Rediscovering Architecture: Paestum in Eighteenth-Century

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Sigrid de Jong first uncertain whether he was seeing attractively reproduced here. Through this Rediscovering Architecture: Paestum rocks or ruins. And Antoine Vaudoyer, evidence, she shows how visitors’ engage- in Eighteenth-Century Architectural visiting Paestum in the summer of 1787, ment with Paestum often developed in sev- Experience and Theory found the temples “of heavy and clumsy eral stages, marked by the interactions of New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, character,” with “the form, the grace and theory and experience. De Jong’smainhy- 2015, 352 pp., 100 color and 185 b/w illus. subtlety of Hercules” (47). The temples pothesis is that the perception of Paestum $85.00 (cloth), ISBN 9780300195750 were the subject of captivating drawings did not alter as a result of changing archi- and paintings, as in Thomas Hardwick’s tectural ideas; rather, architectural thought ’ Sigrid de Jongs Rediscovering Architecture is sketchbooks and William Turner’s dra- evolved alongside and on the basis of the about several things at once. Most evi- matic watercolors (many of which pro- experience of Paestum. dently, it is a book about a group of three vide beautiful illustrations for this book), The third layer of Rediscovering Architec- famous, if not iconic, archaic Greek-Doric and of lavish publications. Between Gabriel- ture concerns architectural experience. De ’ ’ temples: Paestums Temple of Hera I, built Pierre-Martin Dumont’s Suitte [Suite] de Jongs emphasis on varied encounters with around 530 BCE, the oldest and most idio- plans (ca. 1750) and Paolo Antonio Paoli’s and perceptions of Paestum is what makes syncratic of the three, commonly referred Paesti (1784), mid-eighteenth-century au- this book different from earlier treatments. to in the eighteenth century as the Basilica thors produced no less than seven mono- It is also what makes the book stand out because visitors could not believe such a graphs on the temples of Paestum. from most other scholarly publications on peculiar building had been a temple; the De Jong’sbookisalsoaboutthelifeof eighteenth-century architectural discourse; Temple of Athena, constructed ca. 520 BCE, the temples in eighteenth-century architec- its significance extends far beyond the time the smallest of the three; and the Temple of tural thought. Rather than starting from an period under consideration. Obviously, the Hera II, built ca. 460 BCE, the largest and analysis of built forms, it unfolds from the book investigates an era in which the direct the most conventional. At the time of their human responses to them. Paestum gener- experience of architecture acquired a cen- rediscovery around the middle of the eigh- ated half a century of controversy, mainly in tral position in architectural theory, as in teenth century, these structures were met France, England, and Italy. These debates the ideas and writings of Jacques-François with a variety of reactions, including vivid revolved around the central concerns of Blondel, Julien-David Le Roy, and Sir John and often dismissive descriptions expressing eighteenth-century architectural, artistic, Soane, to name a few. The oeuvre of Giam- everything from astonishment to distaste. and aesthetic thinking, among them ideas battista Piranesi, who was also involved These temples did not resemble any build- about primitivism, the beginnings of civili- with Paestum, would be unthinkable with- ings with which eighteenth-century visitors zation, and the origins of architecture. One out these developments. The impact of ar- were familiar; Paestum turned accepted could argue, and De Jong does convinc- chitecture on the beholder became an ideas of classical architecture upside down. ingly, that Paestum functioned as a test- essential component of the value placed on De Jong notes, for instance, that it is known ing ground for eighteenth-century a building. De Jong’s meticulous analysis of that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, upon ar- architectural discourse. Some themes this process provides insights that have im- riving on the site of these porous limestone even originated there, often because pre- portant implications for architecture well temples with their rough columns, was at conceptions were overturned in light of beyond the eighteenth century. Such stud- Paestum’s unusual buildings. De Jong re- ies of architectural experience are rare. ’ Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians constructs the site s preeminent and cru- The structure of the book, which is 77, no. 2 (June 2018), 223–233, ISSN 0037-9808, cial role in architectural aesthetics and divided into three parts, each comprising electronic ISSN 2150-5926. © 2018 by the Society artistic debates by considering visitors two chapters, reflects the diversity of trav- of Architectural Historians. All rights reserved. Please who encountered Paestum in very different elers’ responses to Paestum. The first part, direct all requests for permission to photocopy or ways. She offers extended and detailed ex- “Aesthetic Experiences,” analyzes written reproduce article content through the University of aminations of a diverse range of sources, and visual records of visitors’ impressions California Press’s Reprints and Permissions web page, http://www.ucpress.edu/journals.php?p=reprints, or including letters, diaries, books, drawings, in light of two prominent aesthetic con- via email: [email protected]. DOI: https:// paintings, and engravings—many of them cepts of the period: the sublime and the doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2018.77.2.223. rarely or never before published and all picturesque. Many accounts of “sublime”

223 experiences drew on the immediate sensa- be reconstructed in the mind. One could the process of “exporting” Paestum, its ex- tions evoked on the spot and were in fact actually feel the spatiality in the monu- periential dimension was stripped away: ahistorical. This book is unusual in the ment an sich” (135). In this part of the “Paradoxically, while in one sense knowl- prominence it gives to such feelings, which book, De Jong shows how entering the edge increased, in another genuine com- were the result not of established knowl- ruins in the flesh, as opposed to occupying prehension of Paestum . . . disappeared in edge but of the intense reactions of over- them in the mind, resulted in something the process of abstraction, and the version whelmed viewers, whether they were entirely different from the eighteenth- disseminated to the public . . . was emascu- architects, writers, or sculptors. The author century theoretical discourse on ruins, in lated and generalized” (261). proves that in architecture, much as in which the remains of architecture caused Thiswonderfullyeditedandrichly Tu rn er ’s watercolors, the sublime cannot spectators to reflect on themselves, their illustrated book points to some thought- exist except through experience. Yet being lives, and their character. She then turns to provoking contradictions in eighteenth- there in the flesh did not lead to immediate the artist who pictured the temples most century architectural thinking, while comprehension, nor did carefully con- realistically, Piranesi, and argues that his stimulating rumination about our rela- structed prior knowledge help visitors to etchings “eventually made explicit what tionship with—our experience of—any understand the site. Rather, as De Jong eighteenth-century visitors actually knew but built architecture. By using architectural states, on encountering Paestum, “every- had not expressed before: real Greek build- experience as a focal point, Rediscovering thing [one] knew no longer seemed rele- ings had very little to do with the Renaissance Architecture not only extends our under- vant” (48). Moreover, “the architecture of version of classical architecture” (166). standing of Paestum and of complex Paestum could not be taken in at a single This argument is further developed in trends in eighteenth-century thought but gaze, as in the classical theories—on the the third part, “Contextualising Experien- also elucidates the cultural meaning of contrary. The vastness and infinity so ces.” Here De Jong investigates reflections buildings and the impact of a building on clearly delineated in the theories of Burke on the past to which Paestum gave rise and the beholder while stimulating reflection were to be experienced in the extent and the influence of the site on a rethinking of on our own contemporary engagement spatiality of Paestum. Knowledge from classical architecture as a design model. with architectural space. books and engravings was not useful when She starts from an investigation into the DIRK DE MEYER it came to experience of the reality: . . . It concepts of primitivism and of origin as Ghent University had no place in the powerful impressions of invention in the context of architecture, is- the sublime that Paestum imprinted on sues she has also addressed in an earlier Note [the] mind” (48). publication titled “Piranesi and Primitiv- 1. Sigrid de Jong, “Piranesi and Primitivism: Ori- In the second part of the book, “Expe- ism.”1 Next, she discusses the temples as gin as Invention,” in Aspects of Piranesi: Essays on ” riences of Movement, De Jong follows possible, or rather impossible, examples for History, Criticism and