Review

Reviewed Work(s): New Directions in Italian Architecture by Vittorio Gregotti: New

Directions in German Architecture by Gunther Feuerstein: New Directions in Japanese
Architecture by Robin Boyd: New Directions in British Architecture by Royston
Landau
Review by: Reyner Banham
Source: The Art Bulletin , Sep., 1970, Vol. 52, No. 3 (Sep., 1970), pp. 344-346
Published by: CAA

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3048754

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344 The Art Bulletin

run dry;
unity. Not only was there a disparity between the generations, but some worthy souls who should have known better have
been pressured or bribed into putting their signatures to some
studies of individual architects whose work spanned the centuries
also show significant changes in the use of formal or decorative
pretty trivial pieces of book-manufacturing. However, let us, like
elements after 1900. In the various documents and periodicals
thewe
sun-dial, "note only the sunny hours," and remember the ir-
find evidence that public interest was awakened in regard toreplaceable
the successes like Scully's perversely illuminating Frank
architectural surroundings-to the extreme point of public con-
Lloyd Wright for Braziller, rather than the great wet flops like
Muschenheim's Elements of the Art of Architecture for Thames and
troversy-and that avant-garde painters and critics began, around
1900, to admit a number of architects into the jealously Hudson. definedAnd on the same optimistic basis let us welcome Brazil-
realm of "artists." The architects themselves arrived in the same ler's new middle-format (61/2" x 91/2") series, New Directions in
years at a new consciousness of professional identity, consciously Architecture, which-so far-contains more original hits than
working toward a re-evaluation of their professional efforts: ana- routine misses.
lyzing their own work and that of their colleagues on the printed Even so, the subdivision of the global subject-matter by na-
page, working to reform official attitudes regarding building regu- tional boundaries contains the potential for disaster; not becau
lations and general problems of urbanism, and finally, banding to- national boundaries have "ceased to be meaningful in the post
gether in the Asociaci6n de Arquitectos de Cataluhia to resolve McLuhan world" but because the area bounded by a recognised
together the growing number of problems common to all as pro- frontier may not contain "new directions" convincing enough to
fessional architects. To determine the role which these factors justify even a small book. It will be necessary to return to thi
played in the stylistic changes so apparent in the early twentiethpoint later, but it must be said right away that the architectural in
century and to discover further explanations for the dramatic dif- consequence of national subdivisions contributes to a wild dis
ferences in basic architectural conception would be a fruitful di- parity in approach and level of credibility among the four volum
rection for future study. under review. Indeed, three of them have already failed to achiev
The present book is welcome, if only as an indication of the credibility in the eyes of some critics: Feuerstein's for failing to giv
many problems that have yet to be investigated. But more than that, adequate coverage of German Post-War reconstruction and its ef-
it serves as a guide to further research in providing fundamentalfects; Boyd for concentrating on only one fairly small clique o
background material, summaries of monographic studies published Japanese architects; Landau for cramming in every direction h
