Unfolding
The Culture of Space
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As we saw in the previous chapter there are indeed many ways that we can come to terms with space; some construct a taxonomy of spatial categories, some expel such categorization and understand space as one uniting entity, while again others understand space as a purely empirical experience or observation. However, we could argue that above or below such techniques of handling space, there are two issues that are widely shared; an a priori understanding that space is at all present and that our understanding of space is somehow influenced by other people’s understanding of space, our upbringing and education.(1) For we are not alone in trying to understand space, we learn to decipher space through what we read, see, hear and feel, and are as such placed within a culture that constantly tries to grasp space and to push the boundaries of what space may be or may be used for.
The historian Stephen Kern, observes – and constructs – in his book The Culture of Space and Time a range of connections between different changes in the concepts of space and time between 1880 and 1918. This was a period that produced a significant unfolding of space, marking a clear shift in the spatial paradigm; in a large number of areas, old paradigms were expelled and new ones took over. If the many new spatial constructions of that time were not to be found in the architecture of real physical space, they were to be found in the minds of the men who were bound to construct them. In the words of Stephen Kern: “The age thus had an energy crisis of its own – a crisis of abundance.”(2)
Kern makes two clear observations. First, that the conception, understanding and use of space were not an isolated phenomenon to each individual discipline. Rather, it was a shared culture, where developments in physics, engineering, art, literature, psychology, architecture, politics and military all influenced each other.(3) Second, that the changes in the culture of space had structures that could be identified across the individual disciplines and subsequently analyzed as a whole. Kern draws special attention to two shared cultural structures: first, to relative space as described by non-Euclidian geometries, the critique of an absolute space in physics and cosmology and in the elimination of an absolute observer in perspectivism, and second, to the constituency(4) of space, which reversed or multiplied the traditional relationship of figure/ground and object/space. This later created a positive negative space, which provided a concept for a volumetric and active space in architecture. These two aspects represented two of the most significant shifts in the paradigm of space of the 20th century.(5)
Even though his argument relies heavily on the developments in physical science and technology, his outset lies elsewhere, namely in the works by psychiatrists like Eugène Minkowski and his case studies from the 1930s. Minkowski studied how his patients experienced space as a phenomenon constructed by their abnormal mental capacities and not just as a distortion of their perception.(6) In examining, his patients – primarily psychotics – he found that their mental capacities often were unbalanced leading to an abnormal experience of time, space, causality etc. To Kern that abnormal mind becomes a conceptual lens through which he studies the normal mind.(7) And by focusing on the abnormal experience of space, Kern shows what construction our concept of space really is, and how easily it may be altered relative to conventions of normality in the course of a few decades, within what he calls a culture of time and space.
Relative SpaceIn his account of the changing culture of space Kern identifies three areas that came to define the shift to a concept of relative space: the non-Euclidian geometries, the relative space in physical science, and the individual understanding of space in perspectivism. In Kern’s account, these three areas were connected and had a significant influence on each other, even though the areas now seem far apart. In fact, we could say that it was a bit of a paradox that a shared change in the concept of space could occur at the same time as the very understanding of space became increasingly individual and personal – we could say that it in a way was a shared spatial culture of individual relativism.
The shift towards non-Euclidian geometries was a long process that began in the early 19th century. First, by the mathematician Nicolai Ivanovitch Lobachevski, who in 1830 described a hyperbolic surface space, where the sum of all angles in a triangle was less than 180 degrees. Later, in 1854, another mathematician, Bernhard Riemannn, described an elliptical surface space, where the sum of all angles in a triangle was larger than 180 degrees. Both Lobachevski’s and Riemannn’s spaces were two-dimensional surface spaces, and to imagine three-dimensional hyperbolic or elliptical space did not mean a final blow to Isaac Newton’s absolute space.(8) However, it did mean a blow to Euclid’s fifth postulate: that only one line could be parallel to another line through one single point in the same plane. Still, the most important consequence of the construction of these non-Euclidian geometries was exactly that they together with Euclid’s geometry suddenly were seen as mere constructions – each one just as valid as the other. This meant that there was no absolutely right geometry to describe the structure of space but rather a wide range of geometries to chose from. The description of space had forever changed – not to a relative space at first, but rather to a relativism of spatial constructions. The geometric mathematical description of space that was argued by the mathematicians Johann C.F. Gauss, Lobachevski and Riemann as non-Euclidian may not be relevant for the narrow design process of architecture as such. Nevertheless, it shows that the relative space that Kern describes was just as much a relativism of concepts as it was the development of relative space in physics. The non-Euclidian geometry proved that descriptions of space were multiple, relative and phenomena of culture, and that they were not given a priori constructions.
