production in the twentieth century.

After having explored the writing of Modern Architecture Since 1900 in general, and regionalism and postmodernism as particular forms of the development of modern architecture in the late twentieth century, this chapter presents a close reading of the content of Curtis’s book, looking directly at the question of how closely it aligns with his stated aims. This chapter will also consider how Curtis’s work resonates with architectural debate today. Additional literature which has been published more recently, since the last edition of Curtis’s book, will be reviewed in this discussion as

1 James S. Ackerman, Prof of Fine Arts, Harvard University, Letter to Simon Havilan, Director of Phaidon Press, August 28, 1981. William J.R. Curtis, Letter sent via email message to author, February 21, 2017. WJRC Archive. 2 Peter L. Laurence, “Modern (or Contemporary) Architecture circa 1959,” in A Critical History of Contemporary Architecture: 1960-2010, ed. Elie G. Haddad and David Rifkin (London: Ashgate, 2014), 10. 3 William J.R. Curtis, “Introduction,” in Modern Architecture Since 1900 (London: Phaidon Press, 1996), 12. 177 Rethinking Curtis: The Task of History and Role of the Historian appropriate, in relation to the themes of regionalism, postmodernism and tradition, and to his methodological approach to history.

Curtis claims to perceive and present even the most recent realisations of modern architecture with a dispassionate distance. Consequently, it is necessary to reflect on what the task of history and the role of historian is for Curtis, from three points of view: firstly, from the point of view of his proposed mapping of the architecture of the late twentieth century; secondly, from the point of view of his attempted balance between the roles of the historian and the critic when discussing the recent past; and finally, from the point of view of Curtis’s own methodological approach to the discipline. Curtis’s formulation of a modern tradition materialises the book’s aims, as it encompasses the development, rather than the roots, of modern architecture until the recent past.

1. The Task of History and the Role of the Historian

In January 2007, on the occasion of the presentation of the Spanish translation of the third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900, Curtis still maintained his position: that one of the duties of the historian is to keep a certain critical distance from the currents of his or her own time.4 Writing that edition between 1992 and 1993, he considered that “there is now just enough distance from the 1970s to portray the crises of the period without falling prey to the polemics.”5 In his opinion, the historian of the present has “a unique and unprecedented opportunity to see his subject with a certain dispassionate distance, and this should not be thrown away by indulgence in propaganda.”6 In the case of the first edition, written in the late 1970s, he admits to having pretended to be looking at the architectural production from a distance of a few decades: “from such a vantage point, movements which claim opposition to one

4 William J.R. Curtis, “A Historian’s Perspective on Modern Architecture.” Transcript. English version of text “La perspectiva de un historiador sobre la arquitectura moderna,” translated by Jorge Sainz and read out by the author in Spanish on the presentation of the translation of the third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900 at the Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, January 2007. WJRC Archive. 5 William J.R. Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900 (Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1996), 692. 6 Curtis, “Introduction,” 12. 178 Rethinking Curtis: The Task of History and Role of the Historian another reveal underlying similarities” and continuities.7 Regardless the edition, the claimed distance needs to be questioned when Curtis approaches the recent developments of architecture, in general, and regionalism and postmodernism in particular.

Mapping the Late Twentieth Century A certain balance, rather than dichotomy, opposition or resistance, between the old and the new, between innovation and tradition, between regional and universal, would summarise Curtis’s understanding of regionalism since 1900. In the last pages of Part 4, Curtis recognises the confusion about what constitutes a region in the early 1990s, a period characterised by a “worldwide [the term ‘global’ was not yet in use] standardization of products, images, fashions and ideas on the one hand, and by an even greater pluralism of identities, factions, confederations and territorial allegiances on the other.”8 For him, some of the best examples of architecture of the 1980s appear unaffiliated with “the cliques in charge of media and schools” of architecture and “the babble of their discourse,” and in developing countries or in parts peripheral of and remote from the European and American industrialised world.9 Curtis claims to have cast a wide net, balancing the Third World with the First, balancing examples from places as diverse as Spain and India, Finland and Australia, France and Mexico, the United States, the Middle East and Japan. Curtis prefers ‘universalism’ to a ‘regionalism,’ which, misused in the 1980s, resulted in not only kitsch imitations of the vernacular in the European context, but also the death of most authentic vernaculars while “the rest were under threat of extinction.”10 During the course of my communication with Curtis, he recalled realising that regionalism risked becoming a “lazy shorthand for a much more complex phenomenon concerning the realities and myths of nations.”11

7 William J.R. Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900 (Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1982), 368. 8 William J.R. Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900 (Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1996), 636. 9 William J.R. Curtis, “Contemporary Transformations of Modern Architecture,” Architectural Record vol 177, no. 7 (June 1989): 108. 10 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 639. 11 William J.R. Curtis, email message to author, February 2, 2017. 179 Rethinking Curtis: The Task of History and Role of the Historian

In the introduction to Critical Regionalism: Architecture and Identity in a Globalised World (2003), Alexander Tzonis agrees with Curtis on the misuse of the notion of regionalism, reporting that regionalism as he and Liane Lefaivre formulated it in the 1980s, to indicate “an approach to design giving priority to the identity of the particular rather than to universal dogmas,” was similarly misrepresented.12 Tzonis recollects how regionalism was meant to be an alternative not only to postmodernism, but also to the modernism/postmodernism debate widely criticised by Curtis. He argues that the critical regionalist approach to design of the twenty-first century aims “to rethink architecture through the concept of region,” and “recognises the value of the singular, circumscribes projects within the physical, social and cultural constraints of the particular, aiming at sustaining diversity while benefiting from universality.”13 So, even if Tzonis rethinks regionalism in terms of “unresolved conflict between globalisation and diversity,” confrontation and opposition “between international intervention and identity,” he too sees something positive, or at least beneficial, in universalism. Rather than prioritising conflict and opposition, or identity over universalism, Curtis, writing around 1992-3, describes the architecture of the present as one which balances or “oscillates between the unique and the typical,” characterised by diversity from both an intellectual and a geographical point of view.14

In her own introductory text, Lefaivre presents Mumford’s reformulation of regionalism, and points out that “with Mumford, regionalism becomes a constant process of negotiation between the local and the global on the many different issues that traditionally made up regionalism.”15 According to Lefaivre, Mumford sees regionalism not as resistance, but as an “engagement with the global, universalising world rather,” a position similar to the one previously defended by Curtis.16

12 Alexander Tzonis, “Introducing an Architecture of the Present: Critical Regionalism and the Design of Identity,” in Critical Regionalism: Architecture and Identity in a Globalized World, ed. Liane Lefaivre and Alexander Tzonis (Munich, Berlin, London, New York: Prestel, 2003), 10. 13 Tzonis, “Introducing an Architecture of the Present,” 20. 14 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 657. 15 Liane Lefaivre, “Critical Regionalism: A Facet of Modern Architecture since 1945,” in Critical Regionalism: Architecture and Identity in a Globalized World, ed. Liane Lefaivre and Alexander Tzonis (Munich, Berlin, London, New York: Prestel, 2003), 34. 16 Lefaivre, “Critical Regionalism…,”34. 180 Rethinking Curtis: The Task of History and Role of the Historian

In the introduction to Architectural Regionalism (2007), Vincent B. Canizaro recommends Curtis’s Modern Architecture Since 1900 and the aforementioned 2003 essay by Lefaivre for an “excellent account of the history of regionalism.”17 Interestingly, Canizaro does not include in his Collected Essays any of the writings of Curtis on regionalism discussed in this dissertation, and nor do Tzonis and Lefaivre cite them. Canizaro includes in the introduction to his book one epigraph on authenticity and another on modernism/postmodernism debate. For him, authenticity measures our connection to things and places, an interesting idea that could be applied to Curtis’s own understanding of the notion, as what measures his own connection to the architecture he experiences.18 With regard to the dialectic between tradition and modernity, Canizaro affirms that regionalism lies at the centre of it, helping to achieve a certain balance, “between the necessary cultural continuity and the desire for progress and innovation.”19

In the case of postmodernism, Curtis’s approach can be summarised as the confirmation of an intuition. Writing the introduction to the first edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900 in 1981, Curtis doubts whether postmodernist questioning and rejection of modernism is a sign of the collapse of modern architecture or just another crisis heading toward its consolidation. As early as 1979, as Curtis was beginning to write the book, Joseph Rykwert was already criticising postmodernism as an alternate modernist architecture, and “a diversion, from the serious business of reconsidering the architect’s task.”20 Curtis frames his own critique of postmodernism in similar terms, as a wake-up call for architects to rethink their role, and, in the 1996 edition, declares with absolute assurance that postmodernism was “ephemeral,” just a new re- examination of certain core ideas of modern architecture, advocating for a certain continuity.21

17 Vincent B. Canizaro, ed., Architectural Regionalism: Collected Writings on Place, Identity, Modernity, and Tradition (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007), 446. 18 Canizaro, Architectural Regionalism, 26. 19 Canizaro, Architectural Regionalism, 22. 20 Joseph Rykwert, “Inheritance or Tradition,” Architectural Design vol 49, no. 5/6 (1979). 21 Curtis, “Introduction,” 16. 181 Rethinking Curtis: The Task of History and Role of the Historian

Also writing in 1996, the landscape architect Tom Turner saw “signs of post- postmodern life, in urban design, architecture and elsewhere.”22 However, more recently, in 2007, N. Katherine Hayles and Todd Gannon claimed that “postmodernism died” in 1995 due to expansion of the Internet’s global accessibility.23 Very recently, in a lecture on January 2017, Peter Osborne declared the category of postmodernism “well and truly buried,”24 after having referred to it as an “episode” which enlivened theoretical debates between 1979 and 1999, and an “illusion” that dissipated.25 It is interesting to note that the period of time established by Osborne as the ‘episode’ of postmodernism is similar to the timeline of the writing of Modern Architecture Since 1900, from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. Building on these contributions, Nathan Brown attempts to present a new periodisation related to Curtis’s defence of a certain continuity within modern architecture, which is discussed in the next section on ‘A Modern Tradition.’

In her recent account of Hans Hollein and Postmodernism (2017), Eva Branscome argues that “postmodernism today has become a part of the past.”26 Branscome agrees with Curtis that “even from its beginning, postmodernism echoed the notions of ‘style’ already present in modernism,” and that by the 1980s postmodernism had ossified into: a style devoid of its original complexity and meaning.27 According to Branscome, as was the case with regionalism, postmodernism had lost its original complexity and meaning. She points out that postmodernism is being reassessed not only by way of recent books mentioned in this dissertation such as the one by Jorge Otero-Pailos, but also through conference panels organised by the European Architectural History Network and the Society of Architectural Historians in the United States, and I would add, in Australia and New Zealand and Great Britain. What Branscome refers to as a “hybrid view” supported by recent historiography defends the idea that “many typical

22 Tom Turner, City as Landscape: A Post-Postmodern View of Design and Planning (London: E&FN Spon, 1996), 8. 23 Nathan Brown, “Postmodernity, not yet. Toward a New Periodisation,” Radical Philosophy vol 2, no. 1 (2018): 12. 24 Peter Osborne, “Crisis as Form,” lecture at Kingston University, London (12 January 2017). 25 Peter Osborne, “The Postconceptual Condition: Or, the Cultural Logic of High Capitalism Today,” Radical Philosophy vol 184 (March/April 2014): 19-20. 26 Eva Branscome, Hans Hollein and Postmodernism: Art and Architecture in Austria, 1958-1985 (London: Routledge, 2017), 4. 27 Branscome, Hans Hollein and Postmodernism…, 5. 182 Rethinking Curtis: The Task of History and Role of the Historian features of postmodernism were in fact already present in the modernism of the 1950s, and some features have even been suggested to go back as far as the 1920s” – something that Curtis had already pointed out over twenty years ago, in his 1980s writing and in the third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900.28 For him, “the reality of architectural production in the 1980s and 1990s had more to do with evolution and reassessment than with revolution and radical breaks.” 29

While some argue that postmodernism lost its criticality around 1995, partly due to the emergence of ‘global,’ regionalism is still relevant to the study of the present, at least for Tzonis, precisely because of the “ubiquitous conflict in all fields – including architecture – between globalisation and international intervention, on the one hand, and local identity and the desire for ethnic insularity, on the other.”30 Both regionalism and postmodernism are being rethought today in the light of postcolonial theories in architecture, and of new periodisations of the twentieth century. They are two sides of the same coin, as theoretical frameworks created to identify architectural works emerging out of individual situations, and not terms used by architects themselves.

In general terms, Curtis’s mapping of the late twentieth century, which was praised by most reviewers, as discussed in Chapter Two of this dissertation, can be characterised by his alleged rejection of the use of labels in classifying the pluralism of approaches to architecture, and his rejection, too, of the excess of theory in the writing of history. In the introduction to the third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900, Curtis writes that his work “avoids standard critical postures and largely fictional ‘movements’ and tries to single out buildings and tendencies of lasting value.”31 In his opinion, if we rely too much on ‘-isms,’ it becomes difficult to distinguish between “durable creations and weaker relatives.”32 Instead, he argues for architects to find a balance between innovation and the social significance of buildings. At the end of Part 4 of the book, Curtis writes:

28 Branscome, Hans Hollein and Postmodernism…, 6. 29 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 619. 30 Tzonis, “Introducing an Architecture of the Present…,” 10. 31 Curtis, “Introduction,” 17. 32 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 617. 183 Rethinking Curtis: The Task of History and Role of the Historian

Architecture in the late twentieth century has evidently followed many channels, and has been characterised by both geographical diversity and intellectual pluralism. But this does not mean that the attempt at discerning broader patterns and longer lines of development should be abandoned. Little is gained by inventing fictive movements, especially when these are described or analysed using the rhetorical terminology of the participants themselves. Nevertheless, there may be communities of concern, overlaps of intention or shared territories of expression.33

According to Curtis, the architecture of the late twentieth century is characterized, not by a single style of ideology, or terms used in the early 1990s such as ‘high-tech,’ ‘Regionalism,’ ‘neo-Rationalism,’ ‘classicism,’ ‘contextualism,’ and ‘minimalism,’ but rather by pluralism, or even “multiple modernisms.”34 However, even if Curtis refuses the use of ‘-isms’ to map the late twentieth century, he does use some ‘-isms’ in his own account when convenient: the ‘preservationism’ of the theoretical work of the Krier brothers, the ‘revisionism’ of David Watkin’s work, or the ‘traditionalism’ of other postmodern approaches.

