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Anthologies on Architectural Theory - the German contributions

von Hans Frei


Again a new anthology on architectural theory: after Joan Ockman (1993), Kate Nesbitt (1996), Neil Leach (1997), Michael Hays (1998), Fritz Neumeyer (2002), Gerd de Bruyn / Stephan Trüby (2003), Bernd Evers / Christoph Thoenes  (2003) and Ákos Moravánszky (2003) now also  Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani together with Ruth Hanisch, Ulrich Maximilian Schumann and Wolfgang Sonne (2004).

Why are so many of the recent publications about architectural theory taking on the form of a collection of texts? It has not only to do with an all too human inclination to imitation. The editors are employees of academic institutions.  Here they are involved in a form of theory which is according to them of a much higher quality than the spontaneous free-form-theory produced by architects. Their anthologies are the revenge for having nothing to say in the immense but contaminated realm of architectural thinking.

Hence the academics are forced to run after architectural theories produced elsewhere. They are publishing anthology after anthology. None of them gives us a sober view over the multiplicity of architectural theories. Often the history of architectural theory is turned into a ‘message’, into a guideline for correct thinking, that is constructed by “retroactive operations”. The personal viewpoint of the editor becomes the vanishing point of the whole history of architectural thinking.

Pole position for the E.T.H.

Like always when the rear-guard is concerned the architectural department of the Swiss Institute of Technology (E.T.H.) is top. Two of the new German anthologies are coming from here. Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani and his crew are presenting in Architekturtheorie 20. Jahrhundert - Positionen, Programme, Manifeste a broad selection of 131 texts, introduced either by apologetic or critical comments. Although the subtitle alludes to Ulrich Conrad’s Positionen, Programme, Manifeste (1964), Lampugnain’s undertaking is a correction of the rather martial picture Conrad has given form modern avant-gardism.

But this doesn’t mean that there is something like thaw in Lampugnani’s anthology.  The modern avant-guardists and all those, how are in fact antagonistic towoards modernism, but in spite of that don’t believe in eternal values of architecture, are banished to the side-chambers of horror. In the central hall of Fame of 20^th century architectural theory now one finds traditionalists and all those, who can be attributed to traditionalism and avant-gardism simultanously.

Towards the end of the century there are fewer and fewer theorists presiding over the conflicting sides. Moneo, Siza, Vacchini and Zumthor might be the last ones. Finally in the end all terminates in an irreconcilable conflict between the two sides. The contributions by Paolo Portoghesi, Quinlan Terry, Demetri Porphyrios, Robert A.M. Stern, Hans Kollhoff and Leon Krier are treated most kindely while those of Tschumi, Eisenman, Ito, van Berkel and Koolhaas are only presented with distortions. The message is clear: what stands out for Lampugnani and his crew is a renewed Rescue of the Western World – this time in desperate perfection.

In Architekturtheorie im 20. Jahrhundert. Eine kritische Anthologie Ákos Moravánsky is dealing with the same matter as Lampugnani but in a totally different manner. His collection of texts is open also to not-architects and is broken down into five chapters: „From Stylus to Branding“, „The Perception of Space“, „Constructions of Nature”, „Monumentality“ and „The Place of Architecture“.

There is no teleological alignment of history at work here as in Lampugnani’s book, but one feels the actuality of a determined starting-point. According to Moravánsky it is always the 19^th century that gave the most important impulses to the architectural theory of the 20^th century. To Gottfried Semper (1803-1879) an unique position is conceded like to no theorist of the 20^th century. In three of the five chapters Moravánsky’s explanations are starting with Semper; furthermore Semper is present in the anthology with two contributions.

So Moravánsky’s anthology has some significance as a report of Semper’s influence in the 20^th century. But his attempts to develop specific topics of the 19^th century are loosing impetus already at the beginning of the 20^th century. Finally the layering out of an anthology as archaeology is completely contra-productive, because it destroys exactly the variety of the field which should be presented by the anthology.