Invention,ed.DirkDeMeyer, travelers as they entered the temples and modern—that is, late eighteenth-century— Bart Verschaffel, and Pieter-Jan Cierkens (Ghent: experienced a sequence of responses, building. De Jong accurately calls this sec- A&S/books, Department of Architecture and whichtheythendisseminatedintexts, tion “Paestum Exported.” By singling out Urban Planning, Ghent University, 2015). engravings, and paintings. This approach and exporting limited features of the tem- provides groundbreaking insights, since ples, one arrives at an “architecture without few existing studies offer clues about how experience,” which shows “the poverty of József Sisa, ed. to analyze writings that are rooted in selecting nothing but an order from the Motherland and Progress: Hungarian physical space. Heinrich Wölfflin, of architecture of Paestum” (259). Architecture and Design 1800–1900 course, was one of the few early art his- In this way the author leaves us with a Translated from the Hungarian by Stephen Kane torians to write about the bodily experi- double paradox. The first one she addresses Basel: Birkhäuser, 2016, 996 pp., 767 illus. ence of architecture, and his Prolegomena in the context of her discussion of the sub- $112.00 (cloth), ISBN 9783035610093 zu einer Psychologie der Architektur shows lime, where she argues that the sublime how our experience of and relation to could achieve what accepted architectural Research on the nineteenth century, in- architecture are rooted in our physical theory could not: it could be used to make cluding the reevaluation of historicism, has being. As De Jong notes, “It was exactly sense of what she calls “the paradox of become an area of intense interest through- this break with conventional interpreta- Paestum.” The spatial quality and the out Europe over the past few decades. This tions, arising from Paestum’s lack of ahistorical, primitive character of Paestum bulky and richly illustrated volume on functional or iconological context, that were precisely what made the experience of Hungarian architecture and decorative arts, launched an awareness of the process of the site so disruptive to classical canons and published in Hungarian in 2013 and re- observation” (135). Hence, even more ideals of beauty. The paradox of Paestum is cently translated into English with minor than in the preceding section, she focuses that “a direct experience of the temples . . . , changes, exemplifies this tendency. Pre- here on the intense physicality of visitors’ which had themselves been constructed in senting a comprehensive history of the na- actual experiences at Paestum. Such ex- antiquity, served to undermine the claims tion’s art has long been a focus of art periences were possible because the tem- of classicism to aesthetic supremacy” (65). historical writing in Hungary. A plan for an ples were still relatively intact: “They A second paradox concludes the book’s eight-part series—of which this book is a were not the kind of remains that had to third part, where De Jong observes that in part—was initiated in the 1970s, and some

224 JSAH | 77.2 | JUNE 2018 of the volumes were published in the early while the current book sees this decade as the even have deserved an independent, 1980s, including one on the 1890–1919 pe- peak and fulfillment of the nineteenth cen- portrait-like presentation. riod.1 Work on the volume focusing on the tury’s historicizing tendencies. Motherland As was the case with urban develop- nineteenth century was begun, but when and Progress divides the century into three ment elsewhere in the nineteenth century, historicism became a subject of reevaluation stylistic and conceptual periods: neoclassi- the expansion of construction tasks and during the 1980s, previously overlooked cism (1800–1840), romanticism (1840–70), building types was significant in Hungary. artifacts came to light and a vast new litera- and historicism (1870–1900). This periodi- The defining elements of the era were sec- ture emerged. This latter point is well illus- zation is partly based on international and ular public and residential buildings. How- trated by the bibliography in Motherland Hungarian standards (theimpact of the Ger- ever, church and castle architecture still and Progress: most of the works making up manophone literature and especially that of remained important arenas. In addition to its nearly nine hundred entries were written the works of Renate Wagner-Rieger are imposing public buildings for administra- during the past three decades.2 noteworthy here), but it also results from the tion and culture, various service institu- The volumes in the series were con- content of records explored during the re- tions and infrastructural facilities are also ceived as handbooks, each presenting the search. The periodization is primarily signif- discussed. One key feature of the period history of a given era’s art and architecture icant as a means of classification, which, in was the increased significance of the palace according to the current state of research. addition to the assessment of features of type, expressing the desire of the emerging At the same time, new research is integrated morphology and style, takes into account key civil, entrepreneurial, administrative classes with that of earlier generations of scholars. historical and social changes. A fundamental to follow the lifestyle of the former elites. A total of sixteen authors participated in goal of the project was to present the diverse Palace-type buildings, which could be either writing the latest volume, and two-thirds of monuments and artifacts of the period in public or private, included grand private its chapters were written by volume edi- their full complexity, without simplification. residences and public tenement houses. In tor József Sisa, the leading scholar of The length of the individual chapters Central Europe and Hungary, the neo- nineteenth-century Hungarian architec- varies depending on the nature and impor- Renaissance-stylepalacebecamewidespread ture. Originally, the book was meant to dis- tance of the historical era and the extent of because it corresponded to the self-image cuss all the fine arts together, but faced the available records pertaining to it. For and ambitions of the middle classes while with the outpouring of available materials, example, the chapter on historicism during having the added benefit of flexibility and the volume’s editors decided to treat the the last third of the century is as long as the adaptability. However, contemporaries crit- history of architecture separately. This de- two previous chapters combined. However, icized that style’s heavy symbolism and cision also expresses the increasing appre- across chapters the structure is similar. In monumentality, which in turn contributed ciation of architecture by the wider public. each chapter, an introduction provides a to difficulties in maintaining hygienic and Hungarian developments here are re- general overview of the main historical and comfortable conditions, as well as to high lated to and interpreted as part of broader political conditions of the era and the construction costs and a shortage of apart- developments in Europe during the nine- framework of architectural activity. Impor- ments with affordable rents. teenth century, namely, the defining waves of tant architects are introduced, and develop- The book’stwofinalchapterspresent social modernization and urbanization. The ments in architectural education, as well as the 1890s as a peak moment, completing and book argues that Hungarian society and cul- in professional organizations and institu- terminating Hungary’s nineteenth-century ture were trying to catch up with Western tions, are addressed. After that, buildings aspirations. Concluding the volume’s narra- Europe following decades at the beginning are examined on a typological basis. The tive, which begins with the country’sback- of the nineteenth century when they lagged panorama is completed with discussion of wardness and its architects’ attempts to behind. The new title for the English ver- developments in landscape design, decora- overcome this shortcoming, the final chap- sion, Motherland and Progress,aimstoexpress tive arts, and material culture; the role of ters complete the story dramaturgically. In this aspiration.3 The book situates a new materials and new structural systems the chapter dealing with constructions re- cross-section of European developments are considered, as are issues around archi- lated to the 1896 millennial celebration of in relation to Hungarian ones, addressing tectural decoration. the Hungarian conquest, author József Sisa dominant trends and offering complemen- Urban development receives special at- seems to share a self-evaluation common to tary discussion of regional variations and tention, above all that of Buda and Pest and, the era, according to which Hungarians significant individual achievements. eventually, the united city of Budapest. Spe- “could now rightfully claim” that “they had Choosing a century as a time frame is cial organizations like the Beautification worked off their historical disadvantage” conventional in historiography, but histori- Committee (1808–57) and later the Munic- (781).5 Grandiose constructions led to a cal concepts and evaluative judgments also ipal Council of Public Works (1870–1948) quantitative and qualitative shift in the Buda- played a role in this choice of framework. played a crucial role in regulating territorial pest cityscape, where new buildings, as Sisa A look at the preceding volume, which cov- development and building construction as cautiously criticizes, were in some cases of ers the period from 1890 to 1919, reveals a well as in controlling the projects that were almost “megalomaniac” scale. This was pre- significant shift in the approach taken in the realized. The latter organization could have cisely the case with the two most prominent new book.4 The earlier volume describes the been given stronger emphasis, with discus- projects of the time, the Parliament Building 1890s as a period that witnessed a crisis of sion at the beginning of the historicism by Imre Steindl (1885–1902) and the Buda historicism and the upsurge of new trends, chapter instead of in the middle, or it might Castle by Miklós Ybl and Alajos Hauszmann