In January 2007, on the occasion of the presentation of the Spanish translation of the third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900, Curtis reflected on the relationship between theory and the writing of history. In his opinion, “the historian who identifies with the interests of a single school or clique, sacrifices the possibility of a balanced view,” and the result becomes “second rate.”35 If the historian is to achieve the aim of penetrating the complexity of the past and explaining it intelligibly, what Curtis refers to as ‘obscurantism,’ ‘false theorising,’ or jargon plays no part.36 Although Curtis acknowledges the need for theoretical frameworks, historical thinking and the understanding of architecture itself are, for him, the keys to the writing of history. 37 Curtis claims that his work cannot be linked to any particular ideology or school of thought, and I add that this is evident in the book and its mostly balanced perspective. Curtis agrees with Marvin Trachtenberg on blaming his predecessors for keeping

33 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 657. 34 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 683. 35 Curtis, “A Historian’s Perspective on Modern Architecture,” transcript of the talk, January 2007. 36 Curtis, “A Historian’s Perspective on Modern Architecture,” transcript of the talk, January 2007. 37 William J.R. Curtis, Le Corbusier: Ideas and Forms (London: Phaidon Press, 2015), 477. 184 Rethinking Curtis: The Task of History and Role of the Historian architectural history as a heavily obscure discipline, as discuss in Chapter One of this dissertation.38

Most reviewers of the book dismiss Curtis’s claim that one should avoid an excess of theory in the writing of history, and consider it detrimental to the scholarship of Modern Architecture Since 1900. In The Psychologizing of Modernity (2000), Mark Jarzombek goes one step further, arguing that Curtis’s decision is itself theoretical. Jarzombek uses a quote in which Curtis advocates for a criticism “based upon the experience and analysis of actual architectural objects in their precise setting,” Which Curtis sees as especially relevant at a time when “architecture is once again being buried under smoke screens of ‘theory;”39 Jarzombek does so to argue that “this ‘critique’ of theory is discredited by its attempt to pretend that it itself is not theory.”40 In other words, Jarzombek posits that ‘theory’ here might just be too well ‘digested,’ and that there are theoretical principles lurking behind Curtis’s discursive operations.41 According to Jarzombek’s reflection (though this is sketchy, as he himself admits), Curtis as author functions “inside and outside established disciplines and indeed wants that fluidity to be understood in a positive light as a break with entrenched models of perception,” or even theorisation.42

Curtis’s mapping of the late twentieth century, from the tentative proposal of the first edition to its extended and inclusive 1996 version, is one of the main strengths of Modern Architecture Since 1900, and one of its main contributions to the historiography of modern architecture, as most previous and subsequent historians avoided including the recent past in their accounts. Curtis’s advocacy for continuity in architecture throughout the world and the century is another strength of the book. In drafting a continuous map, though, his methodology, that of a formalist art historian,

38 Marvin Trachtenberg, “Some Observations on Recent Architectural History,” The Art Bulletin vol 70, no. 2 (June 1988). 39 William J.R. Curtis, “Alvaro Siza: An Architecture of Edges,” El Croquis 68/69 (1994): 33. 40 Mark Jarzombek, The Psychologizing of Modernity: Art, Architecture, and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 308. 41 Jarzombek, The Psychologizing of Modernity, 27. 42 Jarzombek, The Psychologizing of Modernity, 36. 185 Rethinking Curtis: The Task of History and Role of the Historian and his ‘theoretical’ determination to avoid obscure theorisations, appear as weaknesses that risk his aim to balance the tasks of the historian and the critic.

Balancing the Historian and the Critic Curtis claims to be aware of the risks and dangers that appear as Modern Architecture Since 1900 draws closer to the present. In Curtis’s opinion, when the historian champions some aspects while chastising others, or imposes a pre-established pattern on recent events (architects and buildings), so that they point to the aspects he or she admires in the architecture of his/her time, this causes history to degenerate into polemic.43 In the first edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900, Curtis writes that it is “a standard part of art historical folklore” that one should never attempt to write the history of the recent past, in order to avoid biases.44 In the third edition of the book, “standard” is replaced by “commonplace.”45 Curtis argues that this is false: if the historian neglects the writing of the history of the recent past, propagandists or architects themselves end up writing history.

At the time of writing his allegedly ‘dispassionate’ history of modern architecture, the problem Curtis encountered was how to overcome the repeated refrain that modern architecture was dead. Alongside the scholars proclaiming the death of modern architecture, Curtis identifies others who cling to their established views and identity as ‘modernists,’ and considers both positions to be extremes to avoid when dealing with the recent past. In the third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900, Curtis argues that neither of these positions gives a nuanced account of invention and “its usual debts to the past,” and that both present a simplistic and monolithic version of modern architecture, and play down its continuities.46 According to Curtis, neither is willing to admit that the balance between the old and the new results in profound innovation, and “that the seminal works of the modern movement have value for the future precisely because their principles transcend period limitations.”47

43 Curtis, “Introduction,” 12. 44 William J.R. Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900 (Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1982), 367. 45 William J.R. Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900 (Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1996), 617. 46 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 589. 47 William J.R. Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900 (Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1982), 367. 186 Rethinking Curtis: The Task of History and Role of the Historian

In the last pages of the three editions of Modern Architecture Since 1900, Curtis claims to have achieved a certain balance between these two positions. And, yet, he acknowledges that it is difficult to arrive naturally at a consensus about contemporary (or current) developments. By including them in a long historical perspective and stating clearly the basis of his judgements, he claims to fulfil the aim of presenting a balanced picture of recent developments in architecture.48 Curtis disagrees with what he calls “the contemporary cynic, protected from difficult social realities by the dogmatic uncertainties of post-modern philosophy, surrounded by the ‘pensée unique’ of the globalized market, [who] thinks that all talk of grand historical narratives has had its day.”49 In addition, he wishes to integrate the practical, the social, the technical and the symbolic in his approach to architecture. Again, a certain balance is required in the thinking and writing of history for what he refers to as the “constant oscillation between fact and opinion, between detailed analyses and broad interpretations, between induction and deduction.”50 At the end of the first edition, he writes:

Such a description [of pluralisms in the 1970s] is bound to be lopsided and incomplete, but I can at least claim that I have set out to portray the complexities – and contradictions – of recent pluralism. If I have, on occasion, adopted a critical position with regard to an idea or a building, I have attempted to lay bare the basis of the judgement.51

It is true that, while Curtis does not use the terms ‘objective’ or ‘objectivity’ to refer to his writing, his emphasis on the balance and distance of his point of view results in a grounded historical narrative, a kind of ‘truth,’ based on his own experience of modern architecture. For Trachtenberg, when dealing with the history of modern architecture, the distance is only relative, regardless if talking about the distant or recent past. He believes that historians of modernism (and he considers Curtis one of them) have the ambition “to alter, to shape, to affect somehow the course of current architectural development with their writing (and justly so).”52 Reconsidering the historiography of

48 Curtis, “Introduction,” 17 49 William J.R. Curtis, “Transformation and Invention: on Re-reading Modern Architecture,” The Architectural Review vol 221, no. 1321 (March 2007): 36-40. Original essay written by Curtis in February 2007, 5, WJRC Archive. 50 Curtis, “A Historian’s Perspective on Modern Architecture,” transcript of the talk, January 2007. 51 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 368. 52 Marvin Trachtenberg, “Some Observations on Recent Architectural History,” The Art Bulletin vol 70, no. 2 (June 1988): 241. 187 Rethinking Curtis: The Task of History and Role of the Historian modern architecture in this light, then, Giedion was as committed to the beginnings of modernism, as Banham was to New Brutalism or high-tech, and as Curtis was to his long historical perspective of modern architecture against postmodernism.

According to John Macarthur, “criticism, no matter who makes it, is a claim to expertise and authority, it is, by its nature, a claim that all should feel towards the work as the critic does, and a differentiated naming of those feelings by reference to issues and ideas larger than the work at hand.”53 Curtis’s authority is related to his own experience of the ‘events’ he narrates, which happened in varied cultural, intellectual and geographical settings, and which he incorporates into a longer historical perspective. However, at the same time, he cannot refrain from conveying his enormous displeasure regarding the ideas and materialisations of postmodernism. In spite of the importance that Curtis gives to authenticity, or what Macarthur refers to as ‘meaningfulness,’ as judgement criterion, his own account of postmodernism, rather than being history, degenerates into polemic criticism. Therefore, I argue that Curtis achieves an unstable balance at crafting a longer historical narrative, credible, because of his expertise and authority on modern architecture. Fundamental to Curtis’s expertise on modern architecture is his first-hand experience, discussed extensively in Chapter Two of this dissertation as a result of our communication and his generosity in sharing archival information with me.

Experiencing Modern Architecture There is one underlying idea in every argument put forward by Curtis on the task of history and the role of the historian: Modern Architecture Since 1900 is, for him, exemplary of what the historian should be doing at the end of the 1970s, and of what previous historians neglected. When he started writing the first edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900, it seemed necessary to Curtis “to avoid the various determinisms [historical or social, as well as over-simplistic definitions] of some previous authors, and to elaborate a more complex picture of both the internal order of a modern tradition, and of longer-range debts to the past,” by showing how modern

53 John Macarthur, “Sense, Meaning and Taste in Architectural Criticism,” in Writing, Representation and Criticism in Architecture/ Semi-Detached, ed. Naomi Stead (Melbourne: Uro Media, 2012), 235. 188 Rethinking Curtis: The Task of History and Role of the Historian masters had learned and transformed lessons from the past.54 Curtis does not “wish to add some glowing extra chapters” to previous historians’ sagas, nor to add to the growing number of ‘revisionist’ histories trying to demonstrate that “modern architecture was some temporary fall from architectural grace.”55 In January 2007, on the occasion of the presentation of the Spanish translation of the third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900, Curtis said:

One inherits from predecessors but does not accept their work passively. One lives in a critical tension with what has gone before and tries to keep a distance from the illusions and delusions of one’s own time. There is nothing more limiting and more provincial than the present.56

Curtis defines history as a communal activity, bound to draw on past models though reinterpreting them. In addition, by presenting new facts and buildings, it is possible to re-scrutinise and reconsider personalities and events that “once seemed to have some immutable status.”57 He believes that history should aim to explain why certain formal configurations and technical solutions are appropriate to a particular task, and to decipher underlying meanings and intentions.58 There is, however, no simple formula. A certain intuition, what Curtis refers to as “an act of historical imagination,” is necessary for a historian to construct his or her own abstractions and form a “mental picture of the past,” or of the intentions and processes of thought behind actual buildings.59 It is precisely through the analysis of aspects of buildings beyond appearance – of generating ideas and spatial organisation – that the historian may find a balance between the concerns of a certain period, the personal style of a certain architect, and the intentions of an individual work. Again, balance is key to Curtis’s approach to writing:

I have attempted to hold in balance the many forces, decisions, intentions, events, even accidents, that influenced architectural results. To insist upon the genesis of forms and the initial sparks that give life to a project, is not to ignore the down to earth realities of resolving, constructing, even paying for

54 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 691. 55 Curtis, “Introduction,” 12. 56 Curtis, “A Historian’s Perspective on Modern Architecture,” transcript of the talk, January 2007. 57 Curtis, “Introduction,” 12. 58 Curtis, “Introduction,” 14. 59 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 692. 189 Rethinking Curtis: The Task of History and Role of the Historian

buildings. To focus to some degree upon the ‘realm of architectural ideas’ is not to minimise the importance of client’s aspirations, sites, institutions, territories, culture, social forces and politics. Nor is it to underrate the role of collaborators, from architects in the atelier to engineers. But without these deep initial impulses, without the fixing of intentions and architectural ideas in sketches and plans, the architectural results would have been altogether different.60

The notion of balance is also necessary for historians in order to identify with architects and agents in the building process while maintaining certain objectivity. In Curtis’s opinion, the historian needs to find a certain balance between the analysis of the individual work and reflection upon the architect’s language and formal thinking. For him, “this constitutes an analysis of style in the true sense of the word: typical elements and characteristic combinations embedded in recurrent patterns of meaning and thought.”61 The historian’s task requires a rigorous differentiation between fact and opinion, and a deep understanding of the individual works of architecture, which are historical documents. It is the analysis of these works that Curtis places at the core of Modern Architecture Since 1900, as discussed in Chapter Two of this dissertation. Despite the importance that Curtis gives to scientific rigour and documentary evidence, in his opinion they are no substitute for insight and interpretive skill, which the historian must use to humbly test their historical hypotheses.62

During the course of our communication, Curtis told me that “first-hand experience of architecture is crucial in my [his] way of operating,” and in his approach to the writing of history.63 Curtis’s first-hand experience of buildings, and his relationship with architects as traveller and photographer, is evident in the preparation of the book. Apart from the travels aforementioned in the section on ‘The Story of the Writing of Modern Architecture Since 1900,’ Curtis holds the copyright on at least fifty images of the first edition, including the pictures in the chapter on ‘The Architectural System of Frank Lloyd Wright’ leading to the type of the ‘Prairie House,’ Mies van der Rohe’s IIT Crown Hall and Lake Shore Drive apartments in Chicago, and Le Corbusier’s work in

60 Curtis, Le Corbusier: Ideas and Forms, 480. 61 Curtis, Le Corbusier: Ideas and Forms, 478. 62 Curtis, Le Corbusier: Ideas and Forms, 479. 63 William J.R. Curtis, email message to author, August 31, 2016. 190 Rethinking Curtis: The Task of History and Role of the Historian

Chandigarh, India. This number is increased in the third edition, and some of Curtis’s pictures from the first edition are replaced by similar ones in colour. In his opinion, the experience of the buildings themselves and the resulting fresh insights have a “liberating effect” against dogmatic and deterministic approaches to the writing of history, arid scholasticism and passing fads.64

Architecture speaks its own language in silence and touches the mind and senses on many levels. What no photograph can recapture is the feeling of moving through spaces of different intensity, the touch of material or the unfolding of views. Just when the historian is settling into lazy definitions it is as well that he be jolted by the unexpected discoveries in the realm of architecture itself.65