Heretics and Believers

The two professors of E.T.H. are not alone in constructing guidelines for architectural theory.  They are only more discreet in giving reasons for their retro-active operations.

Gerd de Bruyn and Stephan Trüby (University of Stuttgart) have composed their book on architektur_theorie.doc. texte seit 1960 in quite a similar manner as Moravánsky. They too have opened architectural theory to not-architects and they too have organised the texts - including a few projects  - according topics by chapters. Each chapter is defined by a constellation of three concepts, opening a wide range of different operations to each topic.

Openness therefore is the keynote of the introduction titled “Plead for heretics and pioneers / Theory of a heterogeneous architecture”.  De Bruyn is pleading here for an open theory in the sense of André Corboz. The most important proposition of such a theory would be to cross the borders of architecture, not to defend them against enemies from without, de Bruyn writes. He mentions as architectural theorists such undisciplined outsiders of the architectural history as Prainesi, Finsterlin, Schwitters, Constant, Kiesler , Fuller and Hejduk.

But the texts of the anthology are coined by a very different form of openness. Here architectural theory is handled as the business of philosophers and human scientists which make up more than half of the contributors.  In addition to Adorno, Habermas and Welsch a few younger American thinkers like Michael Hays, Jeffrey Kipnis, Sanford Kwinter  and John Rajchman also come to word.

Are these the new heretics of architecture? These lovers of words might be heretic as philosophers. As architectural theorists they are just philosophically educated midwifes like de Bruyn himself, whose job it is to help to deliver undisciplined thoughts. Instead of having undisciplined thoughts on their own they are processing the undisciplined thoughts of others.

Only projects like the Dominus Winery by Herzog & de Meuron or the Embriological House by Greg Lynn, presented as appendices to a chapter, gives hints that presenting an open theory of architecture is above all a matter of ‘built’ and not of written texts.

In his book Quellentexte zur Architekturtheorie Fritz Neumeyer (TU Berlin) deals with the whole history from antiquity to the 20th century, thereby  relying on Hanno-Walter Krufts “truly heroic attempt” entitled  Geschichte der Architekturtheorie von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart.

The most important difference to Kruft is that Neumeyer gives a more precise definition of architectural theory so that it can better be distinguished from critique. He introduces his collection of texts by an essay beginning with the fatal phrase: “All theory is in essence a form of believe in systems and is based, as all beliefs are, on metaphysics.” There of springs Neumeyers eagerness in interpreting the selected texts of his anthology as joyful tidings of the mental autonomy of architecture and its  symbolic content.

But the belief in systems – the belief that architecture is based on a higher spiritual level – wasn’t relevant to architecture from the beginning. The first humans building a house as well as Vitruv, the first known architectural theorist, were thinking in much too practical terms about architecture to be concerned with an imaginary system of architecture. Even Leon Battista Alberti, the most influential theorist since the Renaissance, has felt his time marked by the fall of large metaphysical systems. In  Momus – a novel he has written in exactly the same time as the Ten Books on Architecture – the Olympic Gods have withdraw from earth and left the humans to their own. What ever Alberti/Momus was proposing as an architect therefore has more to do with pragmatic hypothesis for a better world than with any belief in spiritual systems.

Before Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768), the belief in systems wasn’t introduced into architecture and it didn’t quite disappear from there on thanks to theorists like Neumeyer.

Furthermore the belief in systems doesn’t correspond to architectural theory any better than any belief in machine-aesthetic, chaos-theory, light-hygiene or what so ever, which was at times identified incorrectly with architecture. After all it might be that the belief in systems is just the worst form of belief, as Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder has written in his essay Effusions from the Heart of an Art-Loving (1799). Because it is a question of intolerance of the mind, that is intent and directed, and not only a question of emotional affectation. When Neumeyer is praising the New Berlin as a New Jerusalem doubts about the belief in systems become an obligation.

Sexy Theory

At last one has to mention the book Architekturtheorie von der Renaissance bis zur Gegenwart (2003) published by Bernd Evers und Christof Thoenes. The selection of texts here doesn’t relate a particular message. The editors were even more satisfied than Neumeyer with just the presentation of highlights out of Kruft’s Geschichte der Architekturtheorie.

