Author | Sigfried Gidieon |
---|---|
Genre | Architectural history/criticism |
Publisher | Harvard University Press |
Publication date | 1941, 1949 (2nd ed), 1954 (3rd ed), 1962 (4th ed), 1967 (5th ed) |
Pages | 960 |
Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition is a book by Sigfried Giedion first published (by Harvard University Press) in 1941. [1] It is a pioneering [2] and influential standard history giving in integrated synthesis the background and cultural context of modern architecture and urban planning, set in their manifold cultural relationships "with other human activities and the similarity of methods that are in use today in architecture, construction, painting, city planning and science." [3] The book was immediately recognized for the author's "monumental and catholic curiosity which compels him to penetrate long neglected nineteenth century by-lanes and reveal to modern eyes their importance for an appreciation of the complex culture of that period and our own." [4]
The book had its genesis in the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard University in the spring of 1938, and it was recognized from the outset as a series of related essays on seminal topics in the organization of human spaces, obtaining fresh insights, not from a panoramic survey, "but by isolating and examining certain specific events intensively, penetrating and exploring them in the manner of the close-up" as Giedion outlined his method.
Giedion revised and enlarged the book five times after the first edition in 1941: 2nd edition 1949; 3rd edition 1954; 4th edition 1962; 5th edition 1967. The book has continued to be printed since then, most recently in 2009. All editions have been published by the original publisher, Harvard University Press. The book has also been translated into German (Raum, Zeit, Architektur), French (Espace, temps, architecture), Spanish (Espacio, tiempo y arquitectura), Italian (Spazio, tempo, architettura), Japanese (間・時間・建築) and Serbo-Croatian (Prostor, vreme, arhitektura). The major change from the first to the second edition was the predominance of coverage given to the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto, more than any other architect in the book, including Le Corbusier, when Aalto had barely been mentioned in the first edition. The reason given for this, is that Giedion saw Aalto as the architect best demonstrating the move away from International Style modernism synonymous with the Bauhaus towards a more organic architecture. [5]
Hugo Alvar Henrik Aalto was a Finnish architect and designer. His work includes architecture, furniture, textiles and glassware, as well as sculptures and paintings. He never regarded himself as an artist, seeing painting and sculpture as "branches of the tree whose trunk is architecture." Aalto's early career ran in parallel with the rapid economic growth and industrialization of Finland during the first half of the 20th century. Many of his clients were industrialists, among them the Ahlström-Gullichsen family, who became his patrons. The span of his career, from the 1920s to the 1970s, is reflected in the styles of his work, ranging from Nordic Classicism of the early work, to a rational International Style Modernism during the 1930s to a more organic modernist style from the 1940s onwards.
Urban design is an approach to the design of buildings and the spaces between them that focuses on specific design processes and outcomes. In addition to designing and shaping the physical features of towns, cities, and regional spaces, urban design considers 'bigger picture' issues of economic, social and environmental value and social design. The scope of a project can range from a local street or public space to an entire city and surrounding areas. Urban designers connect the fields of architecture, landscape architecture and urban planning to better organize physical space and community environments.
The International Style or internationalism is a major architectural style that developed in the 1920s and 1930s and was closely related to modernism and modernist architecture. It was first defined by Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) curators Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson in 1932, based on works of architecture from the 1920s. The terms rationalist architecture and modern movement are often used interchangeably with International Style, although the former is mostly used in the English-speaking world to specifically refer to the Italian rationalism, or even the International Style that developed in Europe as a whole.
Modern architecture, also called modernist architecture, was an architectural movement and style that was prominent in the 20th century, between the earlier Art Deco and later postmodern movements. Modern architecture was based upon new and innovative technologies of construction ; the principle functionalism ; an embrace of minimalism; and a rejection of ornament.
The Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM), or International Congresses of Modern Architecture, was an organization founded in 1928 and disbanded in 1959, responsible for a series of events and congresses arranged across Europe by the most prominent architects of the time, with the objective of spreading the principles of the Modern Movement focusing in all the main domains of architecture.
Peter Reyner Banham Hon. FRIBA was an English architectural critic and writer best known for his theoretical treatise Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (1960) and for his 1971 book Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies. In the latter he categorized the Los Angeles experience into four ecological models and explored the distinct architectural cultures of each. A frequent visitor to the United States from the early 1960s, he relocated there in 1976.
Aino Maria Marsio-Aalto was a Finnish architect and a pioneer of Scandinavian design. She is known as the design partner of architect Alvar Aalto, with whom she worked for 25 years, and as a co-founder with him, Maire Gullichsen, and Nils-Gustav Hahl of the design company Artek, collaborating on many its most well-known designs. As Artek's first artistic director, her creative output spanned textiles, lamps, glassware, and buildings. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, and MoMA has included her work in nine exhibitions, the first of which was Aalto: Architecture and Furniture in 1938. Other major exhibitions were at the Barbican Art Gallery in London and Chelsea Space in London. Aino Aalto has been exhibited with Pablo Picasso.