Just as crucial to the concept of space itself was the shift from absolute space to relative space – one of the clearest shifts in western thinking since the renaissance. It was a shift that abandoned the idea of absolute space as a ubiquitous and empty system of coordinates ready to engulf whatever object we would place in it, as a space that was uniform, predictable, infinite and always stayed the same, whether or not the objects were changed or entirely removed. It was a shift towards a concept of relative space that was only defined by relations between objects, and it was these relations that we manipulated as we manipulated space. For an observer of relative space there was no divine position – no ‘birds eye view’. The observer was an object in space, relative to other objects, and thus an active part of the spatial structure.
The architect Cornelis van de Ven argues, with reference to the philosopher Oswald Spengler, that this shift was not an abrupt revolution that happened overnight, so to speak.(9) Van de Ven finds that the shift in the concept of space was the result of a change in western culture at large, which step by step led to a new concept of space. Van de Ven writes: “The theory of relativity, which was crystallized by Albert Einstein in 1916, should be considered, like Spengler did, as the natural outcome of the spirit and will of an epoch.”(10) Even though the shift was gradual, it had the significant characteristics of a revolutionary shift in the paradigm of space. In the context of Thomas Kuhn’s scientific structures, as describes above, a shift in paradigm occurs when a new paradigm is incompatible and incommensurable with the former paradigm. In the case of space, this would mean that the paradigm of absolute space had no merit in a paradigm of relative space. Relative space could not be an articulation of absolute space, nor could absolute space be a special case in relative space. If the uniform and infinitely large absolute space would exist in a relative space, then even the smallest position in space would be occupied by objects, since relative space only exists as the relations between objects. These objects would be so infinitely small and so close to each other in an infinitely large number that they would collapse into one single object. If there were any space without an object, it would immediately have to be occupied by an object to create space as relations to other objects. The single collapsed object would be entirely uniform and filled, and therefore eliminate the potential of space since there could be no relations to objects beyond itself, which would be necessary for space to exist. Therefore, the concept of relative space was a significant shift in the culture of space and had a widespread influence on the understanding of space in general. But it was not a shift that came without a struggle. Albert Einstein writes in the foreword to physicist Max Jammer’s book about the concept of space in physics: “It required a severe struggle to arrive at the concept of independent and absolute space, indispensable for the development of theory. It has required no less strenuous exertions subsequently to overcome this concept – a process which is probably by no means as yet completed.”(11)
Even though the relative space of quantum mechanics, electrodynamics and astronomy had no practical relevance for the architecture of human bodies, there were still parallels to be drawn. Space in architecture did in fact have more in common with relative space than with absolute space, since it was a shared relative, secular, affective and social construction. In this way, the shift to a paradigm of relative space in natural science, and in particular in physics, gave architects the legitimacy and reason to question their own concept of space. Later, this lead to reinterpretations of space in architecture as in Siegfried Giedion’s Space, Time and Architecture in 1941 and Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky’s article “Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal” from 1956.
