Keynotes

Keynotes Author, Title

Abstracts

Repositioning Objects: Architectural History/Architectural Theory

Andrew Benjamin, Monash University

What is architectural criticism? Rather than justify the question, either through recourse to the history of criticism or in terms of need, once its determinations are sketched out, they can be understood as providing a form of justification. Criticism has an inevitability that is bound up with the nature of the object. As a beginning, two domains of inquiry will be identified. The first is a conception of architecture as a cultural or historical sign, and the second, is the object's self-effectuation as architecture. The complex interrelationship of these two elements will be addressed in the following notes.

Reconsidering Utopia

Hilde Heynen, The Catholic University of Leuven

Of all the criticisms that modern architecture has had to endure since the sixties, the one of utopianism has apparently had the most impact. Modernism’s utopian aspirations are usually seen as completely bound up with paternalistic, no to say totalitarian attitudes, and are for that reason discredited and put aside. There are, nevertheless, serious reasons to reconsider this negative assessment of utopian thinking.

In this address, I will develop a theoretical reflection on modernism and utopian thinking, in which I intend to reassess previous interpretations by Manfredo Tafuri and Fredric Jameson. This will be based on a discussion of the utopian glass architecture of modernism and postwar ‘paper’ architecture by groups like Utopie, Archigram and Coop Himmelblau and dystopian projects by Constant, Superstudio or Archizoom and OMA. One very important reason for this endeavour has to do with the critical capacity that is inherent to utopian thinking. As David Harvey remarks in Spaces of Hope, we should recognize the need for a revitalization of utopianism, because it is the only strategy that enables us to sound the depths of our imagination in order to explore the possibilities of the ‘not yet’.

Writing Aloud

Jane Rendell, Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London

In this presentation I explore the writing of architectural history as a mode of practice that mediates between the archival, the architectural and the personal. For me, this investigation involves a new form of writing, one that is both critical and the creative, and that explores notions of ‘voice’, autobiography, narrative and story-telling. Writing about what has occurred is not only the tracing of a history, but the creation of a new place. The way a writer positions herself in her writing is architectural and has implications for the way in which writer meets reader. Italo Calvino for example has discussed the places writers occupy in relation to their writing in terms of their different identities as subjects or ‘I’s and in terms of the positions they take – where a writer stands – inside and/or outside a text. (Italo Calvino, The Literature Machine, London: Vintage, 1997). Writing may be architectural in form as well as in content, this involves writing 'as' architecture rather than writing 'about' architecture. A S Byatt has written a fascinating account of her interest in ‘topological fictions’ - fictions where the term topological refers to narratives constructed with 'spatial rather with temporal images’. (A S Byatt, On Histories and Stories, London: Vintage, 2001). In Looking in: The Art of Viewing, Mieke Bal notes that the story a person remembers is not identical to the one that happened, but that in the telling it is the ‘discrepancy’ itself that becomes the dramatic act. (Mieke Bal, Looking in: The Art of Viewing, Amsterdam; G and B Arts International, 2001). This starts to blur the distinctions it is possible to make between fact and fiction in historical interpretation, and where the spaces of the imagination merge with 'real' architectures. Certain forms of writing make walls, others create meeting points; some stories close down possibilities for discussion, while others invite participation. Autobiography and travelogue are kinds of spatial writing; they describe where we have come from, where we are going and what it is like along the way. This talk will make a journey through a number of previous texts in order to explore the place of the author in the writing of architectural history.

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