"The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935), by Walter Benjamin, is an essay of cultural criticism which proposes and explains that mechanical reproduction devalues the aura (uniqueness) of a work of art, and that in the age of mechanical reproduction and the absence of traditional and ritualistic value, the production of art would be inherently based upon the praxis of politics. Written during the Nazi régime (1933–1945) in Germany, in the essay Benjamin presents a theory of art that is "useful for the formulation of revolutionary demands in the politics of art" in a society of mass culture.
Sigfried Giedion was a Bohemian-born Swiss historian and critic of architecture. His ideas and books, Space, Time and Architecture, and Mechanization Takes Command, had an important conceptual influence on the members of the Independent Group at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in the 1950s. Giedion was a pupil of Heinrich Wölfflin. He was the first secretary-general of the Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne, and taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, and the ETH-Zurich.
The Athens Charter was a 1933 document about urban planning published by the Swiss architect Le Corbusier. The work was based upon Le Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse book of 1935 and urban studies undertaken by the Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM) in the early 1930s.
The Alice Davis Hitchcock Book Award, established in 1949, by the Society of Architectural Historians, annually recognizes "the most distinguished work of scholarship in the history of architecture published by a North American scholar." The oldest of the six different publication awards given annually by the Society, it is named after the mother of architectural historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock.
Carlo Aymonino was an Italian architect and urban planner best known for the Monte Amiata housing complex in Milan.
The architecture of Finland has a history spanning over 800 years, and while up until the modern era the architecture was highly influenced by Sweden, there were also influences from Germany and Russia. From the early 19th century onwards influences came directly from further afield: first when itinerant foreign architects took up positions in the country and then when the Finnish architect profession became established.
Rogelio Salmona was a French Colombian architect. He was noted for his extensive use of red brick in his buildings and for using natural shapes like spirals, radial geometry and curves in his designs. During the latter part of his life, Salmona gained renown thanks to awards like the first prize at the 1986, 1988, and 1990 Colombian Architecture Biennials, and the Alvar Aalto Medal in 2003. His works are highly representative of Colombian architecture at the end of the twentieth century.
Philip Morton Shand, known as P. Morton Shand, was a British journalist, architecture critic, wine and food writer, entrepreneur and pomologist. He was the paternal grandfather of Queen Camilla.
Alexander Tzonis is a Greek-born architect, author, and researcher. He has made contributions to architectural theory, history and design cognition, bringing together scientific and humanistic approaches in a synthesis. Since 1975, he has been collaborating in most projects with Liane Lefaivre. In 1985, he founded and directed Design Knowledge Systems (DKS), a multidisciplinary research institute for the study of architectural theory and the development of design thinking tools at TU Delft. Tzonis is known for his work on the classical canon, history of the emergence and development of modern architectural thinking, creative design by analogy, and introducing the idea of critical regionalism.
George Baird was a Canadian architect, scholar, and architectural educator. He is widely recognized for his roles as: professor at the Royal College of Art and the Architectural Association School of Architecture, professor and director at Harvard University Graduate School of Design, as well as professor, chair and dean at the University of Toronto Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design. Baird's contributions to the disciplines of architecture and urban design extend from his professional practice, Baird Sampson Neuert Architects, to his theoretical publications on the subject of urban public space. His influential work and passion for architectural academia earned him the 2012 AIA/ACSA Topaz Medallion for Excellence in Architectural Education.
Ernest J. Kump Jr., was an American architect, author, and inventor based in Palo Alto, California. He was widely recognized for his innovations in school planning having designed over 100 public schools in California and 22 community and junior colleges around the world. Kump's most notable projects include Fresno City Hall (1940), the U.S. embassy in Seoul, Korea (1957), and Foothill College in Los Altos, California.
Urban planning is a technical and political process concerned with the use of land and design of the urban environment, including air, water, and the infrastructure passing into and out of urban areas such as transportation and distribution networks.
The Edgar J. Kaufmann Conference Center is a conference hall on the 12th floor of 809 United Nations Plaza in the Turtle Bay neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. Designed by Finnish architect Alvar Aalto for professor Edgar Kaufmann Jr., it is one of four remaining designs by Aalto in the United States. The conference center was announced in 1962, during the construction of the Institute of International Education (IIE)'s headquarters, and was dedicated in December 1964. After the building was sold in 1998 to a group backed by Japanese financiers, there were several unsuccessful attempts to preserve the conference center as a New York City designated landmark.