The Constituency of SpaceThe shift to a concept of relative space had a great influence on mathematics and physics, and to some extent architecture. However, parallel to this was a shift that had an even greater influence on architecture – on the status of space, on how it was constructed and on the relationship between space and objects. Kern describes this as a shift in the constituency of space – as a change from an inward objectivism that placed sculptural objects in a neutral empty space, to an outward spatiality that constructed an active space of relations. It was a shift that was guided by reformulations in physics as described by the philosopher Hiram M. Stanley, who in 1898 identified a tendency by physicists to not see space as full of objects but objects full of space. It was also a shift, where new building techniques were introduced to changed architectural space like electric lightning, mechanical ventilation, reinforced concrete etc.
The two shifts occurred, no doubt, in the same culture. The architectural shift in the constituency of space was relative to the hierarchy of architectural objects, relative to the position of the observer and relative to the architect’s individual understanding of space. It was a shift that questioned many of the traditional relations in architecture – figure/ground, inside/outside, room/architecture, space/object etc.
Kern points in the direction of architecture as one of the areas, where the breakdown in the traditional hierarchy was most noticeable. As Kern observes Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Temple from 1904, he writes: “Architecture must recognize its true purpose as an ‘art of space.’ The primary subjects of architecture are not so much walls and ceilings as the spatial enclosures created by them. This conceptual shift was presented even more forcefully in the writings and buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright.”(12) No doubt, Unity Temple was an architectural expression of space – as were many of Wright’s other buildings in Oak Park outside Chicago. His Home and Studio (1889-1909) had the lowered ceiling in the corridor to the display area on the right of the entrance, the children’s play chamber with the folded up balcony, and the double change of direction when entering the house from the outside. However, Unity Temple had two even more remarkable features, which are evident in Wright’s own descriptions. It was the first building by Wright that was designed by reinterpreting the spatial relation between inside and outside, and it was the first building by Wright, where the formal expression was clearly dependant on the use of specific building techniques. In other words, Unity Temple was a manifest to the shift in the constituency of space as well as in the culture of space. In 1925, Wright described the building: “This building is a cast monolith. A transition building it is … A sense of the third dimension in the use of the ‘box’ and the ‘slab’ – and a sense of the room within as the thing to be expressed in arranging them are what made Unity Temple; instead of the two-dimension-sense of the traditional block mass sculptured into architectural form from without.”(13) In Unity Temple, the interior space formed the exterior architecture, while space, together with the constraints and the freedoms of the building material, was used as an active tool in the design process. In 1932 Wright explains:
Concrete alone could do it. But even concrete as it was in use at the time meant wood ‘forms’ and some other material than concrete for outside facing. They were in the habit of covering the concrete with brick or stone, plastering and furring the inside of the walls. Plastering the outside would be cheaper than brick or stone but wouldn’t stick to concrete in our climate. Why not make the wooden boxes or forms so the concrete could be cast in them as separate blocks and masses, these separate blocks and masses grouped about an interior space in some such way as to preserve this desired sense of the interior space in the appearance of the whole building? And the block-masses be left as themselves with no ‘facing’. That would be cheap and permanent.(14)
It is clear that the relation between interior space or room and exterior architecture was reversed in the design process of Unity Temple – what had earlier been seen as the figure (exterior architecture) was now the background upon which, the new figure (interior space) was expressed. Space was not just a resulting product of Wright’s architectural enterprise – it was the key aspect of Unity Temple and the key tool in the design of the building. With Unity Temple and the buildings that followed, Wright had responded as an architect to a changing culture of space, not only by elevating space as the most important product of architecture, but also by using space as an active tool of creation. The changes in the constituency of space would effect architects around the world like an architectural student in Vienna – R.M. Schindler, who we will investigate later – who in 1910 saw the drawings of Unity Temple, which came to change his entire understanding of space. Or later Robert Venturi, who in 1968 observes about the spatial relationship between inside and outside: “Designing from the outside in, as well as the inside out, creates necessary tensions, which help make architecture. Since the inside is different from the outside, the wall – the point of change – becomes an architectural event. Architecture occurs at the meeting of interior and exterior forces of use and space.”(15)
So the two shared structures that Kern argues changed in the culture of space – relativity and constituency – shows the many systems, which have a part in the spaces that we construct, both physically and mentally. Therefore, when we use space as an active tool in designing, we subscribe to large bodies of knowledge, which are not immediately evident – also, even though we are operating within the strict confines of architectural design. We could therefore see these subscriptions, as Kern suggests we do, as a cultural consensus.