BOOKS 225 (1875–1905). The latter was the biggest most important poets and liberal political thinkers historicity: it emerged in response to inter- – royal castle in Europe, its size tripled during of the Reform era (1825 48). nal migration and refugee influx due to war, 4. See Németh, ̋ – . the period, even though it went virtually Magyar muvészet 1890 1919 cash shortages, particular legislative frame- 5. In the introduction to the historicism chapter, unused. Sisa admits that “even at this rate of develop- works, linguistic debates, entrenched gen- The final chapter deals with new phe- ment . . . Hungary had still not reached the level der roles, and deregulation tactics—all nomena and alternatives to historicism. of the Western half of the Empire, while the combined with canny actions by both resi- Emphasized here are continuity and the Monarchy was also still behind the rest of West- dents and administrators (such as thenotori- ” “organic” transition of old into new, as was ern Europe (423). ous variances on building codes). All these 6. For example, the classic essay “Magyar építészet” the case with architect Ödön Lechner, who (Hungarian architecture), by the Hungarian philos- disparate factors, Theocharopoulou shows, represented a departure from historicism in opher and art historian Lajos Fülep, which was first were bound up with issues of identity, na- 6 some previous interpretations. However, published in the literary journal Nyugat [West] 11, tionhood, urbanization, and modernization. the breaking points—when historicism no. 8 (16 Apr. 1918), deeply influenced the evalua- Even as these issues changed in nature and definitively lost its validity and historic tion of historicism and turn-of-the-century archi- intensity from the nineteenth to the mid- tecture until the 1980s. For a contemporary Hungary collapsed during World War I— twentieth century, they created the condi- position, see János Gerle, “Hungarian Architecture remain outside this volume’s frame and are from 1900 to 1918,” in Wiebenson and Sisa, Archi- tions for the proliferation of the type of mul- not the subject of reflection here. tecture of Historic Hungary, esp. 225–30. tistory apartment building known in Greece With a few changes, the English edition as the polykatoikia, which constitutes the follows the Hungarian original, including quintessential element of the city’surban brief explanations of select historical facts Ioanna Theocharopoulou landscape. and events. Rich and genuinely diverse illus- Builders, Housewives and the In historicizing the building culture of trative material fits the text and aids the — Construction of Modern Athens Athens through multiple filters the images reader’s understanding of the authors’ argu- London: Artifice Books on Architecture, 2017, give rich flavor to the fascinating archival ments. The endnotes, ample bibliography — 176 pp., 154 illus. $39.95 (paper), material the author has investigated the (listing mostly Hungarian publications), and ISBN 9781908967879 book skillfully synthesizes existing knowl- name and place index lend the book schol- edge about the polykatoikia and its urban arly heft. The forty-three brief essays on sig- If the construction of Brasília and Chandi- role. Further, it extends local and interna- nificant individual buildings are informative garh has been explained—in James Scott’s tional scholarship that has contemplated the and illuminating; unfortunately, similar por- seminal work—as the outcome of “seeing underappreciated qualities of the scale and traits of the most important architects are like a state,” then the twentieth-century diversity of Athenian apartment buildings. not provided. Maps that might have aided transformations of Athens can best be un- (Essays by Kenneth Frampton and Dimitris readers in locating buildings are lacking, as derstood, Ioanna Theocharopoulou tells Philippidis are cited, but more recent dis- is an international comparative chronology; us, from another point of view.1 As the title cussions of the polykatoikia by Pier Vittorio these would have been of substantial benefit. of her book Builders, Housewives and the Aureli and his colleagues also come to That said, it is highly welcome that this 2 Construction of Modern Athens hints, one mind.) Theocharopoulou also draws on ur- thorough and demanding work has been must appreciate “seeing” like a builder, or ban theory in discussing the benefits of the made available in English, as its advent will a rural migrant, or a refugee—a person “part-exchange” system (a process whereby help to integrate the nineteenth-century who is cash-short, in urgent need of shel- the owner of a piece of land could exchange achievements of Hungarian architecture ter, and distrustful of a state whose officials, it for units in a polykatoikia to be built there into an international conversation. in turn, are eager to accommodate private by a developer) and the social integration BÉLA KERÉKGYÁRTÓ initiatives and turn a blind eye to quasi- processes initiated by the polykatoikia (which Budapest University of Technology and Economics illegal urban developments. One must also allowed rural migrants and refugees to enter understand, Theocharopoulou continues, the lower middle class). These reflections Notes “seeing” like a housewife who is coming to highlight the Athenian polykatoikia as an al- 1. The published volumes of the series History of terms with her own modernity in the midst ternative to the shantytowns of other rapidly Hungarian Art are Lajos Németh, ed., Magyar mű- of these and other circumstances. urbanizing cities of the global South. Al- vészet 1890–1919 [Hungarian art 1890–1919] Theocharopoulou’s meticulous analysis thoughmore direct engagement withthe in- (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1981), nos. 6/1–2in connects the Greek authorities’ apparently sights of geography could be included, the ̋ the series; Sándor Kontha, ed., Magyar muvészet erratic attitude toward planning with spe- book is a testimony to architectural histori- 1919–1945 (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1985), cific historical circumstances and cultural ography’s interdisciplinary achievements nos. 7/1–2; ErnőMarosi, ed., Magyar művészet 1300–1470 (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1987), idiosyncrasies that produced the Athenian and its capacity to provide in-depth investi- 3 nos. 2/1–2. The Hungarian-language original ver- metropolis. Incorporating tools from social gations of urban space. More important, sion of the book under review is no. 5/1 in the series. history, anthropology, and gender studies, this multifaceted investigation demonstrates 2. For a comprehensive history of Hungarian ar- her book provides a valuable historical per- howdifferent actors haveproduceddifferent chitecture, see Dora Wiebenson and Sisa József, spective on Athens, one that highlights the forms of modernity. This is a crucial contri- eds., The Architecture of Historic Hungary (Cam- bridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998). entwinement of dwelling and urbanism and bution. Among other things, it helps chal- ’ 3. The title phrase is a Hungarian adage adapted shows that the citys anonymous residential lenge interpretive models focused on the from Ferenc Kölcsey (1790–1838), one of the architecture has a distinctive character and “transfer” or “importation” of planning and

