Marxism and Architectural Theory across the East-West Divide

Heynen, Hilde; Loosen, Sebastiaan

doi:10.5334/ah.401

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…This research will take into account the theoretical concepts of temporality and modernity, as presented by Walter Benjamin, and interpret them through the case-study, Prishtina (the capital city of Kosovo). Benjamin's legacy as a critical theorist -together with Theodor Adorno, Ernst Bloch and others -has been formative for authors such as Manfredo Tafuri, Joan Ockman, K. Michael Hays and Fredric Jameson, indicating that architectural theory as we know it today, is thoroughly informed by Western, neo-Marxist theories of the Frankfurt School and others (Heynen and Loosen, 2019). The critical theory of the Frankfurt School is inserted in the architectural thought presented here, for two reasons: 1) the aim to distinguish its own methods, theories and forms of explanation from standard understanding, both in natural and social sciences; 2) its claim that social inquiry must combine the poles of philosophy and social sciences: explanation and understanding, structure and agency, regularity and normativity (Bohman, 2021).…”

Section: Setting the Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

The formal, the temporal and the modern A historical view on the unfnished urban transformation of the city of Prishtina

Pula

2023

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Following Walter Benjamin’s thinking of “the modern” – which is an important theoretical contribution to the study of form – one could understand that the term designates both a formal temporal structure and the diverse range of its historical instances, past and present, whose reinterpretation and critical reading can stimulate possible future scenarios for urban spaces, or the understanding of specific developments related to them. For Benjamin’s theory to be applicable in the discipline of architecture, particular knowledge and methods are required, through which unfold the processes of modernity in relation to the temporal and formal phenomenon. Thus, the aim of this essay is to re-read Benjamin’s modernity within the discussion on temporality, by using architectural form and language as tools. Temporality and modernity are widely discussed topics of scientific research, particularly linked to the tradition of the Frankfurt School. However, we are interested in deciphering these two topics through a historical category, as an object through which the scientific architectural research is crafted. And in order to connect this category to a practical level contextualized within an urban setting, this essay studies the urbanization of modernist cities, the historical events impacting it, and the stages of modernity, focusing on the city of Prishtina in Kosovo. Prishtina is used as a case-study on account of its particular history in the course of the twentieth and twenty-first century. It is the capital city of a post-socialist state that experienced a radical shift in ideological and political systems, characterized by a complex architectural and urban form with distinguished modern features. This paper will study the unfinished modernism in Prishtina (1945-ongoing), – interrupted by politico-ideological instances – which led to a fragmentation of the urban form and the presence of multiple urban realities. In so doing, this paper will decipher specific events from different time periods, to be defined as critical junctures of Prishtina’s modern history, which had a particular outcome in architecture and its urban setting. The study of the temporal and the formal in modern architecture and city planning will focus on two plans: 1) The political and economic context in Prishtina, within former Yugoslavia, which produces an ideological condition within which architecture becomes ideological; 2) The discipline of architecture, which impacts the form and aesthetics of buildings and cities through modern ideology and normativities.

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Section: Setting the Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

The formal, the temporal and the modern A historical view on the unfnished urban transformation of the city of Prishtina

Pula

2023

FORUM A+P

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Section: Setting the Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Crafting ‘Scientific’ Research in Architecture