In spite or because of that the book is a sensation. According to Evers and Thoenes the architectural form is the main issue of all architectural theory.  Written texts are only serving towards a better understanding of form. They are footprints of a work on form. Therefore the editors are presenting a splendidly illustrated “picture atlas about architectural theory” instead of the usual literary wastelands.

Theory by law

But leave it to historians to dispute about the adequate selection of texts in anthologies. Each theorist might publish his own anthology. Let us focus instead of that on how anthologies are injuring architectural theory in general.

Opinions about architecture theory diverge greatly. But there is a consensus that theory is an abstract tool for practising architects. Without theory no architecture. For that reason Lampugnani has selected texts only from educated architects. Ever and Thoenes are going even further by treating form as the main issue of theory.

If that is correct, is it possible at all to deal with architectural theory without showing architecture? It is. Illustrations in anthologies are usually handled in a very careless way. Even when they are integral parts of the original publication they are left out. In each particular case this is a blatant manipulation not fitting for the character of an anthology. In general there is even more at play: when a text gets lost of its explicative function, because the work being explained is missing, its meaning becomes absolute.  A simple explication turns into a rule. Architectural theory then is placed in a totally new constellation in regards to practice. It is no longer an instrument in the hands of an architect, it is now the decree from a would be headquarter of architecture informing how architects should using their hands in the right way.

Therefore all those anthologies and all those literary wastelands! Academic theorists are using anthologies for the lack of anything better to control theory from their lofty philosophical or historical standpoint, to lay down ethical principles of architecture and seemingly to protect the architectural discipline against invasions from without.

Theory as History

There is a further consensus that in our day and age a great variety of architectural theories co-exist without the slightest probability to grasp a single one as the only true one. Each architect develops his own theory – if possible a new one every Monday morning.

Such a variety makes critical enquiries into architectural theories inevitable. Each theoretical approach is somehow going to be taken over by history - either by assimilating it in a larger historical context, or by creating a basis for a new system or simply by ignoring it. It is hardly possible or necessary to stop the historical processing of architectural theory.

Reconsidering the American anthologies of architectural theory, published before the Germans, Sylvia was expecting a revolution in the history of architecture by introducing history to architectural theory.  Now the German anthologies have introduced still more history into theory. But in spite of that Lavin’s expectations haven’t been realized. On the contrary: with more history, architectural theory has become all the more a scientific way of reading coffee-grounds.

Just as the processing of theory by history is inevitable, so is the breaking of history by theory. Theorists are understanding architecture in a way like it couldn’t be understood before.  They are making explicit what till now existed only implicitly.

To detach theory form history doesn’t mean to uncritically accept each spontaneous form of theory. The intention here is more to accept architectural theory as a permanent, unreasonable demand on architectural history. The history of architecture is far more conquested by heretics than de Bruyn is suggesting. One hasn’t to fish in troubled waters to find theorists. The Palazzo Rucellai (Alberti), Sant’Ivo (Borromini), the ETH-Building (Semper), the New Museum (Schinkel), the Guaranty-Building (Sullivan), the Barcelona-Pavillon (Mies van der Rohe), the Schaulager (Herzog & de Meuron) are at once great buildings as well as very important contributions to architectural theory. In fact they are great buildings just because they have in time radically challenged the conventional thinking about architecture. Often the most important principles of architecture were deduced form such buildings. But academic theorists want to see that no one takes over the very rights, which the great rule-makers have once taken out for themselves.

Anthologies are important for the historical processing of architectural theory. But in the strict sense they have nothing to do with the production of architecture and architectural theories. Whoever is working through one or another anthology therefore will without doubt augement his knowledge, he will however not find any inspiration for developing new aspects of architecture. Therefore: Buy! Buy! (With each cent you are supporting the maintenance of a cemetery of ideas.)

(First published in: Hochparterre, Mai 2005)

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