Furthermore, he refers to the experience of buildings as “one of the most direct and enjoyable ways of having one’s prejudices upset.”66 By focussing on the analysis of actual works of architecture, Curtis claims to avoid “the hazy and often pretentious theoretical utterances of architects and sometimes half-blind sycophants and commentators.”67 His emphasis upon the experience of buildings, of what Curtis refers to as “high order,” is his response to writings “which manufacture movements, fashionable trends and other ideological fictions.”68 The critical map of the recent past that Curtis presents in Modern Architecture Since 1900 combines several deep readings into a larger historical pattern.69 In his opinion, architecture should be allowed to speak for itself, to not only the historian, but the reader:

Maybe too one of the functions of a work of architectural history is to open peoples’ eyes to the richness of architecture, to teach them to see. For eventually one must go beyond the text and the photograph to the thing itself. Architecture appeals to all of the senses, and touches both mind and body. It is embedded in daily existence, even in private and collective memories. Some realities exist well beyond books. People should go and

64 Curtis, Le Corbusier: Ideas and Forms, 480. 65 William J.R. Curtis, “Preface to the Second Edition,” in Le Corbusier: Ideas and Forms (London: Phaidon Press, 2015), 13. 66 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 692. 67 Curtis, “A Historian’s Perspective on Modern Architecture,” transcript of the talk, January 2007. 68 Curtis, “A Historian’s Perspective on Modern Architecture,” transcript of the talk, January 2007. 69 Curtis, “Contemporary Transformations of Modern Architecture,” 110. 191 Rethinking Curtis: The Task of History and Role of the Historian

experience buildings directly, their sites, their spaces, their unfolding sequences, their changing light and moods.70

Recalling his time as an undergraduate student at the Courtauld Institute, Curtis remembers the impact that the buildings he visited had on him. Curtis refers to his trips as “the lifeblood of architectural experience,” and highlights the key and very early in his career trips to “California in late 1970-early 1971 and Chicago in the Spring of 1971 when I [he] had the chance to experience first-hand the works of Schindler, Neutra, Wright in California and Wright, Sullivan, Mies, Burnham and Root in Chicago.”71 During the course of our communication, Curtis highlighted the significance of experiencing Alejandro de la Sota’s Gimnasio Maravillas, which he visited in Madrid in 1987; Erich Mendelsohn’s Hadassah Hospital, in Jerusalem in 1990; Rick Lepastrier’s beach house in the northern suburbs of Sydney in 1980; and Jørn Utzon’s church in Bagsvaerd in 1978.72 The experience of this last building was so profound that Curtis decided to finish the first edition with it. He reflects on the consequences of some of these encounters at the end of the Bibliographical Note of the third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900; he writes:

A few months living in the remnants of Schindler’s Pueblo Ribera Courts in Southern California helped me to realise how important ideas of ‘origins’ were to several architects of the 1920s. A visit to Mendelsohn’s Mount Scopus Hospital outside Jerusalem reinforced an existing interest in regional inflections beyond the International Style. A cold morning in Madrid looking at the Maravillas Gymnasium by Alejandro de la Sota set in motion a revised vision of an entire decade and led to a major engagement with Spanish Modern architecture since. Time living in Doshi’s ‘Sangath’ [his own office complex] in Ahmadabad, India, focused attention on a larger range of Asian continuities, and on creative tensions between countryside and city in the Third World.73

Just as architects are encouraged to balance old and new, tradition and modernity, according to Curtis, there are instances, variables and circumstances that historians need to balance in developing their role. I cannot but agree with him that historians should aim to find a balance between the unique and the typical; the local and global;

70 Curtis, “A Historian’s Perspective on Modern Architecture,” transcript of the talk, January 2007. 71 Curtis, email message to author, August 31, 2016. 72 Curtis, email message to author, August 31, 2016. 73 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 692. 192 Rethinking Curtis: The Task of History and Role of the Historian the architect’s work and the intentions and ideals behind it; innovation and the social significance of buildings; and between fact and opinion, analysis and interpretation, induction and deduction. Curtis proposes Modern Architecture Since 1900 as exemplary of his suggestions to historians put into practice, and, after some time, the revision and reconsideration of the content in preparation for the third edition of the book, allows him to show how his stance on the writing of history remains unaltered. The coherence between how Curtis judges the quality and authenticity of architecture and how he understands the writing of its history is undeniable, and it is a first step towards building a credible narrative.

2. A Modern Tradition

One of the first tasks of an historian is to provide a clear definition of the object of their study. Following on from the discussion of Curtis’s understanding of the writing of history, this section looks at his definition of architecture, and modern architecture, and his formulation of a modern tradition. I will then discuss his proposal to chart that modern tradition and its continuities, and its repercussions for current debates on the periodisation of modern architecture. For Curtis, architecture is a “multi-layered phenomenon fusing ideas and forms, social myths and poetic spaces, images and materials, function and structure, past and present.”1 He also defines it as an art, as part of his discourse on the return to principles. One is reminded of John Macarthur and Andrew Leach’s assessment of the discipline, and their belief that “to speak of architecture as an art during the last century has been an implicit call for a return to an older, more inclusive concept of the arts and a common cultural space.”2 Today, it still is difficult to find common ground for a disciplinary definition of architecture; “for many contemporary scholars the preferred terms for this extraordinarily complex

1 William J.R. Curtis, “A Historian’s Perspective on Modern Architecture.” Transcript. English version of text “La perspectiva de un historiador sobre la arquitectura moderna,” translated by Jorge Sainz and read out by the author in Spanish on the presentation of the translation of the third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900 at the Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, January 2007. WJRC Archive. 2 John Macarthur and Andrew Leach, “Architecture, Disciplinarity and the Arts: Considering the Issues,” in Architecture, Disciplinarity and the Arts, ed. John Macarthur and Andrew Leach (Ghent: A & S Books, 2009), 8. 193 Rethinking Curtis: A Modern Tradition physical, experiential, and imaginative terrain are the built environment or the cultural landscape.”3

The previous section discussed Curtis’s opinion on how previous historians, both early ‘mythographers’ like Giedion and Pevsner, and those influenced by the postmodern critique of modernism, present a monolithic and simplistic idea of modern architecture. For him, modern architecture is an invention and the most recent historical revolution in the history of architecture.4 Curtis describes innovation in architecture as working within a certain balance between the conventions and possibilities of its time and the invocation of fundamentals; “‘radical’ is the word which comes to mind: revolutionary while returning to roots.”5

Formulating a Modern Tradition Given the Western and transatlantic bias of previous historiography, Curtis claims that much needs to be done to discuss the “worldwide” dissemination of modern architecture in places like Australia, the Middle East and South East Asia, by studying “the intermingling and collision of ‘universalising’ types with national and regional traditions.”6 Already in the 1930s, transfusions and transformations of ideas and forms in diverse societies were occurring in places as varied as Finland, Japan, Palestine, South Africa, Turkey and of course Spain. In this way, new strands of modern architecture came into being. For Curtis, the historian of modern architecture should show how the new models of cosmopolitan creation, modernisation and universalising aspiration collide with, fuse with and transform existing national or regional traditions with their own internal agendas. Furthermore, the historian of modern architecture should, in Curtis’s opinion, preserve a balance between the unique and the typical, to re-examine modern architecture in relation to various world-views and social projects. Curtis discusses how the most interesting works of the multiple strands of modern

3 Keith L. Eggener, ed., American Architectural History: A Contemporary Reader (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), 1. 4 William J.R. Curtis, “Transformation and Invention: on Re-reading Modern Architecture,” The Architectural Review vol 221, no. 1321 (March 2007): 36-40. Original essay written by Curtis in February 2007, 1-6, WJRC Archive. 5 Curtis, “Transformation and Invention: on Re-reading Modern Architecture,” 3. 6 William J.R. Curtis, “Preface to the Third Edition,” in Modern Architecture Since 1900 (London: Phaidon Press, 1996), 10. 194 Rethinking Curtis: A Modern Tradition architecture, from their very beginnings, resist being “confined to a movement or a transient stylistic trend,” such as functionalism or the International Style.7

The historian who sets out to write a history of modern architecture, like Curtis does, “will be describing and interpreting traditions which have not yet come to an end.”8 He postulates the idea of “a modern tradition with several strands and considers diverse ways in which ideas generated earlier in this century are being cross-fertilised and transformed in response to context and cultural memory as well as to rapidly changing social and technological conditions.”9 In his writing and in the course of our communication, Curtis used the image of a delta to illustrate this modern tradition with all its internal complexities and variations: “a delta with diverse channels;”10 “a delta with the main currents still flowing down tributaries; some have silted up, some have been renewed by deep sources, some are advancing with renewed strength; overall the river continues to move.”11 In a 2007 talk, Curtis added that, in the intervening years since writing the book, “some of the channels have sub-divided still further, some have dried up altogether; others are flowing with renewed force, nourished by deep springs.”12

Curtis understands tradition to “be ruled by dominant forms or governing principles, but it may also contain diverse strands, regional emphases, internal loops, disjunctions and continuities.”13 In addition, once a tradition is founded, firmly in place, it can and should be transformed to adapt to changes in values, new possibilities of expression and the emergence of new problems.14 Curtis advocates for “re-evaluations and reinterpretations of canonical works and core concepts,” and warns of the risks of taking

7 Curtis, “A Historian’s Perspective on Modern Architecture,” transcript of the talk, January 2007. 8 William J.R. Curtis, “Introduction,” in Modern Architecture Since 1900 (London: Phaidon Press, 1996), 12. 9 Curtis, “Introduction,” 17. 10 Curtis, email message to author, June 16, 2017. 11 William J.R. Curtis, “Contemporary Transformations of Modern Architecture,” Architectural Record vol 177, no. 7 (June 1989): 117. 12 Curtis, “A Historian’s Perspective on Modern Architecture,” transcript of the talk, January 2007. 13 Curtis, “Introduction,” 15. 14 Curtis, “Introduction,” 16. 195 Rethinking Curtis: A Modern Tradition for granted the ground rules of the established modern tradition.15 At the end of Modern Architecture Since 1900, Curtis summarises:

This is said, not to denigrate inventiveness, or to insist upon a simplistic line of continuity, but to suggest a diverse and dynamic idea of a modern tradition. To speak of inheriting and extending such a tradition does not mean copying what has gone before, or enforcing stylistic norms. It rather implies the absorption of principles behind earlier solutions and their transformation to meet different conditions and fit new intentions. In the period under review, there were certainly crises and disjunctions, but diverse strands of modern architecture also continued to be extended, critiqued, mannerised, regionalised, even cross-bred with other traditions.”16

The depth of the architect’s comprehension of tradition, and the question of its use and abuse, are key for Curtis. This goes beyond the issue of looking through the ‘useless’ modernism/postmodernism debate, and mapping the late twentieth century. I would argue that tradition becomes for Curtis a way to articulate his choices and judgements in his account of architecture in the entire twentieth century. Authenticity is his criterion of judgment, and the modern tradition becomes his narrative of architecture since 1900. For Curtis, the key to authenticity is the understanding architects have of their own inherited tradition. Again, Curtis writes polemically on this topic, describing a dichotomy between “a playboy promiscuity without commitment” and a loving involvement with the spirit behind past forms which transforms knowledge into vital new inventions; the first position cheapens tradition, the second keeps it alive.”17

In Curtis’s formulation of a modern tradition there is a clear pedagogical element, aimed towards the architects of the present. Writing at the end of the 1980s, Curtis affirms that there are new paths for these architects to open if they understand properly the modern masters and their tradition, penetrating into their substructures and underlying principles, beyond the superficial effects.18 He refers to the many

15 Curtis, “Transformation and Invention: on Re-reading Modern Architecture,” 2. 16 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 618-619. 17 William J.R. Curtis, “Principle versus Pastiche: Perspectives on some Recent Classicisms,” The Architectural Review vol 176, no. 1050 (August 1984): 13. 18 Curtis, “Contemporary Transformations of Modern Architecture,” 116. 196 Rethinking Curtis: A Modern Tradition architects of the present who respond to the complexity of current transformations and “continue to draw sustenance from the seminal works created earlier in this century in confronting the new tasks.”19 In Curtis’s opinion, architects who seek a present in the past, or a past in the present, could, instead of misinterpreting classicism, turn to outstanding works of the modern tradition, which have been rooted in the transformation which occurs after an architect perceives and comprehends the basis of the architectural languages of the past. 20

Curtis’s position on tradition has not changed since the 1980s. He still believes that, instead of mimicking primary works of modern architecture, which are still present today regardless the temporal distance, architects can submit them to critical analysis and creative transformation. Since these works still communicate on many levels, Curtis’s recommendation is to learn from them, rather than claiming that modern architecture is dead.21 In 1987, when he wrote the addendum to the book, he considered that what he had called the ‘modern tradition,’ seemed, after six years, to be not only alive, but still continuing “to support unexpected combinations of new and old, regional and universal.”22 In the aforementioned 2007 reconsideration of what modern architecture means to him, Curtis maintains his pro-modern, anti-postmodern attitude, and further reflects on the relationship between the architect and tradition:

The architects of each generation look at the work of predecessors with new eyes. What they see depends to some degree upon what they are looking for and this relies upon their orientation and their reading of the contemporary situation. But a distinction still needs to be drawn between superficial imitations and deeper transformations. The first remain at the surface level of style, the second penetrate to the underlying principles and processes of thought. A tradition is kept alive by fresh interpretations which often involve unexpected fusions of new ideas and old ones, of local matters and more universal ones. Even the distant past may be ‘read’ in unprecedented ways through the lenses of modern predecessors. A tradition is formed from

19 Curtis, “Contemporary Transformations of Modern Architecture,” 117. 20 William J.R. Curtis, “Authenticity, Abstraction and the Ancient Sense: Le Corbusier’s and Louis Kahn’s Ideas of Parliament,” Perspecta vol 20 (1983): 194. 21 Curtis, “Transformation and Invention: on Re-reading Modern Architecture,” 6. 22 William J.R. Curtis, “The Search for Substance: Recent World Architecture (1987),” Modern Architecture Since 1900 (London: Phaidon Press, 1987), 389. 197 Rethinking Curtis: A Modern Tradition

a sequence of works of high intensity. These dig deeper than period concerns and refuse to fit the official uniforms of movements.23

Curtis formulated his definition of modern architecture – a definition couched in terms of a balanced and unfolding modern tradition – in the late 1970s, a time when most scholars were theorising about crises in, even death of, modernism, postmodernism, regionalism, theory, historical narratives and even architecture itself. As is the case with his stance on postmodernism, Curtis’s definition of a modern tradition can be understood as an intuition that he expresses in the first edition, and confirms in subsequent editions of Modern Architecture Since 1900.

