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1 Manifesto
2 Program
3 Open Call
4 Semesters
5 Sessions
6 Authors
7 Guest Curators
8 Upcoming
9 Events&Projects
10 TV
11 About
12 Search
Semester II
ON REVOLUTION
Session 12
25.09.2019
Location: Lochergut, Zurich, CH
ON REVOLUTION
Session 12
25.09.2019
Location: Lochergut, Zurich, CH
TEXT A
Hvattum, Mari
2018
Mere Style?
Editorial
Architectural Histories
6(1): 14, pp. 1–4.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/ah.342
TEXT B
Hvattum, Mari
2013
Crisis and Correspondence: Style in the Nineteenth Century
Article
Architectural Histories
1(1): 21, pp. 1-8
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/ah.an
Hvattum, Mari
2018
Mere Style?
Editorial
Architectural Histories
6(1): 14, pp. 1–4.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/ah.342
TEXT B
Hvattum, Mari
2013
Crisis and Correspondence: Style in the Nineteenth Century
Article
Architectural Histories
1(1): 21, pp. 1-8
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/ah.an
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TEXT A
Text Synopsis
Text Synopsis
Editorial of “Architectural Histories” issue.
TEXT B
Text Synopsis
Text Synopsis
In his manifesto Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft (1850), Richard Wagner characterised the nineteenth century as a time of crisis. Echoing Saint-Simon, he defined this crisis as a discrepancy between the spirit of the age and the actual, historical conditions. Evoking some of the most potent concepts of modern thinking—Zeitgeist, genius, and the Gesamtkunstwerk—Wagner outlined an aesthetic theory by which the artwork (including architecture) simultaneously reflects and shapes its context, serving both as a mirror of its age and an agent of change.
Wagner’s seemingly paradoxical notion of art provides an apt introduction to historicist thinking. Obsessed with the idea of correspondence (or the lack of it) between art and its times, nineteenth-century thinkers such as Heinrich Hübsch, Carl Bötticher and Gottfried Semper all responded to the perceived crisis. While Hübsch and Bötticher sought to alleviate the crisis by redefining this correspondence for a modern world, Semper presented a far more radical alternative. Not only did he see the current crisis as inevitable; he welcomed it as a necessary dissolution of an old order, out of which a new architecture could emerge. He thus anticipated modernists, such as Sigfried Giedion, for whom historicism was a necessary melt-down; an apocalypse, preparing for the advent of modernism. In this essay, I propose that crisis and style are intrinsically linked in modern thinking. To look closely at this coupling may throw new light not only on historicism but also on the noticeable unease with which the notion of style is treated in contemporary architectural history.
Wagner’s seemingly paradoxical notion of art provides an apt introduction to historicist thinking. Obsessed with the idea of correspondence (or the lack of it) between art and its times, nineteenth-century thinkers such as Heinrich Hübsch, Carl Bötticher and Gottfried Semper all responded to the perceived crisis. While Hübsch and Bötticher sought to alleviate the crisis by redefining this correspondence for a modern world, Semper presented a far more radical alternative. Not only did he see the current crisis as inevitable; he welcomed it as a necessary dissolution of an old order, out of which a new architecture could emerge. He thus anticipated modernists, such as Sigfried Giedion, for whom historicism was a necessary melt-down; an apocalypse, preparing for the advent of modernism. In this essay, I propose that crisis and style are intrinsically linked in modern thinking. To look closely at this coupling may throw new light not only on historicism but also on the noticeable unease with which the notion of style is treated in contemporary architectural history.
About the Author
Mari Hvattum is professor of architectural history and theory, teaching modern architectural history and theory on all levels in the school. She is project leader of the research project The Printed and the Built. Architecture and Public Debate in Modern Europe. Hvattum is a diploma architect from the Norwegian Institute of Technology in Trondheim, with studies in philosophy and aesthetics at the University of Bergen and a PhD from the University of Cambridge, England. Hvattum has taught at The Architectural Association, London, Mackintosh School of Architecture, Glasgow, University of Edinburgh, University of Strathclyde, and Central European University, Prague. She publishes internationally on 19th and 20th architectural discourse and practice, and was vice president of the European Architectural History Network EAHN from 2010 to 2014.
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Style
NineteenthCentury
Semper
Hübsch
Bötticher
Wagner
Zeitgesit
Gesamtkunstwerk
Crisis
Correspondence
EAHN
ArchitecturalHistories
Style
NineteenthCentury
Semper
Hübsch
Bötticher
Wagner
Zeitgesit
Gesamtkunstwerk
Crisis
Correspondence
EAHN
ArchitecturalHistories