Department:

History & Theory of Architecture and Heritage Conservation

Course Leader:

conf.dr.arh. Radu Ponta

Learning outcomes:

An insight into the birth and evolution of Modern Architecture in the context of the “revolutions” in thinking and visual arts from the mid-nineteenth century until the contemporary era.

Content:

Introduction
Predisposing causes
“The tall building”
Frank Lloyd Wright and the new domesticity
Art Nouveau under different names and shapes
Futurism
Constructivism
De Stijl
The Bauhaus, Neue Sachlichkeit
Auguste Perret, Tony Garnier, Le Corbusier – France before WW2
Interwar CIAM — birth of a united front
Italy, Germany and the Soviet Union before WW2
A different modernism
Architecture during the war

Teaching Method:

Lectures and debates

Assessment:

Written examination

Bibliography:

General historical surveys, critical analyses
Curtis, William J. R., Modern Architecture Since 1900, Phaidon, 1982
Frampton, Kenneth, Modern Architecture, A Critical History, Thames & Hudson, 1981
Heynen, Hilde, Architecture and modernity: a critique, MIT Press, 1999
Colquhoun, Alan, Modern architecture, Oxford University Press, 2002
Mallgrave, Harry Francis, Modern Architectural Theory. A Historical Survey, 1673–1968, Cambridge University Press, 2005
Guillén, Mauro F., The Taylorized beauty of the mechanical: scientific management and the rise of modernist architecture, Princeton University Press, 2006
Cohen, Jean-Louis, The Future of Architecture. Since 1889, Phaidon, 2012

Historiography
Tournikiotis, Panayotis, The Historiography of Modern Architecture, MIT Press, 1999
Vidler, Anthony, Histories of the Immediate Present. Inventing Architectural Modernism, MIT Press, 2008

Older historical accounts
Kaufmann, Emil, Von Ledoux bis Le Corbusier. Ursprung und Entwicklung der autonomen Architektur, 1933
Giedion, Sigfried, Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition, 1941
Pevsner, Nikolaus, An Outline of European Architecture, 1942
Zevi, Bruno, Storia dell’architettura moderna, 1950
Hitchcock, Henry-Russell, Architecture: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, 1958
Benevolo, Leonardo, Storia dell'architettura moderna, 1960
Banham, Reyner, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, 1960
Collins, Peter, Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture, 1750-1950, 1965
Tafuri, Manfredo, Teorie e storia dell'architettura, 1968

A complementary bibliography will accompany every topic that the lecture series addresses