Any historical event depends to a great extent on the way in which it has been narrated by the ‘official history’. In the same way, the modern movement is a concept created by means of different narratives that in turn influence the architectural practice of the moment.
In this book, Anthony Vidler examines the work of four historians of the modern architectural movement -Emil Kaufmann, Colin Rowe, Reyner Banham y Manfredo Tafuri- and proves that their respective histories were created like explicit programmes of project theory and practice in a contemporary context.
The author shows how the modern movement conceived by Kaufmann consisted of pure geometric forms of an elemental composition similar to projects that he revered from the late enlightenment; Rowe approached the contemporary project from the ambiguity and complexity of the Mannerists; the modern movement of Banham used the aspirations of the futurists as a point of reference; and the source of Tafuri’s ‘modern renaissance movement’ was found in the division between Brunelleschi’s technical experimentation and Alberti’s cultural nostalgia.
Vidler’s research shows the inevitable clash between history and project which dominates modern architectural discourse and that has given rise to some of the most interesting architectural experiments of the post-war period.
HISTORIAS DEL PRESENTE INMEDIATO.La invención del movimiento moderno arquitectónico
Editorial Gustavo Gili.
Author: Anthony Vidler. Preface: Peter Eisenman.
Release Date: 2011
Format: 15 x 21 cm.
Features: 224 pages, Rustica.
Language: Spanish
ISBN: 9788425223617
Shop Price: 25,00 euros.
Anthony Vidler is dean and professor at the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of the Cooper Union in New York. Historian and critic of modern and contemporary architecture, is the author, among others, books Warped Space: Art, architecture, and anxiety in modern culture (2000) and The architectural uncanny: Essays in the modern unhomely (1992), both published by The MIT Press.