226 JSAH | 77.2 | JUNE 2018 architectural strategies—problematic per- would not necessarily require reverting to as “expressions of Greek culture and ev- spectives that characterize not only the the critiques of Athens’s urban character as eryday life” (15). One comes away feeling agendas of twentieth-century moderniza- random and inconsistent—critiques that that the book successfully explains why tion but also some of the architectural and Theocharopoulou rightly dismisses at the housing in Athens did not take the direc- urban histories of modernization. outset. Recognizing the paradoxes and am- tionof,say,theBerlinMietskaserne or the Of particular importance to the book’s biguities of modernization would, for ex- Lima barriadas. argument are the processes of improvisa- ample, allow a closer examination of other Still, in reading this book, one is re- tion that created the polykatoikia type and possible substructures of power, funding, minded that a similar combination of fac- what Theocharopoulou refers to as “infor- and influence that shaped modern Athens. tors (massive migration from rural areas mal urbanism.” Intriguing propositions that These ambiguities begin to surface in the and quid pro quo processes in which multi- allow new ways of contemplating both the chapter on housewives, where the author ple small investors pool their resources, history and the current resonance of the unpacks gender and social tensions. pursue exchanges, or push for amend- polykatoikia include the assertion that it Other chapters could push such analysis ments, all in the absence of direct govern- might be seen as an example of Bernard further. One wonders, for example, did not ment investment in housing construction) Rudofsky’s “architecture without archi- the United Nations or NATO have a role has had powerful influence on urbanization tects” brought to an urban sphere, and the in Greece’s experience of the Cold War, in other parts of the globe from the twenti- observation that the polykatoikia anticipates which the author highlights as important in eth century to the present day. Although the more recent adaptable building types of shaping the polykatoikia? The United Na- the Athens case is important in and of it- Alejandro Aravena’s Elemental in Chile. tions is acknowledged only in passing, even self, an attempt at charting parallels with Conversely, it would be vital to further un- if it was instrumental in advancing the view housing processes in other cities of the pack notions of improvisation, spontaneity, of housing as nonproductive, an idea that global South would allow for further con- and informality, especially in light of was widespread internationally, and, as textualization, a historiographic pursuit that larger critiques of ad hoc, bottom-up, and Theocharopoulou tells us, also professed Theocharopoulou correctly emphasizes self-help processes that remind us that by the Greek state. Even if foreign consul- as important. For example, what are the “ informality does not necessarily equal tants were not responsible for the emergence differences between the type of builder- ” neutrality.4 Even if one does not apply a of the polykatoikia, did foreign influences developer encountered in Athens and the Marxist critique—which might argue have no impact on the infrastructures, indus- yap-satçi (builder-seller) of Istanbul, particu- that the “individualization” of housing let tries, economic models, and development larly in terms of how individual actors the state off the hook, had a politically con- policies shaping urbanization and moderni- employ funding mechanisms and state pol- 6 servative effect in giving people “a stake in zation in Greece? Similarly, it would have icies? The pursuit of such questions could the system,” and celebrated as freedom of been helpful if the author had supported enable a more comprehensive and broader ’ choice what was actually “compulsion in her archival research on specific figures understanding of Athenssurbanity. PANAYIOTA PYLA the absence of alternatives”5—one still involved in Greece’s modernization with University of Cyprus wonders about the merits of an urbaniza- broader critical perspectives on moderni- tion that made housing construction and zation and development. Such an ap- Notes laissez-faire individual interests the chief proach might have allowed her to unpack 1. drivers of the city’seconomy. further the political investments behind James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have claims of comprehensiveness and local In a similar vein, it would have been Failed (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, beneficial if Theocharopoulou had pro- empowerment and to elucidate how Greek 1998). blematized the issue of modernization in architects’ ethnographic interests and “de- 2. Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Crit- as nuanced a way as she treats the issues of tailed analyses of local building culture” ical History (London: Thames and Hudson, 1987); nationhood and identity. She is of course (95) are not merely reflections of sensitivity Dimitris Philippidis, Gia tin elliniki poli: Metapole- miki poreia kai mellontikes prooptikes [About the correct to highlight the polykatoikia as a to a locale. The discussion of moderniza- Greek city: Postwar paths and future possibilities] modernizing agent, and perhaps right to tion could have been supported by system- (Athens: Themelio, 1990); Dimitris Philippidis, argue that the modernization of Greek so- atic engagement with current theories and “Eponymi kai maziki architektoniki (1930–1970)” ciety was quite locally particular. But as it critiques of the assumptions and tactics of [Formal and mass architecture (1930–1970)], in was elsewhere, modernization in Greece development, informal or otherwise. Moderna architektoniki stin Ellada [Modern architec- was subject to tensions between empower- Theocharopoulou does well to insist on ture in Greece] (Athens: Melissa, 2001); Pier Vit- torio Aureli, Maria S. Giudici, and Platon Issaias, ing potentials and processes of social con- “ ” understanding Athens in its own terms “From Dom-ino to Polykatoikia,” Domus 962 (Oct. trol. While the polykatoikia became a (9). Indeed, her discussion of the particular 2012), 34–43; Pier Vittorio Aureli, “The Dom-ino mechanism for accommodating refugees significance of neoclassicism to the Greek Problem: Questioning the Architecture of Domes- and former rural dwellers, did it not also context, analysis of debates on the Greek tic Space,” Log 30 (2014), 153–68. 3. insert urban life into the logic of the language, and investigation into the role of Works that might have been referenced include Lila Leontidou, market and economic speculation, with housewives, as well as the insightful con- The Mediterranean City in Transition: Social Change and Urban Development (Cambridge: immense environmental and other con- nections she draws to the anthropological Cambridge University Press, 1990); Guy Burgel, sequences? Recognizing such paradoxes analyses of shadow theater, are all key to the Athens, the Development of a Mediterranean Capital embedded in processes of modernization contextualization of urban transformations (Athens: Exantas, 1976).

BOOKS 227 4. See, for example, Rod Burgess, “Self-Help shared the research they had gathered to- Pravina Mehta, the first female architects Housing Advocacy: A Curious Form of Radical- gether. It is Woods’s timely book that is in India, who graduated in the 1930s and ism,” in Self-Help Housing: A Critique, ed. Peter – the subject of this review, and it consti- 1940s, when India was in the midst of its Ward (London: Mansell, 1982), 58 97; Sylvia “ Chant and Cathy McIlwaine, Geographies of Devel- tutes, as she declares, the first history of struggle for independence; also discussed – opment in the 21st Century: An Introduction to the how women architects made a modern here are Hema Sankalia (1934 2015) and Global South (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2008). India” (3). Smita J. Baxi (n.d.), who came of age in the 5. Chant and McIlwaine, Geographies of Develop- In Women Architects in India,Woods following two decades.3 All four women ment, 128. For critiques of informal processes, see contests the dominant global historical nar- were graduates of the Sir J. J. School of Art also Burgess, “Self-Help Housing Advocacy.” 6. ̆ “ rative on women architects, patrons, and in Mumbai, which gives Woods the oppor- Sibel Bozdogan, Residential Architecture and ’ Urban Landscape in Istanbul since 1950,” in clients, which privileges European women tunity to discuss the schools architectural Landscapes of Development: The Impact of Moderni- and women of European descent. Thus, she program from its inception in the 1890s to zation Discourses on the Physical Environment of the makes a significant contribution that will the independence struggle of the 1940s. Eastern Mediterranean, ed. Panayiota Pyla (Cam- aid in upending the Eurocentric account of The section on each woman opens with a bridge, Mass.: Aga Khan Program of the Graduate the history of women’s architectural prac- subhead that includes her name and a char- School of Design, 2013), 118–41. tice, helping to shape a new narrative that acterization suggesting her significance or also reckons with multiple modes of archi- contribution. For example, the subhead for tectural practice across the world, including Mistri is “The First Woman Architect,” Mary N. Woods the global South. Approximately 27 percent while that for Mehta is “APracticeofOne’s Women Architects in India: Histories of the architects practicing in India are Own.” Apart from subdividing individual of Practice in Mumbai and Delhi women, a higher percentage than in the sections to discuss aspects of each archi- London: Routledge, 2017, 236 pp., 115 illus. United States or Great Britain, where the tect’s life, practice, and projects, Woods $155 (cloth), ISBN 9781472475305 field is largely white and male, and profes- uses the subheads as springboards for other sionally educated women serve as employ- thematic issues. In her discussion of Mehta, In 1936, Perin Jamshetji Mistri (1913–89) ees rather than hold positions as partners who was arrested in 1942 at a Quit India was the first woman in India to graduate or principals. demonstration, we get glimpses of the in- with a degree in architecture. She went on Focusing on two cities, Mumbai and dependence movement, urban planning in to work as an architect in her father’soffice, Delhi, Woods’s account juxtaposes the per- India, and the Festival of India in the which, with her inclusion, if not earlier, be- sonal and