Synopses & Reviews
Writing, according to Panayotis Tournikiotis, has always exerted a powerful influence on architecture. Indeed, the study of modern architecture cannot be separated from a fascination with the texts that have tried to explain the idea of a new architecture in a new society. During the last forty years, the question of the relationship of architecture to its history -- of buildings to books -- has been one of the most important themes in debates about the course of modern architecture.
Tournikiotis argues that the history of modern architecture tends to be written from the present, projecting back onto the past our current concerns, so that the "beginning" of the story really functions as a "representation" of its end. In this book the buildings are the quotations, while the texts are the structure.
Tournikiotis focuses on a group of books by major historians of the twentieth century: Nikolaus Pevsner, Emil Kaufmann, Sigfried Giedion, Bruno Zevi, Leonardo Benevolo, Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Reyner Banham, Peter Collins, and Manfredo Tafuri. In examining these writers' thoughts, he draws on concepts from critical theory, relating architecture to broader historical models.
Review
"With this book, Panayotis Tournikiotis has achieved a great feat ofarchitectural historiography." Francoise Choay, Professor of the History of Ideas and the History of Urbanism at the French Institute for Urbanism, University of Paris The MIT Press
Review
With this book, Panayotis Tournikiotis has achieved a great feat of architectural historiography. The MIT Press
Synopsis
Studying the influence of literature on the history of architecture.
Synopsis
Tournikiotis focuses on a group of books by major historians of the twentieth century: Nikolaus Pevsner, Emil Kaufmann, Siegfried Giedion, Bruno Zevi, Leonardo Benevolo, Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Reyner Banham, Peter Collins, and Manfredo Tafuri. In examining these writers' thoughts, he draws on concepts from critical theory, relating architecture to broader historical models.
Synopsis
Literature, according to Panayotis Tournikiotis, has always exerted a powerful influence on architecture. Indeed, the study of modern architecture cannot be separated from a fascination with the texts that have tried to explain the idea of a new architecture in a new society. During the last forty years, the question of the relationship of architecture to its history--of buildings to books--has been one of the most important themes in debates about the course of architecture.
About the Author
Panayotis Tournikiotis is Assistant Professor at the School of Architecture, National Technical University of Athens.