2023

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During the year 2020, millions of people around the world had to quarantine, self-isolate, and apply physical and social distancing. Our lives, our families, and work have drastically shifted into what many are increasingly calling the "new normal". People begin to work, study, shop, and even get health or medical advice remotely. Yet, the majority were not prepared in suitable spaces for conducting virtual lives. Large transformations that affected the way people gather and interact (the role of squares as collection points; the point where urban space is contemplated; the telematic square); transformations affecting financial exchanges; transport of persons and goods; the space of the apartment as a dwelling, orienting more and more towards a space that tends to contain all the functions in the interior where beyond the classic ones, pertaining a home, the space of working, creating or even recreation is added; intelligent city administration; transformations that affect social inequality; the way of nutrition; transformations regarding the working process and many other aspects. All these transformations necessarily translate into transformations of the inhabited space of man.While much of the public attention has been given to medical experts and government guidelines; it became clear that the way that it has been designed and planned so far, our homes and cities has been shaping how we were facing the pandemic at an individual and social level. The web reports and scholarly articles on the role of architecture and urban design and planning on the post-pandemic life and city are thriving daily. Through many fundamental questions raised on the societal response in the post-pandemic city, the Ph.D. Candidates for the International Ph.D. Workshop during the academic year 2021-2022 focused on matters specifically about the "new" role that architecture and built environment sciences can embrace in a dynamically evolving context. In light of the recent crises both at the national and international levels, which have generated a series of phenomena, there has been a rise in the need for different urban spaces and housing models different from what society has been used traditionally. This workshop aimed to conduct research on these phenomena, and explore possible solutions at the spatial level while keeping in mind the need for environmental preservation, thus anticipating the spatial models of the cities of the future.Discussions and research regarding the nature of (post-) pandemic city transformations, urban qualities that stand at the core of these transformations, understanding the ways health and well-being intertwine with city-making in a post-pandemic context as well as the extension that COVID-19 has altered our understanding of urban and living space, pertaining life dialectics composed some of the main research phases to explore future solutions. Such discussions become extremely relevant the society is confronted with measures of physical distancing that will inevitably put into discussion the long-stand...

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“…Here, it will be discussed about architecture's practice of 'hiding' that representative character, through architecture's formal, functional, technical, artistic and aesthetic aspects. Architecture in the interplay with ideology, power, agency and imagination, -or, differently put, with politico-economic, socio-cultural and scientific instances -has been treated in several discourses dealing with different times from antiquity to the present day (Benevolo 1963;Tafuri, 1973;Lane, 1986;Heynen and Loosen, 2019;Smart, 2020). Architectural works such as the Parthenon in Classical Athens and the plan with the building programme of Washington D.C., are examples treated in these discourses.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tirana Architecture Week 2020 - Conference Proceedings: Science and the City

2020

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Dear participant of Tirana Architecture Week, In his famous book ‘The Structure of Scientific Revolutions’ (1962), the American physicist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn, coined the notion of ‘paradigm shift’, intended as a fundamental change in the basic concepts and experimental practices of a scientific discipline. In opposition to the activity of ‘normal science’, a ‘shift’ occurs when the current predominant paradigm, under which scientific activities are conducted becomes incompatible due to new phenomena, facilitating the research – and adoption – of a new theory or paradigm. We can also assume that, such a critical change is often driven by a ‘crisis’, a transitional moment where the appearance of new technologies, environmental conditions (ex. climate change), or political situations (ex. migration phenomena), requires the a drastic rift from the past and opens the way to a reformulation of the notion of the so-called ‘Modernity’. Indeed, according to the words of the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard: «Modernity … is what transforms crisis into a value, a contradictory moral, says Baudrillard, for it gives rise to an aesthetics of rupture». The history of Architecture and Design itself, can be also interpreted as a consequential stream of changes following the research of a new paradigm. The Industrial Revolution deeply influenced the work of professionals during the whole XX Century, leading to the appearance of an architecture that could be a response to the industry preferring a free and functional arrangement of bodies rather than typological preset; transparencyrather than opaqueness, points structures rather than tectonic configurations. In the last thirty years, with the development of computers and ICT technologies, another paradigm has raised and changed these disciplines from their inner structures. The IT Revolution has imposed itself as the central element for a new phase in all of architecture, and information hasbecome the essential component of a new way of designing and a new urban environment. A whole generation of architects has been dealing with the purpose of transferring the dynamic interconnection at the heart of IT from the digital world to a new reality of reactive, sensitive, interactivearchitectures. The aim of Tirana Architecture Week 2020 is to draw current research and design practices, as well as theoretical speculations on therelationship between the paradigm shifts in science and urbanism; in other words about the science and the city. Such mandate will be addressedin multiple scales and contexts, and from different perspectives within different fields of interest, directly or indirectly related to design, architecture, urban studies, sociology, environmental research, engineering, education and pedagogy.

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Marxism and Architectural Theory across the East-West Divide

Cited by 6 publications

References 11 publications

The formal, the temporal and the modern A historical view on the unfnished urban transformation of the city of Prishtina

The formal, the temporal and the modern A historical view on the unfnished urban transformation of the city of Prishtina

Crafting ‘Scientific’ Research in Architecture

Tirana Architecture Week 2020 - Conference Proceedings: Science and the City

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