professional lives of twelve women 1980s. In the section on Baxi, who moved came a family practice. Eight decades later, architects representing several generations to Delhi to become an exhibition designer female students constitute the majority in as well as some significant moments in at the new national museum, Woods dis- many Indian schools of architecture, yet Indian history. Between its introduction and cusses museums and their management in there is still no history of the practice of short conclusion, the book is organized into the newly independent nation-state, where architecture by women in India. Female three major chapters, each of which discusses women emerged as the “tsarinas of Indian Indian architects lack the national and in- the work of four architects. In presenting culture” (53). This sort of contextualization ternational visibility of their male counter- their work, Woods also pays attention to the allows for a rich and deep appreciation of parts, some of whom, such as the eminent absorption and translation of modernism in each individual architect and also links each architects Charles Correa (1930–2015) and India. Given the lack of architectural ar- one to broader cultural and social currents. Balkrishna Vithaldas Doshi (b. 1927), have chives in India (a lack that is only now begin- The format used in the first chapter achieved global prominence. ning to be rectified), research for this book provides the template for the next two. Recently, women architects across the was undoubtedly challenging, especially in Chapter 2, “Building a Practice in Indira world have begun to receive attention, but regard to early architects. Woods has thus Gandhi’sIndia,” highlights four architects only three (two in partnership with male relied on oral histories and interviews as im- from the middle generation, all now in their colleagues) have received the Pritzker portant sources in writing this history, which sixties. Having begun their careers in Prize, the so-called Nobel Prize of Archi- attends to women patrons and clients as well the 1970s, these architects benefited from tecture, awarded annually since 1979. With as to architects. This research is timely. For the huge expansion in construction in the her edited volume Gender and the Built En- example, although Mistri had died by the 1990s, which enabled them to build sub- vironment in India, Madhavi Desai has been time Woods embarked on her research, the stantive bodies of work. Woods finds a a pioneer in drawing attention to the role author was able to garner information on commonality in the works of the members of women architects and builders in India.1 the architect through interviews with col- of this generation, noting that Brinda So- Yet much work remains to be done. It is no leagues and an interview with Mistri’s maya, Neera Adarkar, Revathi Sekhar Ka- coincidence that two books now aim to fill brother available on the website of the HE- math, and Nalini Thakur “all articulate this lacuna in our knowledge: Mary N. CAR Foundation, which supports education social, cultural, and architectural values that Woods’s Women Architects in India and on South Asian architecture; she also visited are either explicitly or implicitly Gandhian” Desai’s Women Architects and Modernism in and photographed two of Mistri’sextant (130); here she is referring not to contro- India.2 These books are the result of a proj- buildings. versial Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of the ect originally undertaken jointly by these Chapter 1, “DesigningforaPost- chapter’s title, but to Mohandas Karamc- two scholars. Later, after parting ways, they Independence India,” profiles Mistri and hand Gandhi, the great freedom fighter and

228 JSAH | 77.2 | JUNE 2018 national leader of an earlier era. Chapter 3, might that mean? Given the focus on indi- Architecture is an in-depth inquiry into the “Practicing in Neoliberal and Global India,” vidual lives and practices, it is disappointing life and thought process of an individual focuses on Shimul Javeri Kadri, Abha Narain that the only photograph of a woman archi- who set out to expand the disciplinary Lambah, Sonali Rastogi, and Sudeshna tect featured in the book is one of Pravina boundaries of design. As the author states Chatterjee, all of whom received profes- Mehta. On the other hand, the building at the outset, “This book tells the story of sional training in India followed by advanced projects of the architects discussed are gen- Kiesler’s pioneering design ideas and vi- degrees abroad. All of these women began erously illustrated. sionary research that formatively chal- their practices during the past twenty years, Clearly written and well illustrated, this lenged the architecture profession to amid the effects of a neoliberal economy and is an important book that will be of use to invent new design, education, and building the rise of identity politics. architects and architectural historians. In practices” (2). Woods does a good job of embedding tracing the history of the contribution of Broken down into seven chapters, the the works of each architect in a given con- women architects to India’s built environ- book takes the reader into Kiesler’s itinerary text, yet the format does occasionally prove ment over multiple generations, Woods of spatial explorations, which were largely rigid and repetitive over the three chapters. has produced a volume that is likely to be- reflective of the changing perceptions of For example, although the structure allows come a standard reference on the subject time and space that came with modernity. the author to summarize important issues, and will have to be taken into account by As an outsider, Kiesler enjoyed a unique such as the plight of mill workers and the scholars writing new histories of architec- vantage point that allowed him to expose status of the conservation movement in tural practice in India and across the globe. architectural audiences to experiential ar- India, it prevents her from engaging in more Finally, then, Indian women architects will rangements that often engaged the built nuanced discussions that could have taken assume their rightfully deserved place at world only peripherally. Installations, gallery her in other directions. I found it fascinating the table. arrangements, set design, window displays, that Charles Correa and, to a lesser extent, PREETI CHOPRA graphic design, lighting, his all-too-rare ar- engineer Shirish Patel were threaded into University of Wisconsin–Madison chitectural realizations, and teaching and thelivesandaccountsofsomanyofthe lecturing allowed him to leave a substantial Notes women covered in the first two chapters. footprint in design culture, prompting the Similarly, many of the women architects in 1. Madhavi Desai, ed., Gender and the Built Envi- architect and provocateur Philip Johnson to Delhi worked in the office of American ar- ronment in India (New Delhi: Zubaan, 2005). consider Kiesler as among the most creative 2. chitect Joseph Allen Stein (as did I) and Madhavi Desai, Women Architects and Modern- designersofhisera.1 ism in India: Narratives and Contemporary Practices came away with an appreciation of his con- The assumption governing Kiesler’sun- (London: Routledge, 2017). cern for craft and his sensitivity around 3. The exact years of Pravina Mehta’s birth and dertaking was that the introduction of au- locating modern buildings in historical con- death are not known; the relevant dates may be tomation and acceleration—both machine texts. Woods uses Stein’sinvolvementto 1923–92 or 1925–88. Unfortunately, I was unable based—had profound and lasting effects on showcase change over time. Apparently, he to find any information at all on Baxi’s birth and the experience of the human-made envi- refused to hire Baxi, as “he felt her presence death dates. ronment. This triggered his call to update, in the office would prevent him from argu- or at least revisit, widely accepted practices ing and cursing” (52), but subsequently, he of space making, then still largely confined didemploymanyotherwomenandeventu- Stephen J. Phillips to managing the static relationships between ally took a female partner. As a former em- Elastic Architecture: Frederick Kiesler architectural objects and program. Early in ployee, I was surprised to learn of Stein’s and Design Research in the First Age his career Kiesler carved a niche for himself desire to argue or curse, but my larger point of Robotic Culture in stage design, restructuring the connec- is that this book would have benefited from Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2017, 384 pp., tions among viewers, actors, and the stage. further exploration of the networks among 21 color and 134 b/w illus. $39.95 (cloth), To that effect Phillips writes: “This book various individuals. The book highlights the ISBN 9780262035736 thus critically examines Kiesler’s transforma- support of women mentors, patrons, and tion of theatrical space into the architecture of clients, but not the support of men, thus Frederick Kiesler’s unorthodox profes- a total work of art of effects (the Gesamt- presenting a somewhat skewed picture. sional trajectory has been the subject of kunstwerk) that fuses viewers, spectators, Woods appears frustrated that most of sustained attention in recent years. A figure structure, light, rhythm, and sound into one the women did not see themselves as femi- who operated at the margins of the archi- cohesive spatial atmosphere” (6). nists or as “women architects.” A central tectural field, one who questioned the very Kiesler’s love affair with the mechanized question raised in this book is, why was be- underpinnings of architecture as a profes- world informed design visions filled with ing a female architect not a matter of pride sion by targeting its institutional assump- proto-robotic relationships between parts, in India? Woods does not find a good an- tions, Kiesler developed investigative and parts linked together with hints of the as- swer to the question, nor does she examine design approaches now widely perceived sembly line and of a highly technological why it should have been important to these as anticipatory of the current wave of work universe overriding the vagaries of human architects to define themselves as feminists. conceived through—and possible to con- action. As an émigré in New York in 1926, If it is true—that being a female architect struct only with the aid of—computers. Kiesler leveraged the lessons he learned was not a matter of pride in India—what In this vein, Stephen J. Phillips’s Elastic designing window displays for Saks Fifth

