Programs and Manifestoes on 20Th-Century Architecture

by Conrads, Ulrich; Bullock, Michael

• ISBN13: 9780262530309
• ISBN10: 0262530309
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1975-11-15
• Publisher: MIT PR

Summary

The present volume offers eloquent testimony that many of the master builders of this century have held passionate convictions regarding the philosophic and social basis of their art. Nearly every important development in the modern architectural movement began with the proclamation of these convictions in the form of a program or manifesto. The most influential of these are collected here in chronological order from 1903 to 1963. Taken together, they constitute a subjective history of modern architecture; compared with one another, their great diversity of style reveals in many cases the basic differences of attitude and temperament that produced a corresponding divergence in architectural style. In point of view, the book covers the aesthetic spectrum from right to left; from programs that rigidly generate designs down to the smallest detail to revolutionary manifestoes that call for anarchy in building form and town plan. The documents, placed in context by the editor, are also international in their range: among them are the seminal and prophetic statements of Henry van de Velde, Adolf Loos, and Bruno Taut from the early years of the century; Frank Lloyd Wright's 1910 annunciation of Organic Architecture; Gropius's original program for the Bauhaus, founded in Weimar in 1919; "Towards a New Architecture, Guiding Principles" by Le Corbusier; the formulation by Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner of the basic principles of Constructivism; and articles by R. Buckminster Fuller on universal architecture and the architect as world planner. Other pronouncements, some in flamboyant style, including those of Erich Mendelsohn, Hannes Meyer, Theo van Doesburg, Oskar Schlemmer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, El Lissitzky, and Louis I. Kahn. There are also a number of collective or group statements, issued in the name of movements such as CIAM, de Stijl,ABC, the Situationists, and GEAM. Since the dramatic effectiveness of the manifesto form is usually heightened by brevity and conciseness, it has been possible to reproduce most of the documents in their entirety; only a few have been excerpted.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. 11
1903 Programme	p. 13
1906 Fermentation in architecture	p. 14
1907 Credo	p. 18
1908 Ornamentation and crime	p. 19
1910 Organic Architecture	p. 25
1911 Aims of the Werkbund	p. 26
1914 Werkbund theses and antitheses	p. 28
1914 Glass architecture	p. 32
1914 Futurist architecture	p. 34
1918 Manifesto I	p. 39
1918 A programme for architecture	p. 41
1919 'Work Council for Art': Under the wing of a great architecture	p. 44
1919 Gropius / Taut / Behne: New ideas on architecture	p. 46
1919 Programme of the Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar	p. 49
1919 The problem of a new architecture	p. 54
1920 Basic principles of Constructivism	p. 56
1920 Down with seriousism!	p. 1920
1920 Towards a new architecture: guiding principles	p. 59
1921 Fruhlicht (Daybreak)	p. 63
1922 Creative Demands	p. 64
1923 Manifesto V	p. 66
1923 Towards collective building (Commentary on Manifesto V)	p. 67
1923 Manifesto for the first Bauhaus exhibition	p. 69
1923 The new engineer is coming	p. 71
1923 Dynamics and function	p. 72
1923 Working theses	p. 74
1923 Analytical and Utopian architecture	p. 76
1924 Towards a plastic architecture	p. 78
1924 Industrialized building	p. 81
1924 Casa Nova	p. 83
1924 Suprematist manifesto Unovis	p. 87
1925 Guiding principles of town planning	p. 89
1926 Principles of Bauhaus production [Dessau]	p. 95
1926 Space City architecture	p. 98
1926 Five points towards a new architecture	p. 99
1927 On form in architecture	p. 102
1927 Formulations towards a reorientation in the applied arts	p. 103
1928 Synthesis - World Architecture	p. 106
1928 CIAM: La Sarraz Declaration	p. 109
1928 ABC demands dictatorship of the machine	p. 115
1928 Building	p. 117
1929 Ideological superstructure	p. 121
1930 The new era	p. 123
1931 Young Architecture	p. 124
1932 The house as an organic structure	p. 126
1932 Universal architecture	p. 128
1933 CIAM: Charter of Athens: tenets	p. 137
1943 A programme for city reconstruction	p. 146
1947 A post-war appeal: fundamental demands	p. 148
1947 Magical Architecture	p. 150
1949 Forms	p. 152
1950 Technology and Architecture	p. 154
1954 New games!	p. 155
1957 Seven theses	p. 156
1958 Mould Manifesto against rationalism in architecture	p. 157
1958 Constant / Debord: Situationist definitions	p. 161
1960 Organics	p. 163
1960 Towards a new architecture	p. 165
1960 GEAM: Programme for a mobile architecture	p. 167
1960 Order is	p. 169
1960 Project for an aerial architecture	p. 171
1960 'Situationists': International Manifesto	p. 172
1960 The Space City	p. 175
1960 Constant: New Babylon	p. 177
1961 The architect as world planner	p. 179
1962 Absolute architecture	p. 181
1962 The ten principles of space town planning	p. 183
1963 We demand	p. 185
Sources	p. 187
Index	p. 191
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.