Charting a Modern Tradition Once he had formulated and established a modern tradition, Curtis took it upon himself to reflect on how to chart it. As part of his focus on the development of modern architecture, rather than its roots, Curtis writes of the ‘decolonization’ after the Second World War as a period that stimulated the emergence of new hybrids of the general and the local. He believes that Modern Architecture Since 1900 is one of the few books “to have looked seriously at the emerging architectural cultures of places like India or Mexico in the 1960’s and 1970’s for example.”24 This dissertation has shown that Curtis’s book is indeed one of the few synoptic histories to have looked at architectures from diverse regions throughout the world, including the Middle East and South East Asia, among many others, and to have included them in the context of a temporally longer and geographically wider historical perspective.

Curtis considers his work at attempting to chart a complex modern tradition with many strands to be miles away from the simplistic and deterministic models of historical development assumed by some of the early chroniclers/mythographers of modern architecture, and also from the Eurocentrism and ‘Amerocentrism’ of writers like Kenneth Frampton and Manfredo Tafuri. Moreover, he claims to avoid “the regression into merely ‘localist’ ideological agendas which distort the picture another way, sometimes to conform to post-colonialist fabrications of ‘identity.’”25 Such a

23 Curtis, “Transformation and Invention: on Re-reading Modern Architecture,” 2. 24 Curtis, “A Historian’s Perspective on Modern Architecture,” transcript of the talk, January 2007. 25 Curtis, “A Historian’s Perspective on Modern Architecture,” transcript of the talk, January 2007. 198 Rethinking Curtis: A Modern Tradition complex, evolving and dynamic tradition, or range of traditions, not only allows architects to learn from it, but also necessitates historians making fresh reconsiderations in response to new realities and intentions. Analysing architecture around 2007, Curtis still sees “further metamorphoses of core principles embodied in earlier, seminal works of modern architecture.”26

When Curtis started writing the first edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900, “an ‘integrated’ approach” seemed desirable, an approach which “might address the multiple aspects of the architectural totality without losing sight of the unique order and presence of the individual work.”27 At the time, it was also clear to him that as a result of the Western bias suffered by historiography, entire areas in the ‘developing world’ remain to be charted and mapped. On the occasion of the publication of the second edition, Curtis highlights how “in many parts of the world, primary lessons learned earlier in the century are being extended and transformed better to deal with the claims of context, region and tradition.”28

In preparation for the major revision of the content of the third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900, Curtis analysed the profuse amount of literature on the modern movement published in the intervening fifteen years, mostly monographic studies resulting from major retrospective exhibitions on architects being celebrated on the centenary of their birth. In Curtis’s opinion, there was an obsession with detail and even with speculation; he criticises the abandonment of any attempt at larger- scale interpretation, and the lack of a satisfactory synthesis of the general and the particular in this literature. I argue that he uses his criticism to differentiate his account from early and contemporary historians, offering in the third edition precisely what they abandoned: a historical narrative.

In the intervening years between the first and third editions, Curtis explored new territories, both geographical and intellectual. As was thoroughly discussed in Chapter Two of this dissertation, in his intensive travels Curtis opened dialogues with diverse

26 Curtis, “A Historian’s Perspective on Modern Architecture,” transcript of the talk, January 2007. 27 William J.R. Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900 (Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1996), 691. 28 William J.R. Curtis, “Preface to the Second Edition,” in Modern Architecture Since 1900 (London: Phaidon Press, 1987), 7. 199 Rethinking Curtis: A Modern Tradition architectural cultures in Australia, India, Mexico, Spain, and Finland, among other countries, resulting in research outputs published in the form of catalogue essays, critical articles and book reviews on aspects of contemporary world architecture. As geo-politically and socio-economically diverse as these countries are, in Curtis’s narrative their architecture is presented in terms of exchanges of forms and ideas, transformed to their own context, but united by timelessness, meaning and authenticity. As a result of his dialogues with major architectural figures, Curtis tried to translate or transform what he calls cultural ‘substructures’ in non-Western traditions into modern terms, presenting the resonances between them.

Curtis claims that his research at that time, led him to reformulating the overall shape of twentieth-century architectural history. During the course of our communication, Curtis referred to his reformulation of the architecture of the 1930s as a “complete breakthrough.”29 In addition, he pointed out how the chapter ‘International, National, Regional: the Diversity of a New Tradition’ “is and was a crucial addition to our understanding of that period.”30 However, as the research compiled in this dissertation shows, his work is underrepresented and unacknowledged; with some exceptions, it is not often cited today, just as it was not cited at the time of its publication. Even if Curtis’s determination to avoid an excess of theory to support his writing of history has been viewed as detrimental to his work, his intuitions and formulations of regionalism, postmodernism and tradition have a certain resonance with recent research on tradition by, for example, Juhani Pallasmaa, and new periodisations of the twentieth century which are discussed in the next section.

Contextualising Continuity and Tradition At the European Architectural History Network (EAHN) conference in Dublin, 2016, both Jean-Louis Cohen and Sibel Bozdoğan in their key-note lectures urged us to look for continuity in architecture, instead of sharp periods and segments of time or fragments of land. Cohen argued against the “fragmentation,” not only of the object of study but also of recent scholarly publications in the form of edited books, which

29 William J.R. Curtis, email message to author, August 31, 2016. 30 William J.R. Curtis, email message to author, June 16, 2017. 200 Rethinking Curtis: A Modern Tradition results in the “miniaturisation” of history, in “microhistories.”31 Curtis did look for continuities within the twentieth century and did attempt to offer a long historical perspective, and he was not mentioned in these lectures.

It could be argued that Curtis’s emphasis on both the ephemeral character of postmodernism, and on the lines of continuity in architecture since 1900, are signs of him not grasping the importance of the changes occurred at the end of the 1960s, or of him considering them merely crises, reconsiderations, rather than profound transformations with structural causes that long predate them. I would say, though, that, for Curtis, architecture is influenced but not defined by socio-political and economic circumstances. That is why, in his account, changes in materials and building technology are considered to be properly revolutionary for the definition of architecture, as these have an effect on the creativity and invention of architects – more of an effect, in his opinion, than the social uprising of 1968, for example. At the end of Modern Architecture Since 1900, Curtis writes:

Despite vast changes in intention, ideology, function and technology, the invention of forms continued to rely upon the major revolutions that occurred earlier in the century. These exerted obvious and less obvious influence, since they affected the underlying structures of conception and perception, as well as actual forms. The lines of continuity turned out to be more complex, diverse and enduring than some had thought. As time moved on and as historical consciousness of earlier phases developed, the entire configuration reorganised itself into unexpected patterns and alignments, and new links were made to diverse cultures and past forms. But the most challenging architecture still emerged in the tension between individual intentions and collective myths, between unique ideas and universal aims.32

Curtis’s approach to the idea of tradition is very similar to the position defended by Juhani Pallasmaa in an essay published in 2012, both pertinent in the age of globalisation. Pallasmaa reflects on the significance of tradition, focussing on meaning and innovation and their relation to what constitutes great, responsible and timeless works of architecture. At a time when “newness” has become the main criteria of

31 Jean-Louis Cohen, “At the Crossroads: Perspectives and Impasses of Architectural History,” keynote lecture at the 4th biannual EAHN conference, Dublin, June 6, 2016. 32 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 684. 201 Rethinking Curtis: A Modern Tradition quality in architecture, Pallasmaa advocates for a sense of rootedness that lies in architectural logic and its cultural structure, and for an architecture that “projects comforting and enriching experiences of participation in a meaningful historical continuum.”33 It is possible to see the connection between Curtis’s formulation of authenticity and Pallasmaa’s phenomenological take on architecture in this idea that there should be a sense of rootedness and belonging that links architecture with the building of cultural identity. Pallasmaa writes that “the significance I am giving to tradition, not only as a general sense of cultural history, but also as the need of understanding the specificity and locality of culture, raises critical concerns of today’s careless practice of designing in alien cultures merely for commercial interests.” 34

Pallasmaa uses Louis Kahn’s “powerful” Parliament Buildings in Dhaka, Bangladesh, to exemplify the idea that “a respectful attitude to traditions does not imply regressive traditionalism, but its acknowledgement as a source of meaning, inspiration and emotional rooting.”35 In similar terms to Curtis, Pallasmaa refers to great works of architecture that “restructure, sensitise and enrich our experiences of our encounters with the world.”36 He does not use the term “authentic,” but writes that “true architecture makes us aware of the entire history of building and it restructures our reading of the continuum of time,” re-illuminating architectural history and making us look at earlier works in a new light.37

It is interesting that Pallasmaa’s reflection on the relevance of tradition leads him to question whether there is any identifiable progress in architecture, or whether there are only changing approaches to fundamental existential motives – again, an argument that sounds very similar to Curtis’s argument that there is a certain continuity within the architecture of the twentieth century.38 For Pallasmaa, the continuum of culture is

33 Juhani Pallasmaa, “Newness, Tradition and Identity: Existential Content and Meaning in Architecture,” Architectural Design vol 82, no. 6 (November/December 2012): 15. 34 Pallasmaa, “Newness, Tradition and Identity…,” 15. 35 Pallasmaa, “Newness, Tradition and Identity…,” 15. 36 Pallasmaa, “Newness, Tradition and Identity…,” 17. 37 Pallasmaa, “Newness, Tradition and Identity…,” 17. 38 Pallasmaa, “Newness, Tradition and Identity…,” 15. 202 Rethinking Curtis: A Modern Tradition key to any individual creative work, and innovation arises from “the sense of humbly and proudly acknowledging one’s role in the continuum of tradition.”39

Even the most original and revolutionary work that touches upon essential existential qualities, in addition to its initial novelty and shock value, ends up reinforcing the continuum of artistic tradition and becomes part of it. This is the basic paradox of artistic creation: the most radical of works end up clarifying and strengthening tradition.40

More similarities between Pallasmaa’s and Curtis’s understandings of tradition appear in the emphasis they both place on great works of architecture grounded in the past, in contrast to products of superficial and meaningless novelty; works of architecture are part of “a true artistic tradition that halts time and reintroduces the already known with a seductive new freshness and intimacy.”41 However, in spite of these similarities in their interpretations of tradition, both based on T. S. Eliot’s definition of true tradition as something to be reinvented and recreated, Pallasmaa does not use Curtis’s writings on tradition or authenticity as references. As with his discussion of postmodernism, Curtis’s formulation of a modern tradition is an intuition that time and further research has demonstrated to be accurate, or at least to be strongly grounded in its (allegedly non-existent) theoretical framework, but which is not properly acknowledged or referenced today.

Curtis’s 1996 advocacy for continuity, his claim that postmodernism was a temporary and localised phenomenon, is the starting point for an essay by Nathan Brown, in which he presents a new understanding of the present situation, as much as a new periodisation of the recent past. Through a thorough reconsideration of Fredric Jameson’s theorisation of postmodernism, Brown proposes that a “minor terminological shift” provides a more accurate historical account of the cultural situation of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.42 By “aligning modernity with capitalism, thus postmodernity with a post-capitalism yet to come, and

39 Pallasmaa, “Newness, Tradition and Identity…,” 18. 40 Pallasmaa, “Newness, Tradition and Identity…,” 18. 41 Pallasmaa, “Newness, Tradition and Identity…,” 21. 42 Nathan Brown, “Postmodernity, not yet. Toward a New Periodisation,” Radical Philosophy vol 2, no. 1 (2018): 12. 203 Rethinking Curtis: A Modern Tradition thus late capitalism to late modernity,” 43 Brown argues for the continuity not only of modernity, but also of its history; for understanding “the continuing history of modernity as the history of capitalism.”44

Yet my sense is that the substitution of the term late modernity for postmodernity, and the shift in perspective this entails, opens a more lucid perspective upon Jameson’s famous claim that ‘it seems easier for us to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth and of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism.’45

If modernity is the historical period from the Renaissance until today, then modernism is its cultural production from around 1850 to 1950, and late modernism, from 1950 until today (and beyond). Rather than periodising the present “through the redoubled application of a prefix marking it as after what was after what came before” – that is, using the term post-postmodernism – Brown understands the present to be part of a late modernity.46 Thus, postmodernism will be the cultural production of a historical era that has not yet commenced.

Likewise, Peter Osborne revisits Jameson’s periodisation by displacing the perspective “from a ‘late’ back to a ‘high’ capitalism in which we are perhaps only just beginning to understand the depth of the mutations of social being that capitalism as a social form involves.”47 For him, “the displacement of the postmodern by the contemporary as the fundamental category of the historical present follows not merely from the discrediting of the postmodern as a temporal and critical concept but, more importantly, from the globalisation of the resurgent concept of modernity…”48

In the three editions of Modern Architecture Since 1900 and the research published in the intervening years, Curtis presents the notion of tradition in general, and the modern tradition in particular, very positively. One infers from his arguments that if

43 Brown, “Postmodernity, not yet…,” 14. 44 Brown, “Postmodernity, not yet…,” 19. 45 Brown, “Postmodernity, not yet…,” 22. 46 Brown, “Postmodernity, not yet…,” 12. 47 Peter Osborne, The Postconceptual Condition. London and New York: Verso, 2017. Originally published as “The Postconceptual Condition: Or, the Cultural Logic of High Capitalism Today,” Radical Philosophy vol 184 (March/April 2014): 19. 48 Osborne, ““The Postconceptual Condition…,” 21. 204 Rethinking Curtis: A Modern Tradition an architect understands and reinterprets tradition properly (according to him and keeping in mind authenticity and the underlying principles that Curtis does not list) then the result is always going to be architecture of the highest standard. He frames his arguments in a way which avoids a reflection on tradition as a double-edged sword or as constraining creativity and innovation.49 However, Curtis establishes a framework to then classify and categorise architecture since 1900 within the boundaries and limitations of tradition, in an exercise of coherent historical narrative.