BOOKS 229 Avenue. Inconspicuous commissions, these conceptual vocabulary and assisting him in that elasticity in architecture is an organic nonetheless presented him with the oppor- dealing with new types of problems. constant in a world dominated by auto- tunity to expose to the masses of New York, It is the word endless,however,thatflows mation and mechanized labor makes it a then still warming up to modernism, to his throughout Kiesler’s oeuvre. His unbuilt valuable addition to the growing litera- visionary ideas. Dynamic geometries, shock Endless House puts him on the map of ture on this multifaceted designer. Phil- effects, dramatization of viewpoints, and architectural history. In this unique project, lips has convincingly demonstrated the lighting variations were some of the tools Kiesler delivered an antitechnological vi- intellectual coherence of an exceptional Kiesler used to rethink the world as he pre- sion in which the traditional hierarchy be- character who, through his remarkable sented it. Space, to him, was inherently elas- tween inside and outside is shattered and work, laid the conceptual foundations for tic, ever shifting, expanding, contracting, the relationships between floor, wall, and contemporary design. always in motion. ceiling are disintegrated; the house featured PIERLUIGI SERRAINO Phillips quotes Kiesler, speaking at a a continuous uneven surface made of an un- University of California, Berkeley design conference in 1940: “Architectural defined organic substance that only partly Note education’s primary purpose is to teach stu- enclosed the space. Kiesler observed that dents to think for themselves” (123). In say- nature presents form in continuous muta- 1. Philip Johnson, letter to Donald MacKinnon, ing this, he was making his own declaration tion in space and over time—a concept that 8 Sept. 1958, Institute of Personality and Social of independence from the growing hege- could be adapted to architecture. He was a Research, University of California, Berkeley. mony of Bauhaus indoctrination then taking pioneer in this regard. One powerful exam- place in the United States, as European ple of his theory in action is his 1931 avant-gardists fled a continent marred by scheme for an endless museum, which fas- Stefan Al World War II. As an instructor at Columbia cinated modern architects after World War The Strip: Las Vegas and the University and at the Juilliard School of II and led to examples like Le Corbusier’s Architecture of the American Dream Music, Kiesler encouraged the new genera- National Museum of Western Art (1959) in Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2017, 272 pp., tion to venture away from architectural con- To k y o . K i e s l e r ’s museum project and many 63 color and 19 b/w illus. $34.95 (cloth), ventions. In this respect, his Mobile Home others demonstrate his ambitious goal of ISBN 9780262035743 Library project, conceived and built from fusing the romance of technology with the 1937 to 1939, was an attempt to formulate mystery of the organic, an attempt that sets Is Las Vegas’s architecture a train wreck or and solve the problem of shelving books him apart from peers positioned squarely in a treasure? Almost fifty years after Learning dynamically as use and users changed their one camp or the other. from Las Vegas, consensus eludes architects interdependent relationships over time. (As At times the academic rhetoric of this and academics. Either way, Las Vegas re- an aside, the photographs of the Mobile book is tiring; for instance, consider this pas- mains a continuing object of infatuation for Home Library reproduced in this publica- sage: “Although his body of work would later many. Few can look away, as this new tion were among the first assignments of suggest alternative and more resistant libe- book’s existence proves. architectural photographer Ezra Stoller, ratory applications, his efforts to produce In The Strip: Las Vegas and the Architecture whose brother Claude—later to become an responsive systems designed to modulate to of the American Dream,authorStefanAl architect—assisted in setting up the scene.) the qualities and intensities of dynamic bod- offers a seventy-year overview of most of the Kiesler was among the first designers to ies in motion facilitated a society of uncon- major buildings, many of the architects, and implement several practices now consid- sciously motivated actions” (162). On the some of the causes that have shaped the Las ered standard. His use of diagrams was as other hand, the key concepts of elasticity, au- Vegas Strip, the stretch of desert highway novel as it was enigmatic. It certainly raised tomation, time, and organicism are clearly that became an international capital of gam- curiosity among viewers trying to decode laid out and reiterated throughout the text. bling, entertainment, charismatic architec- the density of the information he laid out. Phillips also misses some opportunities to ture, and de facto planning. He relies on His 1938 biotechnical motion study and his explore other potentially relevant aspects of extensive research, exploring newspaper and time-scale chart “From Deficiency to Effi- Kiesler’s life and work. One possible area of magazine coverage, books, archives, and ciency” are instances of his effort to bring a investigation concerns the man’sphysical journal commentaries through the years, lay- pseudoscientific angle to the definition of presence. Kiesler’s short stature (4 feet ing some of the groundwork to understand the architectural object. Phillips also brings 10 inches) was something often noted by how Las Vegas came to be. He reminds us, into relief Kiesler’s invention of a new those who met him and a trait examined in for example, how financing—from Jimmy taxonomy to point to propositions never past publications on his work; one wonders Hoffa’s Teamsters union pension fund to seen before. “Correalism,” for example, how much his height might have influenced Michael Milken’s junk bonds—played a key was a bridge term intended to connect the exuberance of his designs. Further, Kies- role in making the Strip’s increasingly large technology and the understanding of hu- ler was a prolific writer, and more excerpts hotel-casino dream palaces real. Yet for all man needs as the basis of design. Other from his publications might have better re- its detail, the book does not fully digest the terms Kiesler developed for his own pur- vealed his points of view on various aspects of voluminous information it amasses. poses included “hereditary nucleus,”“cor- modernity. Perhaps because its sources mirror con- poreality,” and “expansional possibilities”; Despite these shortcomings, the book’s ventional perspectives of their times, the all were aimed at widening the designer’s emphasis on how Kiesler demonstrated book looks through a distorted lens. The

230 JSAH | 77.2 | JUNE 2018 titillation of gangsters, instant wealth, and “The Strip began as an exception,” Al house, theme parks, and neon signs, any of sin has long dominated reports on Las concludes (219), but I disagree. Its early ar- which would have helped to illuminate Las Vegas in the popular press, and disbelief, chitects were well grounded in—and major Vegas’sroots. distaste, and awkwardness have shaped contributors to—the architectural, plan- Because of the city’s initial small size, its most high-art critiques through the years. ning, and social trends that were reshaping singular focus on one industry, and the Judged by modernism’s traditional meas- the nascent Sunbelt metropolises of Los enormous budgets that the gaming industry ures of authenticity, “honest” structural ex- Angeles, San Jose, San Diego, Phoenix, allowed, the forces reshaping the postwar pression, rejection of historic precedent, Tucson, Dallas, Denver, Salt Lake City, and American West (and most American cities) and the belief that less is more, Las Vegas, Las Vegas with the spread of the automo- were magnified in Las Vegas. This is Las a surreal, mirage-like oasis in the sun- bile in the decades after 1920. They crea- Vegas’s value: we can see these broad urban, blasted desert, has consistently been found tively applied concepts—one might say social, and architectural innovations—and wanting. theories—developed and tested