in magazines of limited circulation, and extensive bibliographical could find without any attempt to discriminate between their im
notes at the end of each chapter. It is hoped that the attractive portance or relevance.
presentation will awaken interest in an unjustly neglected area of Against most of these objections there are valid defences tha
modern art history. can be mounted, but neither this class of complaint nor justifica-
JUDITH C. ROHRER tion is relevant to Gregotti's study of the Italian architectura
Columbia University scene. In certain ways, this alone of the four studies under conside
ation may prove to be an historically memorable book, rather tha
simply a timely one, and the reasons for this peculiar quality lie
VITTORIO GREGOTTI, New Directions in Italian Architecture; in the choice of author.
GUNTHER FEUERSTEIN, New Directions in German Architecture; Gregotti is one of the genuine Post-War generation of Italia
ROBIN BOYD, New Directions in Japanese Architecture; architects, those who came to public notice as the enthusiasm
ROYSTON LANDAU, New Directions in British Architecture. (New of the early fifties began to die away. Honest, erudite, disenchanted
Directions in Architecture Series), George Braziller, Inc., New introspective, they applied a ruthless scrutiny to the unquestione
York, 1969. Paperback $2.95 each volume, hardcover $5.95. misapprehensions, licensed dishonesties and pious myths of th
previous generation of Italian architects, critics, and their foreign
When George Braziller launched his Masters of Contemporary admirers. Possessed of an unrivalled platform in the respected mag
Architecture series eight years ago, he uncovered a vein of archi- azine Casabella (with its impeccably anti-Fascist overtones), the
tural publishing-the small scholarly picture book-that has proven used their radical critique to attempt a purge of Italian archi-
highly profitable both to publishers and to the army of scribes that tectural thought and action. In this they do not appear to hav
has penned the prefatory essays and selected bibliographies that succeeded; their success lies in having virtually demolished th
are the sandwiching around the slices of architectural photography Italian Modern Movement and its international reputation. By the
that form the real meat of most of them. learned exposition of the peculiarly local, bourgeois and person
The market has proven so profitable that series have prolifer- well-springs of Italian modern architecture, they have helped
ated as more and more publishing-houses have moved in; ex- persuade the rest of the world that the lesson of the 1960 Triennal
panding lists have pulled in new talent as the supply of available di Milano was what it appeared to be: that Italian architecture was
writers has been exhausted, while the available pundits have been a provincial affair of no great interest to the rest of the world.
desperately canvassed for suggestions when the supply of obvious The years since 1960 have seen Italian architecture in a deadlock
topics has run out before lists have been filled (in one awful month, of conflicting idealisms splintering into ever smaller and more self
the present reviewer turned down seven separate invitations to righteous factions, burying their differences under sectarian verbi
write books, suggest topics or even edit series!). Along the line, and age. As a result, Italy has pioneered one major new direction i
almost inevitably, scholarship has been diluted and inspiration has architecture of world consequence-student revolt. Gregotti's vol-