Space ScienceAs we saw above, science – and especially natural and physical science – has played an important role in our understanding of space.(16) Science helped us explain both the empirical experience of space and the aspects we could not experience first hand, like topology, quantum mechanics or advanced telecommunication. This has without doubt also been the case for architectural space,(17) as it has a significant connection to hard sciences as described by van de Ven, Kern, Giedion, historians and philosophers Paul Virilio, Alberto Pérez-Gómez, Jonathan Crary and others. Architecture sought to reach a new definition of space by science and technology – to such extent that we could argue that space was the one inherent aspect of architecture with the widest range of influences from science.(18) Further, we could argue that the concepts of space in architecture have progressed parallel to these, using them to shift the architectural paradigm of space or at least to articulate old ones.(19) In this way, the architectural history of space to a large extent becomes the history of science and technology, and to keep Kern’s terminology in mind we could say that the culture of space in which, architecture redefined its concept of space, was saturated with the influence of science and technology.(20)
Nevertheless, how did this connection then take place? I will suggest three distinct, but in no way exclusive, ways to look at this issue. First, that architecture just looks like science but is in fact an autonomous entity in itself, as argued by architect and historian Kenneth Frampton, next, that there is a cultural and historical linkage between architecture and science, as argued by historian of science Peter Galison, and last, that architecture is science and science is architecture, as argued by philosopher Rudolf Carnap and more recently by John Rajchman.
In his article from 1991, “Reflections on the Autonomy of Architecture: A Critique of Contemporary Production”, Kenneth Frampton argued that architecture suffered from two ‘dilutions’ – science envy and art envy – which both ignored the real autonomy of architecture.(21) Frampton argues that architecture only use science as a rapture or clothing. Frampton writes: “Lacking a collective raison d’être, architecture has turned first this way and then that in an effort to legitimate itself and to bring its practice into line with the dominant discourse, be it applied science as the reality principle or applied art as a psycho social compensation.”(22) The real logic, meaning and legitimacy of architecture must be found within architecture – in its tectonic aspect. According to Frampton, architecture should not try to imitate or look like neither art (Frank Gehry) nor science (Peter Eisenman), since architecture is neither. So, in a way Frampton shared Kern’s argument that architecture and architectural space was influenced by science and art. They were all a part of the same modern culture of space, but argued that it was wrong to go beyond architecture in the first place, which is why he wanted to enforce the boundaries around an architecture that was drifting without aim in a diversified culture. Frampton saw the tectonic as the defining aspect of architecture because it was the very technology (téche) of architecture, and therefore the category of technology, which was the least foreign to architecture.(23) In so doing, he demonstrated a great belief in architecture’s autonomy, but at the same time a rather limited view of its potential, which leaves architecture alone, disillusioned and secluded.
