HDM Architecture As Conceptual Art? Fall 2003 / Winter 2004, Number 19
"The question here is not whether architecture is “legitimate” as an art form or is concerned with the ideation of form, but specifically how it operates or defines itself. When architecture is presented not as building technology, social development, or economic production, but rather as art, it operates in a different role—neither as building nor its representation but rather as a specific kind of cultural commodity. As such, it asks to be redefined in relation to its sister objects. If, for instance, architecture sees itself as a conceptual activity, the label is affiliated with a host of other conceptual art practices that have been legitimated elsewhere in the art world. Making this connection depends on a (usually formal) resemblance to these other objects. Conceptual architecture then participates—or at least attempts to align itself—within a cultural ecosystem that defines its participants and its objects as possessing a privileging aura. If, as art historian and Getty Research Institute director Thomas Crow caustically observed, the artistic avant-garde acts as the “research and development” arm of the culture industry, then architecture in this sense certainly belongs to the arts."
"Architects and architectural historians might know Karel Teige (1900–1951)—Czech poet, critic, and avant-garde artist—through his unexpected and rather severe criticism of Le Corbusier’s Mundaneum project.(1) Teige’s 1929 text attacked Le Corbusier for grounding this project in an archaic and formalist attitude that glorified vague and unscientific notions such as “harmony” and “sacred space.” Teige defended the radical position that Modern architecture by necessity was no longer an art: “Whenever the work of the architect is guided by the needs of practical life, it is the end of the arts. The criterion of usefulness, as the sole reliable one for evaluating the quality of architectural production, has led modern architecture to abandon ‘the mastodontic bodies of monumentality’ and to cultivate the brain: instead of monuments, architecture creates instruments.”(2) Since Le Corbusier’s Mundaneum project was not answering a concrete, practical need, since it emerged from an ideologically flawed idea—an international museum representing all times and all cultures—it could not be anything but a monument. It was not “constructed” according to scientifically based and clear criteria, but “composed” according to aestheticist principles such as the Golden Section. And being a monument, it could not be modern and failed, in Teige’s opinion, as a piece of Modern architecture."
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"The question here is not whether architecture is “legitimate” as an art form or is concerned with the ideation of form, but specifically how it operates or defines itself. When architecture is presented not as building technology, social development, or economic production, but rather as art, it operates in a different role—neither as building nor its representation but rather as a specific kind of cultural commodity. As such, it asks to be redefined in relation to its sister objects. If, for instance, architecture sees itself as a conceptual activity, the label is affiliated with a host of other conceptual art practices that have been legitimated elsewhere in the art world. Making this connection depends on a (usually formal) resemblance to these other objects. Conceptual architecture then participates—or at least attempts to align itself—within a cultural ecosystem that defines its participants and its objects as possessing a privileging aura. If, as art historian and Getty Research Institute director Thomas Crow caustically observed, the artistic avant-garde acts as the “research and development” arm of the culture industry, then architecture in this sense certainly belongs to the arts."
- bill 10-17-2003 11:11 pm
"Architects and architectural historians might know Karel Teige (1900–1951)—Czech poet, critic, and avant-garde artist—through his unexpected and rather severe criticism of Le Corbusier’s Mundaneum project.(1) Teige’s 1929 text attacked Le Corbusier for grounding this project in an archaic and formalist attitude that glorified vague and unscientific notions such as “harmony” and “sacred space.” Teige defended the radical position that Modern architecture by necessity was no longer an art: “Whenever the work of the architect is guided by the needs of practical life, it is the end of the arts. The criterion of usefulness, as the sole reliable one for evaluating the quality of architectural production, has led modern architecture to abandon ‘the mastodontic bodies of monumentality’ and to cultivate the brain: instead of monuments, architecture creates instruments.”(2) Since Le Corbusier’s Mundaneum project was not answering a concrete, practical need, since it emerged from an ideologically flawed idea—an international museum representing all times and all cultures—it could not be anything but a monument. It was not “constructed” according to scientifically based and clear criteria, but “composed” according to aestheticist principles such as the Golden Section. And being a monument, it could not be modern and failed, in Teige’s opinion, as a piece of Modern architecture."
- bill 10-20-2003 3:19 am [add a comment]