To sum up the discussion presented in this chapter, Curtis contributes to the historiography of modern architecture both in his methodological approach to history, characterised by the emphasis on ‘balance’ at multiple levels, and in his definition of modern architecture as a continuous tradition. His contribution is grounded in a sense of the need for balance in the practice of architecture and its history, and of the continuity of modern architecture, which he feels previous and contemporary historians neglected. This dissertation has shown that it is a contribution unacknowledged by subsequent scholars – not only those who look at the histories of architecture in different regions and countries, as is the case with Latin America, discussed in the introduction among other instances, but even those who defend their positions on regionalism, postmodernism and tradition in very similar terms to Curtis.

This dissertation establishes a cause-effect relationship between the balance Curtis tries to maintain in his work as a historian of the recent past and the way he includes that past as a balanced part of a broader and wider historical narrative. Curtis presents a narrative which balances the reconsideration of established past models and the incorporation of new and more recent events. He believes architecture in the twentieth century to be part of a grand historical narrative, not interrupted by postmodernist reassessment, and that is how he presents it. Modern Architecture Since 1900 is the historical narrative that exemplifies Curtis’s approach to history as well as his definition of modern architecture, making it an example of coherence. It is a credible narrative in that it is built on his own experience and mediated by his own judgment of

49 Joseph Rykwert, “Inheritance or Tradition,” Architectural Design vol 49, no. 5/6 (1979). 205 Rethinking Curtis: A Modern Tradition architecture’s authenticity. In turn, authenticity becomes a way to measure Curtis’s connection with the architecture he historicises.

I claim that Curtis’s emphasis on balance and continuity in their different forms is a way to differentiate his narrative within the context of the historiography of modern architecture, not only from earlier accounts, but also those contemporary to his own, those which are built on strongly theorised frameworks, which prioritise the socio-, economic- and political context over the building and its experience. For Curtis, architecture is defined by the form which materialises the architect’s ideals and intentions, rather than the circumstances of its time. By avoiding the reliance on theories or schools of thought, which is in fact itself a theoretically charged world view, Curtis contends that his view of modern architecture is more balanced than the views of other historians.

Recognising Curtis’s determination to differentiate his discourse from that of any other historian of modern architecture, as well as the fact that his work is indeed different in scope and approach, is a first step towards reconsidering Modern Architecture Since 1900. The last pages of this dissertation reflect on Modern Architecture Since 1900 as Curtis’s intertwined narrative in relation to the theoretical framework developed in Chapter One. In these last pages I present my own narrative, built on the reassessments that occurred in the fields of the history, theory and historiography of architecture between the late 1970s and the 1990s, in which I place, understand and reconsider the work of William J.R. Curtis and Modern Architecture Since 1900 as exemplary of a transition between modern and global.

206 Conclusion: An Intertwined History

Conclusion: An Intertwined History

Curtis’s aim of investigating the meaning of modern architecture outside the Western canon, and of including the exchanges between different traditions in his historical narrative of modern architecture, is presented in this dissertation through the lens of postcolonial theories applied to architecture. This conclusion confronts the study of the content of the three editions of Modern Architecture Since 1900, as well as the personal circumstances which led to its preparation (mostly unpublished and generously shared by Curtis himself for the purpose of this study), with the theoretical framework, formulated in Chapter One of this dissertation.

Three shifts stand out in the development of the history, theory and historiography of architecture, from modern to global, between the 1970s and the 1990s. Firstly, the ‘professionalisation’ of the discipline of architectural history in the early 1970s, with the introduction of doctorate research programs in universities in Europe and the United States, as argued by Mark Jarzombek, makes Curtis’s book one of the first professional historical narratives of modern architecture. Secondly, and resulting from the aforementioned shift, the change in the readership of architectural history in the late 1970s and early 1980s, embodied in undergraduate and postgraduate students of architecture, led to a need for readability and legibility, of which Curtis’s book is exemplary. Finally, the disciplinary reassessments that occurred in the late 1990s, including the studies of postcolonial theories in architecture, have had an influence on my reading of Curtis’s book. This dissertation is the first historiographical assessment of Curtis’s historical discourse – as a result of it, I posit that Modern Architecture Since 1900 is closer to the idea of an ‘intertwined history’ as formulated by Edward Said in 1978, and discussed by Sibel Bozdoğan in 1999, than are any of the other synoptic histories of modern architecture.1

Shift 1: Revising one of the ‘First’ Histories of Modern Architecture The unusual and unprecedented revision of the content of Modern Architecture Since 1900, and hence the differences between the first and third editions, are justification

1 Sibel Bozdoğan, “Architectural History in Professional Education: Reflections on Postcolonial Challenges to the Modern Survey,” Journal of Architectural Education, vol 52 no. 4 (May 1999): 210-211. 207 Conclusion: An Intertwined History for the approach of comparing and contrasting Curtis’s account of the main themes discussed in this dissertation, regionalism and postmodernism. Conversely, the differences outlined in the analysis of both themes are evidence of the extent of the changes introduced in the third edition. The comparison between the three editions of the book also allows us to identify the positions and critical stances which Curtis maintains, as is the case with his stance on the modern tradition. The conclusion of this dissertation reflects, in part, on the implications of the rewriting process of Modern Architecture Since 1900, one of the first results of what Jarzombek calls the professionalization of the history of architecture in the 1970s.

The writing of history begins with a critical understanding of previous historiography on the subject, in this case, on modern architecture. Even if historians have aimed or claimed to present an ‘objective’ narrative of the events, it is complicated for them to overcome the identification with their subject, with their own discourse. Curtis aims for balance, to bring the best out of the almost unprecedented opportunity he believes he has to write the history of modern architecture with dispassionate distance.

In addition to dissenting from the myths created by early historiography, Curtis challenges contemporary historiography published around 1980. Curtis published critical reviews on the work of contemporary historians at the time when he was working on the manuscript of the book, accusing Manfredo Tafuri, Francesco Dal Co and Kenneth Frampton of indulging in propaganda when writing their histories, and when relating architecture to beliefs and ideologies. In an attempt to differentiate his own approach from that of previous historians, Curtis plays the role of the new historian, who should “avoid the temptations of either positive or negative propaganda.”2 Curtis also understands that it is nearly inevitable to fall into some of the previous historians’ weaknesses the closer you get to the present, but, for Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900 is evidence of his attempt to avoid those weaknesses:

This book was written partly with the idea that a historical bridge might be built across the stream of passing intellectual fashions to a more solid

2 William J.R. Curtis, review of Modern Architecture by Manfredo Tafuri and Francesco Dal Co and Modern Architecture: A Critical History by Kenneth Frampton, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians vol 4, no. 2 (May 1981): 170. 208 Conclusion: An Intertwined History

philosophical ground, partly with the hope that this might encourage a return to basic principles. But such aims have been secondary: the first thing a historian ought to do is to explain what happened and why, whatever people may now think of it.3

It is inaccurate to say that the first edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900 is a reaction against Tafuri and Dal Co’s, and Frampton’s work. Stanislaus von Moos and Samuel B. Frank both begin their reviews of Curtis’s book by mentioning Curtis’s own 1981 JSAH review of Tafuri and Dal Co’s, and Frampton’s histories, but by the time Curtis wrote this review, he had already sent the full manuscript of his work to both the publishers and James Ackerman for their consideration. However, I posit that some of the comments in the preface to the first edition read as critiques of these historians, whose work Curtis presents as being in opposition to the task of the historian and the role of history, as he understands it.

The preface to the second edition, together with the addendum, already present Curtis’s objection to mapping the late twentieth century in terms of ‘–isms.’ He does not criticise Frampton directly, but, as this dissertation has shown in Chapter Four, that is precisely the way recent architecture is presented in Frampton’s Modern Architecture: A Critical History: classified by ‘-isms’ which change between the 1980, 1985 and 1992 editions. Furthermore, Curtis’s rejection of these categories is further developed in Part 4 of the third edition of his book. Since one of Curtis’s reasons for expanding the book was to present a more complete account of the architecture of the 1970s and 1980s, it can be argued that the revision of Modern Architecture Since 1900 was in part motivated by this intention to give an alternative to a classification by ‘- isms’ – to Frampton’s classification, to differentiate his discourse. If Curtis was writing and rewriting from late 1993, it is safe to say that, at that time, the 1992 edition of Frampton’s critical history was already out, and that Curtis had access to it. The different comparisons drawn throughout this dissertation show how, even though most of the time Curtis does not mention Frampton or his book specifically, he rejects precisely what is present in Modern Architecture: A Critical History.

3 William J.R. Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900 (Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1996), 17. 209 Conclusion: An Intertwined History

Even if changes appear as a result of Curtis’s revision of his work prior to the publication of the third edition, his aims remain the same. He modifies the body without losing the spirit, with a specific focus on developing themes that were left underdeveloped, “to reveal more of the original soul while giving a better shape to the body.”4 Curtis admits that writing the third edition was hard, as it involved reconsidering many of his assumptions as a historian.5 Writing in 1995, he claims that “the time has come now for some major additions and revisions,” of the architecture produced in the intervening years, as well as revisions of his own approach to writing.6 More than twenty years later he writes:

The third edition was the result of a major self-critical revision taking into account my own and other people’s work over the intervening years. Among other things I wished to integrate findings and reflections based upon my individual studies in places as far apart as India, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and of course several countries in South and Central America.7

Revision means, according to Adrienne Rich, “the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction.”8 In writing and revising Modern Architecture Since 1900, Curtis looks back at architects, buildings and interpretations, with a new perspective and fresh eyes, exactly what he argues the architect and the historian of the present should do. As a result of the practice of re- editing and re-publishing books, notions like value and originality operate differently for written works than for, say, visual art works. In the case of books in general, and of Modern Architecture Since 1900 specifically, first editions tend to be scarce and rare, and, hence, more expensive; the third edition could be considered less valuable given its availability and affordability. However, this is not the only way to look at it, and the

4 William J.R. Curtis, “Preface to the Third Edition,” in Modern Architecture Since 1900 (London: Phaidon Press, 1996), 9. 5 William J.R. Curtis, “A Historian’s Perspective on Modern Architecture.” Transcript. English version of text “La perspectiva de un historiador sobre la arquitectura moderna,” translated by Jorge Sainz and read out by the author in Spanish on the presentation of the translation of the third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900 at the Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, January 2007. WJRC Archive. 6 Curtis, “Preface to the Third Edition,” 9. 7 William J.R. Curtis, email message to several academic acquaintances on the occasion of the Buenos Aires Biennale, September 7, 2015. Forwarded to author on July 7, 2016. 8 Adrienne Rich, “When we Dead Awake: Writing as Re-vision,” in On Lies, Secrets and Silence: Selected Prose 1966- 1978 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1979), 35. 210 Conclusion: An Intertwined History difference in the content in the three editions of Modern Architecture Since 1900 needs to be taken into account in a historiographical analysis.

On the one hand, the third edition is the most complete and up-to-date for students to deepen their understanding of the different strands of modern architecture. However, on the other, there are some nuances and bold judgments made in the first edition that are worth noting and knowing, which are suppressed in the third edition. Whether additions or suppressions, those changes make it necessary to acknowledge both versions almost as independent works. Curtis goes one step further and declares that Modern Architecture since 1900 “does not pretend to be ‘definitive’: works of history are working hypotheses which require testing and adjustment in the light of new facts.”9 Very recently, Curtis reflected on the idea of writing a fourth edition, for which “I shall again do my best to integrate my own and other people’s findings into the overall synthesis.”10

The writing of the three editions of Modern Architecture Since 1900 is the result not only of Curtis’s reaction and response to the theoretical currents of the time when he was writing, first of the late 1970s and then of the early 1990s, but also of the dialogue he establishes with his own work, claiming to be aware of the strengths and weaknesses of his narrative. In the first edition of the book, Curtis presents a prospective attitude, anticipating positions that he later looks at from a retrospective point of view, when he judges that discourse in the third edition. Curtis also establishes a dialogue with the readers, both students and scholars, who need to be aware of the differences between the editions and the historiographical implications of the revision towards the third edition, and not refer to the three editions indistinctly. Just as anticipated by Jorge Sainz in his review of the book, the meticulous comparison between edition has been a revealing task.11

9 Curtis, email message on the occasion of the Buenos Aires Biennale, September 7, 2015. 10 Curtis, email message on the occasion of the Buenos Aires Biennale, September 7, 2015. 11 Jorge Sainz, “Arquitectura moderna: última edición,” review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, Arquitectura Viva, no. 49 (July-August 1996): 73. 211 Conclusion: An Intertwined History

Shift 2: Change in the Readership of the History of Modern Architecture By confronting the discussion presented in the previous chapter with the outlined theoretical framework discussed in Chapter One, this dissertation establishes a certain parallel between Kostof’s A History of Architecture and Curtis’s Modern Architecture Since 1900. A part from being published around the same time, 1985 and 1982 respectively, both books prioritise method over research, a readable literary style over scholarly conventions such as footnotes. The interpretation and analysis undertaken by both Kostof and Curtis are overlooked, resulting in a certain lack of acknowledgement, less so with the former than the latter. As argued in Chapter Five of this dissertation, Curtis’s emphasis on balance and continuity in their different forms, both in the practice of architecture and the writing of its history, is a way to differentiate his narrative from that of his contemporaries and predecessors, as is the case with Kostof.

In considering Modern Architecture Since 1900 as an example of Curtis’s historical discourse, as framed by Roland Barthes, I argue that the structure of the book, discussed in Chapter Two of this dissertation, reflects the historian’s regard for the reader.12 Curtis organises his narrative of modern architecture in a structure with three chronologically distinct parts, and within these are thematic chapters in which different ideas and countries appear intertwined. His emphasis on the readability of the text is also part of his strategy to differentiate his discourse and approach from those of more ‘obscure’ historians, as is also true of the revision of the content. This dissertation has demonstrated that Curtis’s emphasis on the readability of the text has resulted in a perception of negligence, or lack of rigorous scholarship, on his part. This, I argue, is one of the reasons for the lack of acknowledgement of Curtis’s work that I discovered during the course of my research – and justifies it –, from the initial absences presented in Chapter One to the most recently discovered and discussed in Chapter Five.