The matter is quite different with Alberto Pérez-Gómez. In 1999, he contributed to an anthology entitled The Architecture of Science that offered a thorough investigation of the connection between science and architecture by asking to modern space and question whether architecture indeed was science.(24) Pérez-Gómez points out that “… given the state of affairs in contemporary theory and practice, it is important to discuss whether and how scientific discourse may be normative for architecture …”(25) On this point he agrees with Frampton, but he continues in another direction:
… rather than assuming that science and architecture have become linked only as a result of recent ‘revolutions,’ such as the end of metaphysics, logocentricity, classical authorship, or whatever, it is important to understand that architecture and science were linked at the very inception of our Western tradition. Their aims always ran in parallel.(26)
Thus, opposite Frampton, Pérez-Gómez does not see a strange or foreign connection between science and architecture – even though, as he argued in the 1983 book Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science, that connection had been transformed by the scientific revolutions from the late Renaissance until today. In the frame of Kern’s culture of space, it is therefore clear that architecture and science are more than just interacting bodies of knowledge – they are closely connected siblings, but siblings we should not automatically take for granted. Pérez-Gómez writes:
Chaos and catastrophe theory, for example, often irresponsibly extrapolated into architectural theory, are made to suggest formal strategies for architecture, metaphorical connections in themselves merely a mannerism of modernity. Identifying truth with science and science with applied science, that is, the theory of technology, the result is incapacity to consider truly radical alternative modes of thinking in architectural theory.(27)
Therefore, even though architects cannot and should not escape science, we should not confuse science with truth and seek to legitimate architecture by subscribing to science without at the same time being critical of science. On this point, Pérez-Gómez repeats the point by Albert Einstein as previously described. Pérez-Gómez concludes: “One could argue that architectural theory, therefore, was science; it had the same status as scientia, while being in a noninstrumental relationship with practice. Scientia named that which should be contemplated, the proportional order that architecture embodied, not only as a building, but as a human situation, in the space-time experience.”(28) In many ways, Pérez-Gómez’ thorough argument shows the limits of Frampton’s argument. It shows that we cannot just choose to exclude science from our understanding of space. What we can do instead is to be critical of the connection to science and to see it as part of a larger epistemological system.
However, in the same anthology as Pérez-Gómez’ article, Kenneth Frampton has an article entitled “The Mutual Limits of Architecture and Science”, which contains an opening that can bring us further. Frampton states:
Thus whether we like it or not, the interface between architecture and science returns to the political, and as (Raymond) Guess implies, the epistemic criteria of a critical practice aren’t just out there waiting to be appropriated and applied. On the contrary, they have to be formulated in the process of constructing a world, just as building comes into being about the convergence of a set of forms and materials that do not as yet exist.(29)
Frampton’s article should be seen as an amendment to his articles on the autonomy of architecture from 1991 and the calling to order from 1990. Still having doubts about the connection between architecture and science, he advocates a constructive philosophy, which metaphorically applies the tectonic of architecture to the construction of our understanding of architecture, space and the world in general. This is an interesting mobility of a concept that was found at the heart of architecture; in Frampton’s argument, architectural constructions could be applied to the scientific and philosophical construction of conceptualization, while the opposite direction would be a superficial envy.
However, what if the opposite was just as true – that science was architecture and architecture science, that instead of only one direction there would be two? The German philosopher Rudolf Carnap suggested such an overlapping exchange in his address to students at the Bauhaus school in Dessau in 1926 where he told them: “I work in science and you in visible forms; the two are only different sides of a single life.”(30) An expression of logical positivism that he explained in another lecture in 1929: “There is only one science, not separate subjects … for all knowledge stems form one source of knowledge: experience – the unmediated content of experience such as red, hard, toothache, and joy. These make up the ‘given’.”(31) The dynamic exchange between philosophy and architecture at the Bauhaus had a significant influence on defining a new and modern paradigm in both areas, as the philosopher John Rajchman explains:
