“The Legitimation of Modern American Architecture”

AboutAnalyzes the rhetorical and ideological strategies used by early twentieth-century American architects — chiefly Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, and Richard Neutra — to legitimate their break from historicist eclecticism. Argues that because modern architecture challenged deep-seated aesthetic and social values, its advocates needed to justify their work with words as well as buildings, and traces three overlapping lines of justification: an appeal to "community integration" (the architect as social reformer and planner), an appeal to "nature" (as simplicity, instinct, or the primitive), and an appeal to "science" (objective, biologically grounded design criteria, associated especially with Neutra). Discusses how a broadened notion of "functionalism" let architects treat buildings as expressions of, and remedies for, a fragmented, industrialized, urbanized society, citing Sullivan's dictum that architecture is "a branch of social science" and his search in nature for "the few and simple principles" underlying design. Also examines Wright's "Broadacre City" as a program for reintegrating architecture with nature and Gropius's community-planning theory. Frames all these positions as responses to a perceived "axiological crisis" produced by industrialization.

PURL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-8529%28196221%2920%3A3%3C251%3ATLOMAA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-J