12 Roland Barthes, “The Discourse of History,” in The Rustle of Language (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989). 212 Conclusion: An Intertwined History

Curtis’s stated aim of presenting a readable account of the development of modern architecture, and his methodological approach to the writing of history, are intimately related to the potential audience he saw for Modern Architecture Since 1900. The importance of buildings in the book, reinforced for the audience by the size and number of illustrations, “serve as effective devices for engaging the curiosity of uninitiated readers.”13 The fact that the main audience of the book is architecture students, is one of the reasons why the book is viewed as a ‘survey’ by several scholars – and, it could be inferred, as a contribution to the field not worthy of rigorous historiographical study. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a ‘survey’ as a broad treatment of a subject – modern architecture, in this case – and as the result of examining that subject with regard to condition, situation, or value, and of considering it comprehensively. The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as a description of the whole of a subject, and as the result of examining all of something, especially carefully. Curtis’s account of modern architecture is without a doubt broad and comprehensive, as well as inclusive, presenting what he considers to be the whole of modern architecture from a fresh point of view.

In addition to displaying Curtis’s emphasis on the importance of first-hand experience of buildings in his methodology and approach to history, most of his study of the earlier phases of modern architecture synthesises and makes accessible previous scholarship. However, his account of the more recent developments of architecture, in countries such as India and Australia, adds more in the way of original scholarship, as it is also based on his conversations with practising architects. Curtis defends his work in the following terms:

The book relies upon detailed scholarship but it is not a compendium. It is an intellectual synthesis with an articulate structure and a clear literary form. It is written in such a way that it can appeal to the intelligent seventeen year old with an open mind who needs to discover modern architecture for the first time; at the same time it can stand the scrutiny of specialists.14

13 Peter Serenyi, review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians vol 43, no. 3 (October 1984): 275. 14 Curtis, “A Historian’s Perspective on Modern Architecture,” transcript of the talk, January 2007. 213 Conclusion: An Intertwined History

In The Psychologizing of Modernity (2000), Mark Jarzombek disagrees, and considers Curtis’s unwillingness to tackle theoretical issues to be “totally unsatisfactory” from the perspective of rigorous scholarship.15 Jarzombek relates the lack of theorisation in Modern Architecture Since 1900 to its potential audience: he explains that rigour is not what is asked for in a book aimed at students, who, in his opinion, “are to be transformed into the foot soldiers of modernity’s ongoing search for meaningful aesthetic production.”16 However, he sees a problem in the lack of a “precise map of engagement” of the relationship between the artist or architect; the viewer and historian, Curtis in this case; and the reader, the young reader in particular.17

Curtis claims that he analyses the form of a work of architecture to understand how it materialises the architect’s intentions, ideas and mental processes; ‘invention’ is the notion he uses. For Jarzombek, Curtis’s Modern Architecture Since 1900 is exemplary of the practice of psychologising, which Edmund Husserl criticises for being a “vague and open-ended effort” to locate those mental processes.18 Jarzombek introduces the nuance that in his persuasive attempt to reveal the mind of the architect, the historian may end up manipulating the mind of the reader.19 In his opinion, critics such as Adolf Behne, Herbert Read, Clement Greenberg, Vincent Scully and Curtis refuse for their writing to be perceived as too scholarly, thus becoming part of the crisis of modernism rather than its solution.20

The irony is that, with such tremendous emphasis being placed on participatory historiography, historians who want to enter the fray have to demonstrate that they can contribute in a positive way to the grand search for an age’s philosophical essence. And this, in turn, means that scholars have to position themselves in an antinomic [sic] relationship to their discipline. They cannot simply be ‘historians,’ but rather have to possess what Arthur Danto, the philosopher-turned-art-critic, calls ‘a tremendous synoptic vision.’21

15 Mark Jarzombek, The Psychologizing of Modernity: Art, Architecture, and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 31. 16 Jarzombek, The Psychologizing of Modernity, 31. 17 Jarzombek, The Psychologizing of Modernity, 31. 18 Jarzombek, The Psychologizing of Modernity, 31. 19 Jarzombek, The Psychologizing of Modernity, 31. 20 Jarzombek, The Psychologizing of Modernity, 5. 21 Jarzombek, The Psychologizing of Modernity, 5. 214 Conclusion: An Intertwined History

Curtis draws his arguments mostly from secondary sources, something that has been repeatedly pointed out by the scholars who reviewed the book, subsequent historians and researchers on history and historiography, and, for instance, by researchers on Le Corbusier.22 Jarzombek interrogates the space of exchange, the distance between Le Corbusier’s work and Curtis’s analysis, between the architect’s frame of mind in the 1930s and the historian’ description of his supposed mental processes in the 1980s. According to Jarzombek, the question to be asked is simple: “Where does the author acquire his confidence and upon what does he ground his assumptions?”23 Jarzombek makes the point that his intention is not to blame Curtis, but rather to highlight that there is more at stake than just an interpretation of the architect’s work and ideas, for example social and technological shifts, and other major changes that occurred throughout the twentieth century. I believe that Modern Architecture Since 1900 is a coherent account of the development of modern architecture, as Curtis frames it. The issue is that, as posited by Jarzombek, a definition of modern architecture based mostly on the materialisation of architect’s ideals and ideas, based on basic principles, and of the writing of its history based mostly on the historian’s ability to reproduce the structure of the architect’s choices – what Barthes calls reflexive history – is not complete.24

Jarzombek points out that Curtis’s emphasis on the architect’s ideas and ideals, his ‘psychologised’ writing, could be intended as a form of primary source and validation, but without Curtis theoretically justifying why that is necessary in the first place.25 He argues that it is precisely Curtis’s determination to explain architecture in terms of the creativity and innovation of the architects that results in subjective writing, in which his own voice and ‘self’ is prioritised over the architects’ voice. Jarzombek reflects on Curtis’s writing, and how “it is difficult to separate his desire to seem ‘authentic’ from the practices of modernist history writing.”26 I agree with Jarzombek in that Curtis’s

22 Graham Livesey and Antony Moulis, “From Impact to Legacy: Interpreting Critical Writing and Research on Le Corbusier from the 1920s to the Present,” LC 50 Years After Conference Proceedings (Valencia, 2015), 9. Recently published in Livesey and Moulis, Le Corbusier: Critical Concepts in Architecture (London: Routledge, 2017). 23 Jarzombek, The Psychologizing of Modernity, 25. 24 Barthes, “The Discourse of History,” 136-137. 25 Jarzombek, The Psychologizing of Modernity, 26. 26 Jarzombek, The Psychologizing of Modernity, 26. 215 Conclusion: An Intertwined History emphasis on differentiating his narrative is, in the end, one of the features that links him to the tradition of the writing of the history of architecture.

Extrapolating this analysis to the writing of Modern Architecture Since 1900 in the light of what has been discussed in this dissertation, certain parallel again arise between Curtis’s work as a historian and the way he portrays the work of authentic practicing architects: firstly, that the writing of history, like architecture, is mainly a creative practice involving the innovation of the creator’s mind; and, secondly, that Curtis considers his arguments to be as authentic as the works of meaningful architecture, rooted in the best of the modern tradition and addressing the circumstances of the present. I argue that Curtis’s choice to focus, not on primary sources and theoretical debates, but rather on describing the experience of buildings and the architect’s process, and even his decision to avoid quotes and an excess of notes, enhances the readability of Modern Architecture Since 1900. As discussed in this dissertation, by emphasising the need for readability in his historical narrative, Curtis assumes a risk that he may ultimately hide or disguise its potential scholarly value. Curtis claims that the book is merely about architecture, but I would add that it is also about his interpretation of architecture, and that it shows how crucial it is “to understand the multiple levels of interpretation used in coming to terms with buildings and architectural ideas.”27

Similarly, the historical narrative presented by Curtis in his book can be read and interpreted on multiple levels: as a recommended reading, to further explore themes, architects and buildings mentioned in undergraduate and postgraduate courses on the history and theory of architecture; and, as with this dissertation, as the object of study of historiographical research. Like Modern Architecture Since 1900, this dissertation is mainly built on secondary sources complemented by first-hand experience, in this case by communication with the Curtis. The argument presented is the result of a personalised reading of Modern Architecture Since 1900 under the premises justified in Chapter One, and it is shaped by my choice of sources and literature to include in the discussion of the different themes. However, this dissertation contributes to

27 William J.R. Curtis, email message to author, August 31, 2017. 216 Conclusion: An Intertwined History knowledge by interpreting Curtis’s writing in the context of its own time, and by discerning and justifying a certain resonance of his discourse with today’s architectural debates.

Shift 3: Pioneer of a Global Discipline This dissertation has shown that it is possible to understand Curtis as a pioneer in the field of global history in architecture, given his balanced and global approach to modern architecture, and to the writing of its history. The book itself is a global reality given its impact, its accessibility in many different languages, and the fact that elements of it were written in different parts of the world. Curtis’s formulation of a modern tradition that is inclusive, continuous, a result of transformations and exchanges throughout the world and the twentieth century, makes it possible to argue, as I do, that Modern Architecture Since 1900 is close to the idea of ‘intertwined history,’ as coined by Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978). I contend that Curtis’s book is exemplary of the attitude change in histories of modern architecture, the addition of non-Western traditions to the architectural survey, detected by Sibel Bozdoğan in 1999, even if she does not mention it. Also, it is exemplary of an inclusiveness that goes beyond a growing list of countries and architects, including not only previously neglected developed and developing regions, but also the periphery of Europe and the United States where some regions had been equally overlooked.

The question is: does Curtis really challenge the Western canon or does he merely incorporate diverse countries and realities into that canon without really challenging it? Can we state that a White and male European historian challenges the dominance of the discourse generated by White and male European and American historians and architects? It is worth noting that the success of Modern Architecture Since 1900 makes him an odd privileged ‘outsider’ with an extraordinary ease to travel and to challenge, if not fully the canon, the institutions responsible for its generation, on which he does not depend. In the letter written on August 28, 1981, by James S. Ackerman on his positive reaction to the manuscript of Modern Architecture Since 1900, he refers to

217 Conclusion: An Intertwined History

Curtis as a “freelancer,” and to his methodology as “adventurousness.”28 Curtis’s view of modern architecture is also influenced by his practice as a photographer and artist, and, in his own words, as “a world traveller who uses his eyes”29 in an attempt to understand the ‘substructures’ of diverse cultures and their manifestation in built spaces and forms.30 In my conversation with Jean-Louis Cohen about this research, he agreed on the significance of understanding Curtis as a traveller and ‘experiencer’ of architecture, and the way this attitude differentiates his own historical discourse from that of previous and subsequent historians.31 Not only is Modern Architecture Since 1900 a global history with a global impact, but Curtis can also be understood as a global historian.

Curtis’s narrative, as well as his personal experience of architecture, shows a sincere engagement with the problems and potentials of every country, within reason. Modern Architecture Since 1900 is a first step towards undoing the established hierarchies, consolidated as Western canon. When addressing the current situation around 1992-3, and without using the word globalisation, Curtis writes that “the growing perception of a shared planet offered hints of new conceptions of universality, while the appreciation of local differences prompted new formulations of ‘modernity’ and revised schemes of history.”32 Had he written a fourth edition after 1999/2000, he would have had the linguistic and disciplinary tools to overcome what could be considered the ‘colonialism’ of his own approach, incorporating more politically correct terms and a properly global framework into his writing.

Going back to Jarzombek’s 2015 reassessment of global, as discussed in Chapter One of this dissertation, if the false duality between tradition and modernism and its institutionalisation is one the problems that have perpetuated the Western canon, then, Curtis’s permanent rejection of the dichotomy between modernity and tradition is indeed a way of challenging the canon, as is his understanding of a universalism

28 James S. Ackerman, Prof of Fine Arts, Harvard University, Letter to Simon Havilan, Director of Phaidon Press, August 28, 1981. William J.R. Curtis, Letter sent via email message to author, February 21, 2017. WJRC Archive. 29 William J.R. Curtis, email message to author, March 11, 2016. 30 Curtis, “A Historian’s Perspective on Modern Architecture,” transcript of the talk, January 2007. 31 Jean-Louis Cohen, meeting with Gevork Hartoonian’s PhD students, July 9, 2017. 32 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 684. 218 Conclusion: An Intertwined History non-homogenising. However, as pointed out by Hilde Heynen, since the 1980s the idea “emerged that modernity can take on different forms and that it is not the same everywhere,” making it necessary to understand the differences in the way architecture is conceived, built and experienced in different parts of the world – this individualised understanding is less evident in Curtis’s synoptic narrative than the willingness and possibility to include examples from diverse countries and contexts.33

In The Postconceptual Condition (2017), Peter Osborne reflects on the relationship between the alleged end of postmodernism and the emergence of the global. The decline of the critical category of postmodernism was accompanied by, and followed, the rethinking of modernity, or modernities: “a revival, deepening, multiplication and complication of discourses of the modern – with ‘multiple,’ ‘alternative,’ and ‘postcolonial’ modernities at the fore.”34 To understand what Osborne calls “a singular, complexly internally differentiated global modernity,” it is not enough to grasp the present; in his opinion, modernity is portrayed more accurately through the notion of “global contemporaneity.”35 However, I would argue that global modernity is a category that helps to understand the situation of architecture at the end of the 1990s, which resonates with Curtis’s proposal of a modern tradition. Osborne writes that “one might understand global modernity more processually [sic] as a play of forces between the abstractly unifying and temporally self-differentiation power of the universalisation of exchange relations at the level of the planet and the persisting complexly interacting multiplicity of relatively territorially discrete, immanently self-differentiating modernities,” which again seems to expand on Curtis’s argument for the need to find a balance between a certain universalism and the specificities of different regions.36

33 Hilde Heynen, “Modernity and Modernities. Challenges for the Historiography of Modern Architecture,” in Conceiving our Modernity: Perspectives of Study on Chinese Modern Architectural History, 2015, 27. Proceedings of the 1st Symposium of Chinese Modern Architectural History and Theory Forum. 34 Peter Osborne, The Postconceptual Condition. London and New York: Verso, 2017. Originally published as “Global Modernity and the Contemporary: Two Categories of the Philosophy of Historical Time,” in Breaking up Time: Negotiating the Borders between Present, Past and Future ed. Chris Lorenz and Berber Bevernage (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, 2013), 71. 35 Peter Osborne, The Postconceptual Condition. London and New York: Verso, 2017. Originally published as “The Postconceptual Condition: Or, the Cultural Logic of High Capitalism Today,” Radical Philosophy vol 184 (March/April 2014): 20. 36 Osborne, “Global Modernity and the Contemporary…,”78. 219 Conclusion: An Intertwined History

In conclusion, Curtis’s formulation of a modern tradition, or traditions, that encompasses architectural production throughout the twentieth century and the world in an intertwined way, resonates with very recent attempts to formulate new and more accurate historical periodisations and definitions of modernity. Curtis’s intuitions about both regionalism and postmodernism, about their relevance and ephemerality respectively, were not only proven when he wrote the third edition in 1996, but are also relevant today for attempts at theorising the present and contemporaneity, at theorising the global. In order to periodise the present, it is necessary first to understand the late twentieth century and the relationship between modernity and capitalism. Curtis’s book can be considered exemplary of the transition from a ‘colonial modernity’ to a ‘global modernity,’ or, to use his own term, from a modern tradition to a global tradition.