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 BOOK REVIEWS 345

ume alone has a chapter devoted specifically to the as aproblems

persistent oftransatlantic commuter with teaching invo
the schools, for in Italy strikes and lock-outs of architecture stu-
in both continents, gives him a proper mix of off-shore an
dents began two years before the Free Speech Campaign attitudes, but even this seems hardly adequate to han
at Berke-
extraordinary
ley. And it is difficult to blame the architecture students of Italy, and labyrinthine intellectual disorders t
presented as they were with the spectacle of faculties whosethe
marked pro-last quarter-century of British architecture. O
gressive members seemed entirely preoccupied withwhich disputing
does with
emerge with great, if accidental, clarity, howe
one another about their inability to move the reactionary profes-
this: that few countries have launched more good ideas in
sors. ternational pool since the last World War than Britain,
Gregotti's position at or near the center of allsothese
little develop-
to make convincing architecture of them at home.
ments, together with his powers of intelligent observation, give histown-planning legislation has been the env
Thus, British
world,
short text the extraordinary quality of an auto-critique, but
with its implementation, as in the New Towns, h
over-
tones of an almost Leopardesque pessimism that survives
as mucha rather
bewilderment as disappointment; at the other
pedestrian translation, and its insider's viewpoint clearly
radical sets it
architects with world reputations, like Alison a
apart from either Feuerstein's or Boyd's, whose stance is external
Smithson, have been allowed to go for a decade between
to the action described. while commissions. Understandably, the world has aske
it you
Since his base is Vienna, Feuerstein has a closer view British write so well about architecture but can't b
of Germany
than Boyd has of Japan from Melbourne, but the short And focus seems
equally understandably there has been no logical answ
to have led to a classic wood/trees syndrome. It is, alas,
And a pretty
equally understandably again, Landau (in spite of a c
un-illuminating text, which seems to be little more than a "The
headed compila-
Logic of a Situation") has pursued a prett
tion from Feuerstein's teaching collection. Thorough it certainly
syncratic path in surveying the scene. He does, in fact, cov
seems to be-every major German architect is represented, plus
consequential initiative, practical or theoretical, since
some surprisingly minor ones, and some outsiders whose work
fifties, but in
he still manages to devote a quarter of the
Germany justifies their inclusion (Aalto, for instance).
handful There is
of unbuilt projects by Cedric Price and the A
even a short chapter on recent developments in Eastern
Group. Germany,
On a statistical accounting of achieved construction
but, overall, the roster of some hundred architects, wildly
teams, disproportionate,
or design and has naturally infuriated the
offices so far fails to reveal the practitioners of any
sivegenuine new responsible for massive programs in scho
bureaucrats
directions that one begins to suspect that Germany housing. But, in
is still firmly as George Baird and others have noted wi
the grip of its old directions (Expressionism, Machine
the Aesthetic),
ideas of Archigram and Price (especially the latter) stri
and one is tempted to conclude that the freshest talent
very is thatof
roots ofarchitecture as we have known it, and Land
the oldest designer represented, Hans Scharoun. the point, almost in self-justification, in the very last sen
It is difficult, no doubt, to make a point about a his
body of work
text: "If architecture is becoming mathematical at one
which contains no points to be made, and on this score Boyd hadat
anti-building a another, perhaps it should be classified as
much easier task, perhaps the easiest of the four. Japanese
chitecturearchitec-
... but this would signify that it had taken a N
ture exhibits one very clear new direction-towards
tion." a structural
monumentalism deriving from Le Corbusier and from If welocal tradi-this point to Landau, then almost everything
can concede
tions-which comprehends nearly all Japanese architectural talents
which is contained in these four volumes is not a new direction but
of any quality. This direction has a clear beginningmerely
in time, also in
a temporary aberration from architecture's time-honored
that fateful year of 1960 when, as Boyd notes, the Japanese made
path-the creation of amassive, static but culturally-evocative space-
fairly frank bid for a position in the Big League at the World
containers. If we De-
cannot allow Landau his point, then Price's pro-
sign Congress. In the subsequent eight or nine years,
posalsthis direction mobile space-services without cultural con-
for lightweight,
has not yet had time to disintegrate into smaller factions;
tent are notmen a new like
direction in architecture but something else-and
Tange and Kurokawa are still visibly its leaders, so the Metabolism
are one or two projects in each of the other three books. In mak-
group is still its shock troops. ing this point explicit, Landau has perhaps written the most im-
Boyd has, of course, an off-shore view of this situation,
mediately and book of the four, and the chaos of British
important
would admit with a self-deprecating smile to beingarchitecture
a "tourist" if thanked, maybe, for forcing him to raise it.
is to be
so accused. But he is a deeply involved tourist with strong profes-
The importance of the point goes beyond these, or any subse-
sional connections in the field (as architect for thequent
Australian
volumes inex- the New Directions series, however, because un-
hibits at the Osaka Expo and his present relationshipcertainty
to the about
Japa- the actual domain of architecture is endemic.
nese situation seems almost ideal for a summary interpretation
Throughout these fourof studies, it is tacitly assumed that anything
that situation's present condition. The result is thedone
mostby astraight-
man calling himself an architect is architecture, and on
forwardly readable and most directly satisfying ofthe the four
basis texts
of this assumption Gregotti, for instance, is able to in-
under consideration, but whether it will stand up asa a
clude historical
chapter on industrial design (one of the less pessimistic
document in ten years time (as Gregotti's will) remains
parts to betext)
of his seen.
because most of the better industrial design in Italy
And as for Landau's view of new British directions,
has beenalmost
done by designers who trained at architecture schools. But
everything remains to be seen because, as his book makes
the business of clear,
designing movable objects for mass-production and
there is too much to be seen at once in a small text. His
retail viewpoint,
distribution is a different matter from designing fixed struc-