… toward the end of the nineteenth century we see a dual movement away from this ‘enlightened’ idea of architecture and philosophy. On one side, architecture tries to fee itself from the beaux-arts, looking instead to modern engineering and industry; in place of the maestro of the Gesamtkunstwerk (as still with Frank Lloyd Wright), the architect gradually assumes the persona of an artist-engineer of the problems of modern life. On the other side, philosophy tries to rid itself of the great post-Kantian system of thought and become ‘modern’ in its own way … The background is a strange intersection between philosophical and tectonic cultures that emerged in Vienna, captured in the anecdote that Adolf Loos, when it was finally arranged that he meet Wittgenstein, exclaimed ‘You are I!’ The philosopher had become a sort of engineer, a mechanic of concepts. For while architecture freed itself of ornament and iconography, becoming pure and functional, philosophy had freed itself from the remnants of post-Kantian ‘metaphysics’ and resolved to keep al meaning or sense within the bounds of a ‘logical construction (Aufbau) of the world’, to be built mechanically from atomistic units through logical operations alone.(32)
So, Rajchman sees this partnership between architecture and science both as a dynamic interaction that is impossible to neglect and as something that will always have to be tested and defined anew as a critical pragmatism, he asks: “What if the architectonic in Kant were not an overarching system but something that has itself to be constructed anew, in each case, in relation to fresh problems – something looser, more flexible, less complete, more irregular, a free plan in which things hang together without yet being held in place?”(33)
All this said, what is then the relevance for space? As we saw in the previous chapter, our understanding of space may take many forms and is always a construction, except for an a priori understanding that space is. Our understanding of space may be seen as a complex construction of many sources, references and experiences, which we in Kern’s terminology could describe as a culture of space. When we observe our understanding of space in architecture, that culture has to a large effect, but not exclusively, been influenced by science. Not just by hard science like physics and mathematics, but sciences like sociology, ethnography, psychology, geography and even medicine, which have helped define the understanding and conceptualization of space in architecture. That this partnership is essential to the definition of architectural space, both in the design process and as a final form, is evident in almost all discussions about architectural space, whether the vis-à-vis position of science and architecture is appreciated or not. It is a partnership that we will encounter throughout the rest of the dissertation – in the definition of a design space in the next chapter, in the Unit System by R.M. Schindler, in the geographic spaces of the postmodern suburb, in the creation of digital synthetic spaces and in my own constructions and its use of media. So, from Kern we can construct a path that goes from our understanding of space as a cultural construction, across the relations between science and architecture to the investigation and construction of embedded spaces.
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(1) I will not expand any further on the philosopher Immanuel Kant’s concept of a priori in this context, except to say, I believe that we have an unfortunate tendency to confuse an a priori understanding that space is, with aspects and causalities of space, which we take for granted.
(2) Kern, Stephen (1983), The Culture of Time and Space, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, p. 9.
(3) This view on space as a cultural phenomenon is a direct unfolding of the first of the three components mentioned above in A Path Through Space.
(4) Kern (1983), op. cit., p. 152. The Merriam-Webster American English dictionary defines the term ‘constituent’ as “serving to make up or form the basis of a thing, an element, material etc. that makes up a whole component”, and the Gyldendal Engelsk-Dansk dictionary defines it as “Valgkreds, vælgere, (to constitute) udgøre, indrette, fastsætte, anordne, udnævne, nedsætte, (constitution) indretning, beskaffenhed, sammensætning, struktur, bygning.”
(5) See the discussion of shifts in paradigm in the chapter On Doing Architectural Research.
(6) This interest in the ‘abnormal’ mind as a diagnostic tool for the ‘normal’ mind is also found in the accounts of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and medical doctor and neurologist Oliver Sacks, or in the analysis of space in Anthony Vidler’s Warped Space (2000).
(7) When Kern’s conceptual lens is directed towards architects another dimension is added, since architects not only experience the phenomenon of space, they also produce space, and yet another dimension is added as some architects use space as a tool for producing space.
(8) I will not go further into this issue for now, but return to the matter in the chapter Structure. The essential issue here is that the non-Euclidian geometry was a part of the culture of space, which ensured the concept of relative space.
(9) Van de Ven writes about Spengler: “Spengler’s aim was to encompass all cultural phenomena, of science, mathematics, physics, art, religion in order to see all these fields related to the inner Faustian will to express its idea of space. The most contemporary of theories in physics, the theory of relativity formulated in the same decade and which destroyed the concept of absolute space, became for Spengler, the most eloquent illustration of the Faustian idea of space.” Van de Ven, Cornelis (1987), Space in Architecture, Assen/Maastricht: Van Gorcum, p. 167.
(10) Ibid., p. 43.