Finally, I want to acknowledge that I have built my conclusion on the idea of considering Modern Architecture Since 1900 as Curtis’s historical discourse, or his “discourse of history” as discussed by Barthes, recognising his authority as a historian and his organisation of the narrative, when I am fully aware of the author’s rejection of the term ‘discourse.’37 Curtis argues that his emphasis is on the analysis of buildings based on his own experience, and on understanding them within a broader historical perspective, though not within a particular discourse, as yet another way to differentiate his approach from those of other historians of modern architecture. As a result of this doctoral investigation, I posit that William J.R. Curtis’s Modern Architecture Since 1900 is a credible and inclusive narration of the continuous development of modern architecture, a narration that has its strengths and weaknesses, but is coherent within the premises of Curtis’s own understanding of architecture and of the writing of its history. The scope and depth of Curtis’s approach made his book a starting point to be improved on in the development of the field of the global history – at least, a narration to take into account. However, as with most

37 Roland Barthes, “The Discourse of History,” in The Rustle of Language (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989). 220 Conclusion: An Intertwined History themes discussed, his contribution to architectural discourse is yet to be fully and properly acknowledged.

By acknowledging Curtis’s contribution to the writing of history, made in the early 1980s and culminating in 1996 with the third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900, this dissertation has explored the limits of the theoretical and historical box in which he is imprisoned.38 I argue that Curtis is a pioneer in the writing of a global history of architecture because, in 1982 and again in 1996, he presented an alternative and intertwined narrative of modern architecture built on the formulation of a modern tradition, or traditions. However, this does not make Modern Architecture Since 1900 a global history of architecture written in the late twentieth century. Precisely because of the time when it was written, the book is a major contribution to the historiography of modern architecture in comparison to contemporary and subsequent histories, but too early a contribution to make it part of the new global understanding of, and approach to, architecture. Despite the fact that the delimited timeframe in this dissertation corresponds to the time when Curtis was writing Modern Architecture Since 1900, between the late 1970s and early 1990s, both the discussion and conclusion inevitably draw closer to the present, when yet new shifts are taking place. Through the writing of this dissertation my own research interests have drawn closer to the present, from the study of the writing of architectural history in the 1920s and 1930s to the late twentieth century, from the historiography of modern architecture, to the historiography of global architecture, which, is still to be written.

38 Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature, ed. Randal Johnson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 184. 221 Bibliography

Bibliography

Ackerman, James S. Prof of Fine Arts, Harvard University. Letter to Simon Havilan, Director of Phaidon Press, August 28, 1981. William J.R. Curtis, Letter sent via email message to author, February 21, 2017. WJRC Archive.

Akcan, Esra. “Critical Practice in the Global Era: The Question Concerning ‘Other’ Geographies.” Architectural Theory Review vol 7, no. 1 (2002): 37-57. –Review of Histories of the Immediate Present: Inventing Architectural Modernism by Anthony Vidler. Journal of Architectural Education vol 62, no. 3 Criticism in Architecture (February, 2009): 89-90. – “Postcolonial Theories in Architecture.” In A Critical History of Contemporary Architecture: 1960-2010, edited by Elie G. Haddad and David Rifkin. London: Ashgate, 2014.

Amourgis, Spyros, ed. Critical Regionalism: The Pomona Meeting Proceedings. Pomona: College of Environmental Design, CSP University, 1991.

Arnold, Dana. Reading Architectural History. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. – “Facts or Fragments? Visual Histories in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Art History vol 25, no. 5 (September 2005): 450-468. – “Art History: Contemporary Perspectives on Method.” Art History vol 32, no. 4 (September 2009): 657-663.

Arnold, Dana, Elvan Altan Ergut and Belgin Tura Özkaya, eds. Rethinking Architectural Historiography. London and New York: Routledge, 2006.

Barthes, Roland. “The Discourse of History.” In The Rustle of Language, 127-140. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.

Blau, Eve, ed. “Architectural History 1999/2000.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians vol 58, no. 3 (September 1999).0

Bozdoğan, Sibel. “Architectural History in Professional Education: Reflections on Postcolonial Challenges to the Modern Survey.” Journal of Architectural Education vol 52, no. 4 (May 1999): 207-215.

Borden, Iain and Jane Rendell, eds. Intersections: Architectural Histories and Critical Theories. London and New York: Routledge, 2000.

Branscome, Eva. Hans Hollein and Postmodernism: Art and Architecture in Austria, 1958-1985. London: Routledge, 2017.

Brown, Nathan. “Postmodernity, not yet. Toward a New Periodisation.” Radical Philosophy vol 2, no. 1 (2018): 11-27.

Buchanan, Peter. “With Due Respect: Regionalism.” The Architectural Review, 1035 (May 1983). 223 Bibliography

Canizaro, Vincent B., ed. Architectural Regionalism: Collected Writings on Place, Identity, Modernity, and Tradition. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007.

Clark, Justine and Paul Walker. “Interpretation, Intention and the Work of Architecture.” In Writing, Representation and Criticism in Architecture/ Semi- Detached, edited by Naomi Stead, 221-228. Melbourne: Uro Media, 2012.

Cohen, Jean-Louis. L’architecture au futur depuis 1889/ The Future of Architecture since 1889. Paris/New York: Phaidon Press Limited, 2012. – “At the Crossroads: Perspectives and Impasses of Architectural History.” Keynote lecture at the 4th biannual EAHN conference, Dublin, June 6, 2016.

Colquhoun, Alan. “Postmodernism and Structuralism: A Retrospective Glance.” Assemblage, no. 5 (February 1988): 6-15. – “The Concept of Regionalism.” In Postcolonial Space(s), edited by Gülsüm Baydar Nalbantoglu and Wong Chong Thai, 13-24. New York: Princenton Architectural Press, 1997. –Modern Architecture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Curtis, William J.R. “The Royal College of Physicians in Regent’s Park, Denys Lasdun and Partners.” Connoisseur (August 1970): 284-285. – “Berthold Lubetkin: Socialist Architecture in the Diaspora.” Archithèse 12. Zurich: Arthur Niggli, 1974. –Le Corbusier/ English Architecture 1930s. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1975. –Review of The Architecture of Henry Hobson Richardson and His Office by James O’Gorman. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians vol 34, no. 4 (December 1975): 319-324. –Review of Architecture and Design 1890-1939. An International Anthology of Original Articles by Tim and Charlotte Benton. Journal of the Society of the Architectural Historians vol 35, no. 3 (October 1976): 224-225. –Review of The Open Hand. Essays on Le Corbusier edited by Russell Walden. Journal of the Society of the Architectural Historians vol 37, no. 4 (December 1978): 295-299. –Review of Morality and Architecture, The Development of a Theme in Architectural History and Theory from the Gothic Revival to the Modern Movement by David Watkin. Journal of the Society of the Architectural Historians vol 38, no. 3 (October 1979): 304- 307. – “Wells Coates,” “Berthold Lubetkin,” “Denys Lasdun.” Entries in Contemporary Architects, edited by Muriel Emanuel. New York: St. James Press, 1980. –Boston: Forty Years of Modern Architecture. Boston: I.C.A., 1980. –Modern Architecture Since 1900. London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1982. – “Authenticity, Abstraction and the Ancient Sense: Le Corbusier’s and Louis Kahn’s Ideas of Parliament.” Perspecta vol 20 (1983): 181-194. – “Modern Architecture, Monumentality and the Meaning of Institutions: Reflections on Authenticity.” Harvard Architectural Review no. 4 (1984): 65-85. – “Principle versus Pastiche: Perspectives on some Recent Classicisms.” The Architectural Review vol 176, no. 1050 (August 1984): 11-21. 224 Bibliography

– “Modern Transformations of Classicism.” The Architectural Review vol 176, no. 1050 (August 1984): 37-49. – “Regionalism in Architecture Session III.” In Regionalism in Architecture, edited by Robert Powell, 73-77. Singapore: Concept Media/The Aga Khan Award for Architecture, 1985. –Le Corbusier: Ideas and Forms. London: Phaidon Press, 1986. – “Towards an Authentic Regionalism.” In Mimar 19: Architecture in Development, edited by Hasan-Uddin Khan, 24-31. Singapore: Concept Media, 1986. – Modern Architecture Since 1900. London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1987. –Balkrishna V. Doshi: An Architecture for India. New York: Rizzoli, 1988. – “Contemporary Transformations of Modern Architecture.” Architectural Record vol 177, no. 7 (June 1989): 108-117. –Modern Architecture Since 1900. London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1996. – “A Historian’s Perspective on Modern Architecture.” English version of text “La perspectiva de un historiador sobre la arquitectura moderna,” read out by the author in Spanish on the occasion of the presentation of the translation of the third edition of Modern Architecture Since 1900 at the Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, January 2007. WJRC Archive. – “Transformation and Invention: On Re-reading Modern Architecture.” The Architectural Review vol 221, no. 1321 (March 2007): 36-40. Original essay written by Curtis in February 2007, 1-6, WJRC Archive. – “The History of a History: Le Corbusier at work, the Genesis of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts.” In Massilia 2013- Le Corbusier- Ultime Pensées/Derniers Projets- 1960/1965, 112-151. Paris and Marseille: Fondation Le Corbusier and éditions Imbernon, 2014. WJRC Archive. – “Remembering Ackerman: Resonances and Reminiscences over Half a Century.” In James S. Ackerman: Remembrances, 71-121. James Sloss Ackerman Memorial, Harvard, April 2017. WJRC Archive.

Donham, Brett. “Revisionist Modernism,” review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis. Progressive Architecture vol 65, no. 5 (May 1984): 185.

Eaton, Leonard K. Review of A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals by Spiro Kostof. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians vol 39, no. 3 (March 1988): 76.

Eggener, Keith L. “Placing Resistance: A Critique of Critical Regionalism.” Journal of Architectural Education vol 55, no. 4 (May 2002): 228-237. –, ed. American Architectural History: A Contemporary Reader. London and New York: Routledge, 2004.

Esteban Maluenda, Ana. “Latinoamérica en la historiografía moderna.” In La arquitectura moderna en Latinoamérica, edited by Ana Esteban Maluenda, 291- 339. Barcelona: Reverté Editorial, 2016.

Fernández-Galiano, Luis. “Para hacer las paces con el pasado.” Review of The Historiography of Modern Architecture by Panayotis Tournikiotis. Arquitectura Viva vol 14, no. 82 (January-February 2002): 89.

225 Bibliography

–ed. Atlas Global Architecture circa 2000. Fundación BBVA, 2008. – “La óptica francesa: otra historia del siglo XX.” Review of The Future of Architecture since 1889 by Jean-Louis Cohen. Arquitectura Viva no. 144 (2012): 77.

Fisher, Dinah. “The City as Culture.” Architecture Australia vol 72, no. 5 (September 1983): 72.

Foster, Hal. “(Post) Modern Polemics.” Perspecta vol. 21 (1984): 144-153.

Fournier, Colin. “Reassessing Postmodernism: Is the Movement Still Relevant 50 Years on?” The Architectural Review vol 230, no. 1377 (November 2011): 112-117.

Frampton, Kenneth. Modern Architecture: A Critical History. London: Thames and Hudson, 1980. – “Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance.” In The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Post-Modern Culture, edited by Hal Foster, 16-30. Seattle: Bay Press, 1983. – “Prospects for a Critical Regionalism.” Perspecta vol 20 (1983): 147-162. – Modern Architecture: A Critical History. London: Thames and Hudson, 1985. – “Critical Regionalism Revisited” In Critical Regionalism: The Pomona Meeting Proceedings, edited by Spyros Amourgis. California: College of Environmental Design California State Polytechnic University, 1991. – Modern Architecture: A Critical History. London: Thames and Hudson, 1992. –ed. World Architecture: A Critical Mosaic 1900-2000. Wien: Springer, 1999. – Modern Architecture: A Critical History. London: Thames and Hudson, 2007. – “A Conversation with Kenneth Frampton: Can there be a Global Architectural History today?” CCA lecture at the Paul Desmarais Theater, delivered on April 6, 2017, accessed May 11, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRWp5AqAZjs. –Plenary Talk at the 71st Annual International Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, in Saint Paul, Minnesota, delivered on Friday, April 20, 2018. Published on May 21, 2018.

Frank, Samuel B. Review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis and Modern Architecture and Design: An Alternative History by Bill Risebero. Journal of Architectural Education vol 36, no. 4 (summer 1983): 29-30.

Gannon, Todd. Reyner Banham and the Paradoxes of High Tech. Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute, 2017.

Garcia, Jean-Claude. Review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis. L’Architecture d’Aujourd'hui (December 1996). Mentioned in William J.R. Curtis short CV plus addendum with best book reviews. WJRC Archive.

Ghirardo, Diane. Architecture After Modernism. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1996.

Goad, Philip and Julie Willis. “A Bigger Picture: Reframing Australian Architectural History.” Fabrications vol 18, no. 1 (June 2008): 6-23.

226 Bibliography

Groat, Linda and David Wang. Architectural Research Methods. New York: John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2002.