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346 The Art Bulletin

tures that are bought and sold where they stand. This particulartionalism," and "The Influence of the Allied Arts." After an ex-
extension of the architect's field of activity is respectable, of course,
cellent survey of the late eighteenth-century revolutionaries and
having been blessed by Walter Gropius and the apologists an of the
illuminating analysis of the influence of historiography and the
Bauhaus, and the philosophical and methodological confusions it on the practice of architecture, the author successfully
picturesque
entails are not only tolerated but encouraged. leads us through the jungle of nineteenth-century revivals, ending
Conversely, the attempt of Archigram, or of Price, to transpose
with the mid-century "Demand for a New Architecture." It is re-
buildings themselves, and their production processes, rapidly to- to have revivals treated seriously in terms of their under-
freshing
ward the condition of movable consumer-goods is quite inconsist-lying presuppositions rather than having them exhibited as a stale
ently combatted as psychologically and culturally undesirable. It forms, or having them offered as curious antiquarian
catalog of
is clear that a good deal of sloppy thinking goes into currently ac- or, as in earlier writing about modern architecture, self-
specimens,
cepted categories of what is and isn't architecture. An author like
righteously dismissed as carbuncles retarding the healthy growth of
the body of canonical "Modern Architecture."
Feuerstein who is content to remain within the accepted categories
There-
occasions no intellectual discomforts, yet far from finding this "Functionalism" section (describing biological and mechanical
assuring, most readers evidently find it boring. For the historical
analogies for architecture) is reminiscent of Geoffrey Scott's "Fal-
lacies" in The Architecture of Humanism, London, 1914. Gastro-
fact remains that almost the only continuing tradition of modern
nomic and linguistic analogies are thrown in for good measure,
architecture is the search for a new direction out of the accepted
categories by which architecture is defined. both curiosities adding meaningful dimensions to our understand-
Boundaries, therefore, will always be blurred, and statements
ing of nineteenth-century architectural thought. Already sound in
about new directions will always tend to be imprecise until such structure and literary style, the author approaches "Ra-
substance,
time as a direction has ceased to be new and can be safely cata- in an even keener and more pursuasive manner, since
tionalism"
loged. This continuing situation helps to explain the sloppyevidently
think- nineteenth-century Rationalism has stolen his heart and
ing, but cannot be allowed to excuse it. Gratitude to Landaumind, for
adding authority to the analysis while simultaneously shrink-
drawing fresh attention to this fundamental problem must ing his be
vision of twentieth-century architectural thought. Accepting
tempered by the recognition that neither he, nor the other three
C6sar Daly's 1864 definition that, in Collins' words, "the self-im-
authors, have fully faced its implications. posed task of the Rationalist School was to reconcile modern archi-
REYNER BANHAM tecture with modern science and industry," Collins assumes that
University College, London "Rationalism is still, and must always be, the backbone of any valid
architectural theory, for however deeply the alliance between archi-
tecture and sentiment may be explored, the alliance between ar-
PETER COLLINS, Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture: 1750-1950,
chitecture and science must always be its ultimate basis of exist-
London and Montreal, McGill University Press, 1965.ence" Pp.
(pages 198-99).
309;
40 pls. $12.50. Armed with nineteenth-cenutry technological determinism, Col-
lins is able to point to some of the planning-spatial freedoms that
resulted from technical innovation, such as the designer's ability to
From the lucid, revolutionary statements of the eighteenth-century
Boull6e, Ledoux, Soane and Durand to the mystical chantplace interior
of Sieg- divisions freely, as the supporting frame became
fried Giedion's "space-time" jingle, Peter Collins has structurally
surveyed independent.
the But the implication that new structural
systems
assumptions and ideals that influenced architectural form necessarily
and prac- produced freer plans does not hold up histori-
tice in the modern world. With an intent similar tofor
cally, Reyner
some of the most important open plans of the century-
Banham's Theory and Design in the First MachineWright's Age (London,
Robie House of 1909, Rietveld's Schroeder House of 1924
and
1960), Collins broadens the investigation to include a Mies'
large Barcelona
rangePavilion of 1929-were established within
of eighteenth- through twentieth-century ideals that helped shape
technologically and functionally indifferent forms. So one is aston
the goals and means of architecture. Where Henry Russell ished toHitch-
hear that "The greatest revolution in planning occurr
cock exhaustively documented architectural forms of round
the about
past two1890, when new structural systems made it unneces-
centuries and Giedion propounded an explanatory mechanism sary to ensurefor that partition walls in the upper parts of a buildin
modern architecture, Collins concentrates on "the motives which right down to the ground . . . the younger . . . ar
were continued
chitects in
dictate the character of an architect's work, . . . the changes welcomed
those these aids to freer planning, and, by substitutin
ideals which produced [architectural forms]" (page 16). point supports for load-bearing walls in every type of buildin
The author engages in a lengthy explanation of theused time them to produce plans which were even more functional tha
limits
of his analysis and argues justification for his approach, before"both(pages
un-224-25).
necessary as far as this reviewer is concerned, since It both limits
is around this stage of the study that Changing Ideals in Mod
and approach are manifestly sound. Not as acceptable, ernhowever,
Architectureis becomes a polemical wolf disguised in an objecti
the author's tendency to shift point of view, oscillating between
scholarly sheep's clothing, for now Collins begins to contradict h
historian and critic, resulting in a confusion of intentions. stated objective
But more of presenting a "history" of assumptions and
of this later. ideals, and becomes a promoter of nineteenth-century positivism.
In five major sections, plus an introduction and epilogue, Surely one can agree that liberties may result from technological
Collins
deals with "Romanticism," "Revivalism," "Functionalism," "Ra- innovation, and that the introduction of point support systems o

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