in the labo- flaws—more clearly there because the city Over the years, however, the most use- ratories of those cities in response to how focuses their expression. It has been as pris- ful commentaries on Las Vegas have come motorists required architectural scales and tine a laboratory for urban development as from those who—like Tom Wolfe, Reyner configurations suited to the rhythm of car the real world may ever offer. Banham, Dave Hickey, J. B. Jackson, Hal culture. They had practical experience with Observers who have included such fresh Rothman, and John Chase—sidestepped the culture of recreation and pleasure that perspectives have contributed seminal in- those conventions and recognized truths was guiding modern architecture in those sights, though they are still often marginal- that lay beneath the mesmerizing tinsel and growing cities. And they worked in prag- ized.2 Encouragingly, The Strip, at times, sleaze. The controversy sparked by Learn- matic commercial environments that also challenges the conventional critiques. ing from Las Vegas, the landmark 1972 text brought their ideas to a broad general audi- In discussing the Venetian hotel, with its by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, ence. Wayne McAllister’sunderstanding Styrofoam re-creations of Venice, the au- and Steven Izenour, forced a spotlight onto of the ways autos were reshaping cities and thor notes that the “real” Venice in Italy is this hidden but significant corner of Amer- living patterns was more fundamental than today as much a theme park as the version of ican modern architecture.1 But for every a simple mimicking of the aesthetics of cars, Venice in Las Vegas. He recognizes that Learning from Las Vegas, there have been as The Strip implies. Most modern critics “theorists obsessed with dismissing heritage dozens of Jean Baudrillards, Umberto ignored these trends and, unaware of the copies” (194) are blind to the larger context Ecos, and Ada Louise Huxtables discussing logic behind them, saw the results only as that shapes these designs; he reports the simulacra. strange and ungainly. Al repeats this mis- deep-rooted phenomenon that transformed Relying on these distorted lenses leads take. For example, he describes McAllister’s the New York–NewYork hotel-casino’ssim- The Strip into some critical blind spots. Al’s seminal designs for El Rancho Vegas and ulacra Statue of Liberty into a heartfelt pop- discussion of the early, formative years of the the Sands variously as “strange paradox[es]” ulist shrine in the days after the 9/11 terrorist Strip hotels, for example, lacks the serious (6), “incongruities” (5), and “glaring contra- attacks. “The distinction between mass con- architectural analysis given to recent Las dictions” (15). sumerism and elite culture continues to Vegas structures by “certified” high-art ar- Anything about El Rancho Vegas or the fade,” he observes (220–21). These are ex- chitects such as CityCenter’sCesarPelli, Sands that seemed strange to untrained eyes, cellent insights, but their implications are Daniel Libeskind, Norman Foster, Helmut however, actually reflected the innovations not plumbed. Jahn, and Rafael Viñoly, the Cosmopolitan’s of suburban and commercial strip develop- Instead, The Strip reengages the high- Bernardo Fort-Brescia, and the Hermitage- ment (both ad hoc and intentional) that art lens in its last chapter, when Al, dis- Guggenheim’s Rem Koolhaas. These are blossomed after 1945 in those rapidly ex- cussing CityCenter, calls it “authentic indeed names more famous than those of panding Sunbelt cities. Las Vegas was no ex- architecture” that “rivals New York’s Wayne McAllister, Martin Stern Jr., Hugh ception. Its long, organic evolution is best finest contemporary buildings” (198). To Taylor, and George Vernon Russell, some of understood, for example, through a study of elevate modernism’s criterion of “authen- the early Strip’s architects, or Kermit Wayne the history of the vernacular roadside motels ticity” in a city built on a creative prefer- and Hermon Boernge, two of the key sign and cabin courts of the 1920s and 1930s ence for the “realfakery...overthe designers of the period. Yet these were the that reflected the impact of the automobile fake reality” (as critic Dave Hickey has architects and designers who perfected not on culture and the democratized wealth and prompted us) misses the point of seventy only fresh formal solutions to challenging pleasures of tourism. By the 1950s motels years of Las Vegas.3 CityCenter’s gleam- new architectural problems but also new had evolved into larger “motor inns,” with ing sculpted towers, identical to similar building types—and not just new building features like pools and restaurants, a tem- complexes in a dozen other cities by Pelli, types but a new “suburban-city” framework plate for the Las Vegas Strip. These in turn Libeskind, Foster, Jahn, and Viñoly (most into which they fit. Without a solid assess- evolved, starting in the 1960s, into the enor- of whom have acknowledged their distaste ment of these early architects and the histor- mous hotel-casinos that became in effect for Las Vegas), are as much a surreal impo- ical context in which they worked, the full complex and condensed cities within the sition of architecture from elsewhere as significance of Las Vegas is difficult to evalu- city. This background is absent from The the Las Vegas versions of the Eiffel Tower ate. They established the design strategies Strip, as are parallel evolutionary histories of and Piazza San Marco—only with less formostofwhatfollowed. the commercial strip, suburbia, the ranch wit. Sensing this, Al wavers. CityCenter’s

BOOKS 231 “shock and awe formalism” may be “mag- Daniel A. Barber solar energy has been subject to a frustrat- nificent individually,” but it is “tame A House in the Sun: Modern ing cycle of invention and reinvention, re- compared to Luxor” (211). Architecture and Solar Energy in the covering and forgetting, revealing and There you have it. You can’thaveit Cold War obscuring. The writing of solar history, one both ways. The Strip mirrors the ambiva- New York: Oxford University Press, 2016, could argue, has been shaped by the same lence and discomfiture about Las Vegas 352 pp., 136 illus. $39.95 (cloth), geopolitical vicissitudes, consumer habits, still seen in the architectural and academic ISBN 9780199394012 and disciplinary blind spots that have con- professions. Yet this book’s existence contributed to the uneven evolution of solar firms academia’s continuing curiosity about The pages of Daniel A. Barber’s A House in energy technologies themselves. To take Las Vegas, however much the city’s archi- the Sun: Modern Architecture and Solar En- only one example, the historian John Per- tecture undermines the tenets of high-art ergy in the Cold War literally glisten. The lin’s once-popular book A Golden Thread: modernism. But perhaps it is too much to volume’s thick, glossy paper, of a type usu- 2500 Years of Solar Architecture and Technol- ask us to consider casino builders like Del ally reserved for monographs on canonical ogy, published in 1980 with a foreword by Webb, Moe Dalitz, and Jay Sarno along- figures like Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies the environmentalist Amory Lovins in the side planners like Ebenezer Howard and van der Rohe, gives the subject of the post- wake of the energy crises of the 1970s, lan- Camillo Sitte. war solar house a material presence befit- guished for decades on the shelves of used A half century after Learning from Las ting the historical attention it has long bookstores—most often in alternative life- Vegas, I would have thought that the main- deserved but only recently begun to attract. style sections—until it was republished in stream would be further along in consoli- The glare each page casts under overhead 2013 in a revised and expanded edition even dating Las Vegas’s place in the evolution light makes the reader feel a bit like a family more ambitiously titled LetItShine:The of modern architecture and planning. Ob- depicted in one of the book’s many reveal- 6,000-Year Story of Solar Energy.1 At the be- servers such as Venturi, Scott Brown, and ing archival photographs. A husband, wife, ginning of Let It Shine, Perlin frames his Izenour did consolidate Las Vegas’splace, and little boy wear dark sunglasses as they narrative not only as a continuation of the and they drew tough-minded conclusions pose for a publicity shot while picnicking excavation work he started in the 1970s but that gave their essays lasting power. If The on a neat lawn. All around them is the in- also as the rekindling of a vision that could Strip had the same conviction to embrace tense shininess produced by a parabolic so- be traced, intermittently, all the way back to the city’s clear implications, it might have lar stove kitted out to roast hot dogs and by the beginning of the twentieth century. Just resolved this ambivalence. an expansive solar collector forming the as Charles Henry Pope, in his pioneering ALAN HESS roof of their single-family house—in this 1903 publication Solar Heat: Its Practical Ap- Irvine, California case, the fourth experimental demonstra- plications, saw history as a means of “arous tion dwelling constructed in the 1950s by [ing]interest...[in]‘catching the sun- Notes the Massachusetts Institute of Technology beams’ and extracting gold from them,” 1. Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Ste- as part of its Solar Energy Fund. In the Perlin hoped that his archival research ven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas (Cambridge, photograph, the family gazes out at a might similarly stimulate a move from “to- Mass.: MIT Press, 1972). bright, hot “possible future,” to use Barber’s day’s fossil-fueled world to a solar future.”2 2. See, for example, Frances Anderton and John term, where the confluence of modern de- Against the background of this histo- Chase, Las Vegas: The Success of Excess (London: sign, renewable energy systems, and the Ellipsis, 1997); Reyner Banham, “Las Vegas,” Los riographic ebb and flow, A House in the Sun Angeles Times West Magazine, 8 Nov. 1970; Charles single-family house were seen to hold the resists such straightforwardly operative for- F. Barnard, The Magic Sign: The Electric Art/Archi- twin promise of national energy security mulas. For Barber, there is something else tecture of Las Vegas (Cincinnati: ST Publications, and new forms of domestic life. In AHouse at stake in the possible futures constructed 1993); Dave Hickey, Air Guitar (Los Angeles: in the Sun we look back at that past’sfuture, in the middle of the twentieth century Foundation for Advanced Critical Studies, 1997); but with the hindsight that the highly around solar energy—not simply that the J. B. Jackson, Landscapes (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1970); Chris Nichols, The staged photograph stands as much for a vi- solar house has a history that is useful, but Leisure Architecture of Wayne McAllister (Layton, sion unattained as it does for a critical, albeit that its history is a specifically architectural Utah: Gibbs Smith, 2007); Hal Rothman, Neon largely forgotten, episode in the history of one. In this respect, we might think of a Metropolis: How Las Vegas Started the Twenty-First modern architecture. complaint that Reyner Banham raised in Century (New York: Routledge, 2002); Martin The historiography of solar power, such the introduction to the second edition of Tr e u , Signs, Streets, and Storefronts: A History of as it is, echoes the discontinuous trajectories Architecture and Graphics along America’sCommer- The Architecture of the Well-Tempered Envi- cial Corridors (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univer- of the personalities and technologies that ronment, his frequently cited history of sity Press, 2012); Tom Wolfe, The Kandy-Kolored constitute its primary subjects. Since the modern environmental control technolo- Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (New York: Far- 1950s, when the engineer Maria Telkes led gies.3 Banham observed that librarians had rar, Straus and Giroux, 1965); Alan Hess, Viva Las an effort by the Stanford Research Institute often incorrectly placed his book on the Vegas: After-Hours Architecture (San Francisco: to assemble a collection of “all known facts” same shelf as general introductions to tech- Chronicle Books, 1993). about solar technologies and publish a com- 3. Dave Hickey, “Dialectical Utopias,” Harvard nology. This, he thought, was a categorical Design Magazine, no. 4 (Winter/Spring 1998), prehensive bibliography for the field (an error that reflected more general schisms http://www.harvarddesignmagazine.org/issues/4/ initiative that Barber details in the book), in the treatment of technical subjects dialectical-utopias (accessed 15 Jan. 2018). the creation of historical narratives about within architectural discourse and design

232 JSAH | 77.2 | JUNE 2018 school curricula. We can easily imagine At first glance, the two volumes appear to and political issues. These wider issues in- that the same shelf also contained a good cover much of the same territory, suggest- clude the global circulation of petroleum, number of writings on solar energy, ing a kind of nascent renewable energy the politics of resource scarcity, the emerg- wherein the figure of the sun-tempered canon consisting of projects such as the ing science of energy forecasting, and the house, alongside other gadgets like the so- houses of Fred Keck in Illinois, the designs growth of international technical assistance lar hot dog cooker, was considered as one resulting from the Libby-Owens-Ford programs. What ultimately emerges—and form of technics among others. Placed on company’s Your Solar House program of what gives AHouseintheSunsignificance that shelf, no less than on the shelf dedi- the mid-1940s, Maria Telkes and Eleanor well beyond the field of solar design—is an cated to alternative lifestyles, Barber’sanal- Raymond’s 1949 Dover Sun House, and overarching biopolitical argument. Barber yses would seem out of place. George Löf’s work in Colorado. Beyond envisions the solar house as a critical site for In AHouseintheSun, the solar house is these overlaps, however, the two accounts the visualization of new forms of subjectiv- not the sum total of its equipment. Instead, differ significantly in both scope and em- ity. This, in fact, is the kind of work done by through a sequence of case studies tracing phasis. Denzer directly connects 1950s the publicity photograph of the family pic- individual research programs, architectural experiments to the passive solar scene that nicking in front of their experimental house, competitions, and built projects, Barber ap- emerged around the oil crises of the as well as by many other illustrations in the proaches it as a potent architectural idea— 1970s and then to more recent popular ini- book populated by the normative staffage of an “argument,”“image,”“symbol,” or tiatives such as the U.S. Department of American suburban life. While there are “experimental object,” as he variously calls Energy’s Solar Decathlon. In this trajec- places where Barber might press his inter- it—that was cultivated and consumed within tory, the solar house is envisioned as a pretations even further to explore the ways the expanding circuits of postwar North “pioneer” of sustainable design. Barber too in which the particular future staged by solar American–centered design discourse. The addresses the complex afterlife of midcen- discourse seems to have consolidated and fact that almost all of these projects ended tury solar discourse in a concluding sec- perpetuated a vision of household labor in failure, having been left unfinished, dis- tion, but he stops short of framing his underpinned by many of the gender-, mantled, gutted, scrapped, relocated, or material as a prelude to sustainability— race-, and class-inflected values that ac- otherwise erased from memory, does not indeed, the word does not appear at all in companied suburban expansion in the detract, for Barber, from their powerful role the book’sindex.Instead,hesituatesthe United States, AHouseintheSunwill as “communication devices.” In the book, solar house within an expanded history of surely become a central point of reference the medium of the solar house is just as architectural modernism that enriches fa- as historians continue to formulate meth- frequently a promotional photograph, miliar debates about the environmental odologies both subtle and expansive advertising pamphlet, newspaper article, performance and cultural valence of glass enough to register the complex environ- symposium paper, scientific report, tech- and the relationship between domestic ar- mental coordinates of modern design. nical drawing, or graph as it is a building chitecture and the concept of the region ALBERT NARATH in the conventional sense of the term. The through extended forays into the socio- University of California, Santa Cruz book’s main protagonists, moreover, are ecological context of the Cold War. just as often engineers, university scientists, In his most illuminating analyses—such Notes conference organizers, energy policy mak- as his discussions of John Yellott and ers, or nongovernmental organizations as Charles M. Shaw’s solar house design for a 1. John Perlin, Let It Shine: The 6,000-Year Story of they are architects. Seen through these 1958 U.S. Department of Commerce trade Solar Energy (Novato, Calif,: New World Library, 2013), revision of Ken Butti and John Perlin, A coordinates, the midcentury solar house fair in Casablanca and of the architecture ’ – “ Golden Thread: 2500 Years of Solar Architecture and emerges at the intersection of design and student Peter R. Lee s195758 Living Technology (Palo Alto, Calif.: Cheshire Books, energy expertise; it stands as a crystalliza- with the Sun” House (built in Scottsdale, 1980). tion of environmental knowledge. Arizona, as part of a competition spon- 2. Perlin, Let It Shine,xix,xxi,citingCharles It is in this respect that Barber’s account sored by the Association for Applied Solar Henry Pope, Solar Heat: Its Practical Applications diverges in meaningful ways from perhaps Energy)—Barber seamlessly oscillates be- (Boston, 1903). 3. Reyner Banham, The Architecture of the Well- its closest point of comparison—the archi- tween the environmental control equipment Tempered Environment, 2nd ed. (Chicago: Univer- ’ tectural historian Anthony Denzers cogent and aesthetic appearance of the individual sity of Chicago Press, 1984). and similarly heavily illustrated book The house, the inner workings of burgeoning 4. Anthony Denzer, The Solar House: Pioneering Solar House: Pioneering Sustainable Design.4 solar energy institutions, and wider social Sustainable Design (New York: Rizzoli, 2013).

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