The history of the CIAM organization and of its breakaway group Team 10 is one of the best documented and researched themes in recent architectural historiography, thanks to well-organized archives and doctoral programs. Its main protagonists, conferences, internal conflicts, communication and organizational systems have been discussed in numerous publications. Still, the method of dichotomization – generational conflicts, political divisions – tends to divert the attention from continuities and from the complex interrelations between the various lines of thought in- and outside CIAM. The lecture will trace three notions as three threads in the web: ruralism, humanism, and realism, to show their constitutive and transformative role in the fabric of post-war architecture. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
During the decades following World War II, efforts were made to connect the rhetoric of the human scale with that of a superhuman, geographic or territorial scale. Aerial photography has opened up an all-encompassing view of the universe, presented in scalar sequences as the visual foundation for a new humanity. In the US, the large-scale regional project of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). Attempts at integrating ecological, engineering, landscaping, architectural, and aesthetic concerns to realize a socio-economical vision were followed with enormous interest in Europe – before and after the war, in both West and East – and applauded by different political systems. Images popularizing the success of five-year plans and the heroism of nature transformation in the Soviet Union were also omnipresent themes in Western Europe. Ideas of transnational planning emerged in Europe shortly before the postwar continent was divided between the world powers. After the political partitioning of Europe into blocs, however, such plans had to be buried. ; During the decades following World War II, efforts were made to connect the rhetoric of the human scale with that of a superhuman, geographic or territorial scale. Aerial photography has opened up an all-encompassing view of the universe, presented in scalar sequences as the visual foundation for a new humanity. In the US, the large-scale regional project of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). Attempts at integrating ecological, engineering, landscaping, architectural, and aesthetic concerns to realize a socio-economical vision were followed with enormous interest in Europe – before and after the war, in both West and East – and applauded by different political systems. Images popularizing the success of five-year plans and the heroism of nature transformation in the Soviet Union were also omnipresent themes in Western Europe. Ideas of transnational planning emerged in Europe shortly before the postwar continent was divided between the world powers. After the political partitioning of Europe into blocs, however, such plans had to be buried.
AbstractAustrian architect Camillo Sitte, author of the important treatise on urban design, Der Städtebau nach seinen künstlerischen Grundsätzen (1889), is known as the founder of romantic "picturesque" urbanism. One has to differentiate, however, between the two meanings of the German term das Malerische: "picturesque" and "painterly." Sitte is clearly connected with the representatives of modem picturesque urbanism. In his "Townscape Casebook," Gordon Cullen published a collection of photos and sketches to reinvigorate a picturesque way of seeing and thus set forth a basis for the design of the environment based on picturesque principles. Cullen proposed the concept of the townscape to develop a comprehensive "field of vision" that gathered heterogeneous elements into a unified whole - an idea that influenced the work of the American urban theorist Kevin Lynch. In fact, populist arguments could be detected in those representations of the picturesque as a way of seeing that corresponded to the supposed "national character." Sitte himself expected a "unified national work of art" to emerge as a result of the "popular synthesizing" of all the visual arts.