Habermas, Jürgen. “Modern and Postmodern Architecture.” In Architecture Theory since 1968, edited by K. Michael Hays. Cambridge, MA. and London: The MIT Press, 1998. Presented as a lecture at the opening of the exhibition ‘The Other Tradition: Architecture in Munich from 1800 up to Today,’ November 1981; published in a new translation in Habermas, The New Conservatism: Cultural Criticism and the Historians’ Debate. Cambridge, The MIT Press, 1989.

Haddad, Elie. “Charles Jencks and the Historiography of Post-Modernism.” The Journal of Architecture vol 14, no. 4 (2009): 493-510.

Haddad, Elie G. and Rifkind, eds. A Critical History of Contemporary Architecture. London: Ashgate, 2014.

Hancock, John E. Review of A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals by Spiro Kostof. Journal of Architectural Education vol 39, no. 3 (Spring 1986): 31.

Harries, Karsten. “Thoughts on a Non-Arbitrary Architecture.” Perspecta vol 20 (1983): 9-20.

Harries, Susie. Nikolaus Pevsner: The Life. London: Chatto & Windus, 2011.

Hartoonian, Gevork. The Mental Life of Architectural Historian: Re-opening the Early Historiography of Modern Architecture. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011. – “Critical Regionalism: Whatever Happened to Autonomy.” Fusion 4 (August 2004) accessed February 3, 2017. http://www.fusion-journal.com/issue/004- fusion-the-town-and-the-city/critical-regionalism-whatever-happened-to- autonomy. This is an updated and revised paper originally published as “Critical Regionalism Reloaded,” Fabrications vol 16, no. 2 (December 2006): 122-139.

Hays, K. Michael, ed. Architecture Theory Since 1968. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 1998.

Heath, Tom. Review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis. Architecture Australia vol 73, no. 5 (July 1984): 26.

Herde, Peter and Erik Wegerhoff, eds. Architecture and Identity. Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2009.

Hernández Pezzi, Emilia. Historiografía de la arquitectura moderna. Madrid: Universidad Complutense, 1988.

Heynen, Hilde. Architecture and Modernity. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 1999. – “Engaging Modernism.” In Back from Utopia. The Challenge of the Modern Movement, edited by Hubert-Jan Henket and Hilde Heynen, 378-398. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2002. – “Modernity and Modernities. Challenges for the Historiography of Modern

227 Bibliography

Architecture.” In Conceiving our Modernity: Perspectives of Study on Chinese Modern Architectural History. 2015, 20-34.

Hidalgo Hermosilla, Germán. “Lectura del tratado La arquitectura moderna desde 1900: William J.R. Curtis, arquitectura entre tradición e invención.” Barcelona: Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña, 1997.

Higgot, Andrew. Review of The Historiography of Modern Architecture by Panayotis Tournikiotis and Architecture and Modernity: A Critique by Hilde Heynen. AA Files 41 (summer 2000): 81.

Hvattum, Mari and Christian Hermansen, eds. Tracing Modernity: Manifestations of the Modern in Architecture and the City. London and New York: Routledge, 2004.

Isac, Ángel. “La historiografía de la arquitectura del siglo XX: modelos historiográficos.” In Lecciones de los maestros: aproximación histórico-crítica a los grandes historiadores de la arquitectura española, edited by Maria Pilar Biel Ibáñez y Ascensión Hernández Martínez, 35-58. Zaragoza: Institución ‘Fernando el Católico’ y Universidad de Zaragoza, 2009.

Jacobs, Jane M. Edge of Empire: Postcolonialism and the City. London: Routledge, 1996.

James-Chakraborty, Kathleen. Architecture Since 1400. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014.

Jameson, Fredric. “Postmodernism and the Market.” In The Retreat of the Intellectuals: Socialist Register 1990, edited by Ralph Miliband and Leo Panitch, 95-110. London: Merlin Press, 1990. – “Architecture and the Critique of Ideology,” in Architecture Theory since 1968, ed. K. Michael Hays (Cambridge, MA. and London: The MIT Press, 1998), 460. Paper presented at the Institute of Architecture and Urban Studies, New York, 1982; published in Architecture, Criticism, Ideology, ed. Joan Ockman et al. (Princeton Architectural Press, 1985).

Jarzombek, Mark. “The Disciplinary Dislocations of (Architectural) History.” In “Architectural History 1999/2000,” edited by Eve Blau. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians vol 58, no. 3 (September 1999): 488-493. –The Psychologizing of Modernity: Art, Architecture, and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. –Review of The Historiography of Modern Architecture by Panayotis Tournikiotis. The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians vol 60, no. 1 (March 2001), 108. – “Critical or Post-Critical?” Architectural Theory Review vol 7, no. 1 (April 2002): 149-151. – “Working out Johnson’s Role in History.” In Philip Johnson: The Constancy of Change, edited by Emmanuel Petit, 234-239. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. – “Architecture: The Global Imaginary in an Antiglobal World.” In “A Discussion on the Global and the Universal.” Grey Room 61 (Fall 2015): 111-122. 228 Bibliography

Jarzombek, Mark, Vikramaditya Prakash and Francis D.K. Ching. A Global History of Architecture. New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons, 2006.

Jarzombek, Mark and Alfred B. Hwangbo. “Global in a Not-So-Global World.” Journal of Architectural Education vol 64, no. 2 (March 2011): 59-65.

Jones, Peter Blundell. “Curtis’s Corbussian Bent.” Review of Modern Architecture since 1900 by William Curtis. Architects Journal vol 187, issue 22 (June 1988): 79.

Kostof, Spiro. A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.

Leach, Andrew. Manfredo Tafuri: Choosing History. Gante: A&S Books, 2007. –What is Architectural History. Cambridge, UK and Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2010.

Leach, Andrew (guest editor), Johan Lagae, Marc Schoonderbeek, Tom Avermaete. “Editorial: Positions. Shared Territories in Historiography and Practice.” OASE no. 69 (2006).

Leach, Andrew, Antony Moulis, and Nicole Sully, eds. Shifting Views: Selected Essays on the Architectural History of Australia and New Zealand. St. Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press, 2008.

Leach, Neil. Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory. London: Routledge, 1997.

Macarthur, John and Andrew Leach. “Architecture, Disciplinarity and the Arts: Considering the Issues.” In Architecture, Disciplinarity and the Arts, edited by John Macarthur and Andrew Leach, 5-15. Ghent: A & S Books, 2009.

Macarthur, John. “Sense, Meaning and Taste in Architectural Criticism.” In Writing, Representation and Criticism in Architecture/ Semi-Detached, edited by Naomi Stead, 229-235. Melbourne: Uro Media, 2012.

Mansoor, Jaleh. Marshall Plan Modernism. Italian Postwar Abstraction and the Beginning of Autonomia. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2016.

McLeod, Mary. “Architecture and Politics in the Reagan Era: From Postmodernism to Deconstructivisim.” Assemblage no. 8 (February 1989): 22-59.

Mead, Andrew. Review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis. Architects’ Journal vol 204, no. 10 (September 1996): 50-51.

Mertins, Detlef. “Transparencies yet to Come: Sigfried Giedion and the Prehistory of Architectural Modernity.” Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation, Princeton University, June 1996. –Modernity Unbound: Other Histories of Architectural Modernity. London: AA Publications, 2011.

229 Bibliography

Moos, Stanislaus von. Review of Modern Architecture since 1900 by William Curtis. Art Journal vol 43, no. 2 (summer 1983): 207-209.

Nesbitt, Kate, ed. Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture: An Anthology of Architectural Theory 1965-1995. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996.

Norberg-Schulz, Christian. “Heidegger’s Thinking on Architecture.” Perspecta vol 20 (1983): 61-68.

Oliver, Paul. Review of Modern Architecture since 1900 by William Curtis. The Oxford Art Journal vol 5, no. 2 Architecture (1983): 55-56.

Osborne, Peter. “Global Modernity and the Contemporary: Two Categories of the Philosophy of Historical Time.” In Breaking up Time: Negotiating the Borders between Present, Past and Future, edited by Chris Lorenz and Berber Bevernage, 69-84. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, 2013. – “The Postconceptual Condition: Or, the Cultural Logic of High Capitalism Today.” Radical Philosophy vol 184 (March/April 2014): 19-27. – “Crisis as Form.” Lecture at Kingston University, London (12 January 2017). –The Postconceptual Condition. London and New York: Verso, 2017.

Otero-Pailos, Jorge. Architecture’s Historical Turn: Phenomenology and the Rise of the Postmodern. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2010.

Pallasmaa, Juhani. “Tradition and Modernity: The Feasibility of Regional Architecture in Post-Modern Society.” In Architectural Regionalism: Collected Writings on Place, Identity, Modernity, and Tradition, edited by Vincent B. Canizaro, 128-139. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007. Originally published in The Architectural Review (May 1988): 26-34. – “Newness, Tradition and Identity: Existential Content and Meaning in Architecture.” Architectural Design vol 82, no. 6 (November/December 2012): 14- 21.

Pawley, Martin. “Fish are Jumping.” Review of Modern Architecture: A Critical History” by Kenneth Frampton and Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis. The Architectural Review vol 174, no. 1041 (November 1983): 6.

Peponis, John. Review of The Historiography of Modern Architecture by Panayotis Tournikiotis. The Journal of Architecture vol 6, no.1 (2001): 102.

Pommer, Richard. “Revising Modernist History: The Architecture of the 1920s and 1930s.” Art Journal vol 43, no. 2 (summer 1983): 107.

Powel, Robert, ed. Regionalism in Architecture. Singapore: Concept Media/ The Aga Khan Award for Architecture, 1985.

Powers, Alan. Review of Histories of the Immediate Present: Inventing Architectural Modernism by Anthony Vidler. Times Higher Education (17 of July 2011).

230 Bibliography

Rich, Adrienne. “When we Dead Awake: Writing as Re-vision.” In On Lies, Secrets and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1979.

Rivera Gámez, David. La otra arquitectura moderna: expresionistas, metafísicos y clasicistas, 1910-1950. Barcelona: Reverté Editorial, 2017.

Rogers, Michael. Review of Modern Architecture since 1900 by William Curtis, Library Journal (1 October 1996): 132.

Rudolph, Paul. “Regionalism in Architecture.” Perspecta vol 4 (1957): 12-19.

Rykwert, Joseph. “Inheritance or Tradition.” Architectural Design vol 49, no. 5/6 (1979): 2-6.

Sainz, Jorge. Review of Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William Curtis. Arquitectura (Revista del Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Madrid) vol 266, no. 8 (May-June 1987): 8. –“Arquitectura moderna: última edición.” Review of Modern Architecture since 1900 by William Curtis. Arquitectura Viva vol 59, no.7 (July-August 1996): 73.

Scalvini, Maria Luisa and Maria Grazia Sandri. L’ immagine storiografica dell’architettura contemporánea da Platz a Giedion. Rome: Officina Edizioni, 1984.

Sekler, Eduard F. and William J.R. Curtis, Le Corbusier at Work, the Genesis of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1978.

Serenyi, Peter. “Timeless but of Its Time: Le Corbusier’s Architecture in India.” Perspecta vol 20 (1983): 91-118. –Review of Modern Architecture since 1900 by William Curtis. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians vol 43, no. 3 (October 1984): 274-277.

Smith, Norris Kelly. “Architectural Authenticity.” Perspecta vol 20 (1983): 215-219.

Soja, Edward W. Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory. London: Verso Books, 1989.

Somol, Robert E, ed. Autonomy and Ideology: Positioning an Avant-Garde in America. New York: Monacceli Press, 1997.

Sykes, A. Krista. Constructing a New Agenda: Architectural Theory 1993-2009. New York: Princeton University Press, 2010.

Szacka, Léa-Catherine. “Irony; or, the Self-Critical Opacity of Postmodern Architecture.” The Journal of Architecture vol 19, no. 3 (2014): 457-464.

Tafuri, Manfredo. Theories and History of Architecture. Translated by Giorgio Verrechia. London and New York: Granada, 1980. Originally published as Teorie e storia dell’architettura. Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1968.

231 Bibliography

Tournikiotis, Panayotis. The Historiography of Modern Architecture. Cambridge, MA.: The MIT Press, 1999.

Trachtenberg, Marvin. “Some Observations on Recent Architectural History.” The Art Bulletin vol 70, no. 2 (June 1988): 208-241.

Turner, Tom. City as Landscape: A Post-Postmodern View of Design and Planning. London: E&FN Spon, 1996.

Tzonis, Alexander and Liane Lefaivre. “The Grid and the Pathway.” Architecture in Greece, no. 5 (1981): 121-134. – “Why Critical Regionalism Today?” in Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture: An Anthology of Architectural Theory 1965- 1995, edited by Kate Nesbitt, 484-492. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996. Originally published in 1990. –eds. Critical Regionalism: Architecture and Identity in a Globalized World. Munich, Berlin, London and New York: Prestel, 2003.

Vidler, Anthony. Histories of the Immediate Present: Inventing Architectural Modernism. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.

Vidler, Anthony, Mark Jarzombek, Meredith TenHoor, et al. “E-Flux Architecture presents ‘History/Theory.’” Colloquium organised by E-Flux, New York, November 14, 2017.

Walker, Paul. “Kenneth Frampton and the Fiction of the Place.” In Shifting Views: Selected Essays on the Architectural History of Australia and New Zealand, edited by Andrew Leach, Antony Moulis and Nicole Sully, 70-80. St. Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press, 2008.

Watkin, David. The Rise of Architecture History. London: The Architectural Press, 1980. –A History of Western Architecture. London: Laurence King Publishing, 1986.

Whiteley, Nigel. Reyner Banham: Historian of the Immediate Future. Cambridge, MA. and London: The MIT Press, 2002.

Wittkower, Rudolf. Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism. London: Warburg Institute, 1949.

Zabalbeascoa, Anatxu. “Kenneth Frampton: ‘Los rascacielos no son arquitectura, solo dinero.’” El Pais Semanal (March 10, 2017), accessed March 14, 2017. http://elpaissemanal.elpais.com/confidencias/kenneth- frampton/?id_externo_rsoc=FB_CC.

Zahiri, Nima, Omid Dezhdar and Manouchehr Foroutan. “Rethinking of Critical Regionalism in High-Rise Buildings.” Buildings vol 7, no. 4 (January 2017): 2.

232