(11) Jammer, Max (1993 Dover Edition (1954)), Concepts of Space, The History of Theories of Space in Physics, New York, NY: Dover Publications, Inc., p. XVI.
(12) Kern (1983), op. cit., p. 157.
(13) Wright, Frank Lloyd (1925), “In the Cause of Architecture: The Third Dimension,” in Frank Lloyd Wright Collected Writings Vol. 1 1894-1930, ed. Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer (1992), New York, NY: Rizzoli, p. 212.
(14) Wright, Frank Lloyd (1932), An Autobiography: Book Two: Work, in Frank Lloyd Wright Collected Writings Vol. 2 1930-1932, ed. Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer (1992), New York, NY: Rizzoli, p. 212-3.
(15) Venturi, Robert (1998, 1977 Second Edition (1966)), Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, New York, NY: The Museum of Modern Art, p. 86.
(16) This issue of architecture’s influence from science has three areas of relevance in this dissertation. The first two – Schindler’s reliance upon science in the development of his reference frames in space, and in the contemporary use of digital media and computer applications like MAYA – has the function of inspiration or articulation, while third has the function of a critique of modernity’s blunt acceptance of science as the evaluator of function and the inspiration of form.
(17) By the term ‘architectural space’, I mean space within an architectural field of action, which would include both the real space as the result of architectural production, the mental space of the architectural design process, and the possible overlappings of these.
(18) Other aspects could be techniques and esthetics, which seem to have a narrower scope than space. Likewise, we could argue that the aspect of space has for long been too diffuse to easily categorize, and it is not listed as a category by either Pollio Vitruvius or Gottfried Semper.
(19) I believe that architecture is within the boundaries of science, why these terms with reference to Thomas Kuhn are applicable.
(20) This saturated influence from technology and techniques will be seen in a more critical light in the chapter Media in the part Construction.
(21) Frampton, Kenneth (1991), “Reflections of the Autonomy of Architecture: A Critique of Contemporary Production,” in Out of site. A Social Criticism of Architecture, ed. Diane Ghirardo (1991), Seattle, WA: Bay Press. Frampton’s critique must be seen as part of the reintroduction of tectonic as a decisive aspect for architectural autonomy, for which Frampton argued in his article “Rappel à l’ordre, the Case for the Tectonic” from 1990.
(22) Ibid., p. 19.
(23) Even though tectonic often is seen as the structural skeleton a building, this is done in the context of Semper; the knowledge of how the four parts of architecture (earthwork, hearth, framework/roof and enclosing membrane) are combined.
(24) The anthology had contributions by among others Adrian Forty, K. Michael Hays, Antoine Picon, Alberto Pérez-Gómez, Kenneth Frampton, Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi. A quite impressive and counterpoised group of people.
(25) Pérez-Gómez, Alberto (1999), “Architecture as Science: Analogy or Disjunction?,” in The Architecture of Science, ed. Peter Galison & Emily Thompson (1999), Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, p. 337.
(26) Ibid., p. 338.
(27) Ibid., p. 340.
(28) Ibid., p. 338.
(29) Frampton, Kenneth (1999), “The Mutual Limits of Architecture and Science,” in Galison & Thompson ed. (1999), op. cit., p. 368. In the beginning of the article, Frampton has a reference to Raymond Guess, The Idea of a Critical Theory: Habermas and the Frankfurt School (1951).
(30) Rudolf Carnap’s lecture at Bauhaus, Dessau (1926) is quoted in Galison, Peter (1999), “Buildings and the Subject of Science,” in Galison & Thompson, ed. (1999), op. cit., p. 19.
(31) Carnap’s lecture at Bauhaus, Dessau (October 16, 1929 is quoted in Galison, Peter (1990), “Aufbau/Bauhaus: Logical Positivism and Architectural Modernism,” in Critical Inquiry 16 (Summer, 1990), p. 736.
(32) Rajchman, John (1998), Constructions, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, p. 4-5. Rajchman’s emphasis.
(33) Ibid., p. 1.
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