Architecture’s Historical Turn traces the hidden history of architectural phenomenology; a movement that reflected a key turning point in the early phases of postmodernism and a legitimating source for those architects who first dared to confront history as an intellectual problem and not merely as a stylistic question. Jorge Otero-Pailos shows how architectural phenomenology radically transformed how architects engaged; theorized; and produced history. In the first critical intellectual account of the movement; Otero-Pailos discusses the contributions of leading members; including Jean Labatut; Charles Moore; Christian Norberg-Schulz; and Kenneth Frampton. For architects maturing after World War II; Otero-Pailos contends; architectural history was a problem rather than a given. Paradoxically; their awareness of modernism’s historicity led some of them to search for an ahistorical experiential constant that might underpin all architectural expression. They drew from phenomenology; exploring the work of Bachelard; Merleau-Ponty; Heidegger; and Ricoeur; which they translated for architectural audiences. Initially; the concept that experience could be a timeless architectural language provided a unifying intellectual basis for the stylistic pluralism that characterized postmodernism. It helped give theory—especially the theory of architectural history—a new importance over practice. However; as Otero-Pailos makes clear; architectural phenomenologists could not accept the idea of theory as an end in itself. In the mid-1980s they were caught in the contradictory and untenable position of having to formulate their own demotion of theory. Otero-Pailos reveals how; ultimately; the rise of architectural phenomenology played a crucial double role in the rise of postmodernism; creating the antimodern specter of a historical consciousness and offering the modern notion of essential experience as the means to defeat it.
#1101683 in eBooks 2014-01-29 2014-01-29File Name: B00IJEXYZW
Review
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful. GreatBy Stop Motion ManiacThis is a welcome title as there isnt much written in regard to artists film and video (cinema). Some of my favorites are discussed: Doug Aitken; Thomas Demand; Stan Douglas; Pierre Huyghe and Isaac Julien. Highly recommended for artists and art historians.
