Colquhoun

two interpretations of architectural history:

normative "repository of permanent values transmitted from one generation to the next in the form of myths and apodictic (certain) truths"

relativist "a process of evolution in which systems of cultural value only possess a relative truth"

(pg. 11)

two types operating in the creation of buildings or cities:

invariable forms underneath the infinitely varied forms | archetype

historical survivors whose meaning does not depend on a particular time | a de facto form

(pg. 15)

"Modern Architecture's task of going beyond the self imposed limits of modernism and recovering the deeper layers of the architectural tradition must come to terms with two traditions of historicity and two notions of typology" (pg. 18)

Alan Colquhoun (June 27, 1921 - December 13, 2012)

Architect, Theorist, Critic, Historian

In the 1961, he entered a partnership with his colleague John Miller. Colquhoun & Miller operated until 1990.

While still in practice, Colquhoun begin his career in academia. He lectured at the Architectural Association in the 50s and 60s and the then Polytechnic of Central London in the mid 1970s.

In 1981 he started to teach at Princeton University wherein he transferred to emeritus status in 1991.

Chapter 3: Architecture and the City

The Superblock (1978)

Central Beheer (1974)

Plateau Beaubourg (1977)

Frames to Frameworks (1977)

Chapter 4: History and the Architectural Sign

Historicism and the Limits of Semiology (1972)

Sign and Substace: Reflections on Complexity, Las Vegas, and Oberlin (1978)

E. H. Gombrich and the Hegelian Tradition (1981)

The Beaux-Arts Plan (1978)

From Bricolage to Myth, or How to Put Humpty-Dumpty Together Again (1978)

Form and Figure (1978)

Introduction: Modern Architecture And History

Chapter 1: Modern Architecture and the Symbolic Dimension

The Modern Movement in Architecture (1962)

Symbolic and Literal Aspects of Technology (1962)

Formal and Functional Interactions:

A Study of Two Late Buildings by Le Corbusier (1966)

Chapter 2: The Type and its Transformations

Typology and Design Method (1967)

Displacement of Concepts in Le Corbusier (1972)

Rules, Realism, and History (1976)

Alvar Aalto: Type versus Function (1976)

Alan Colquhoun was born in Esher, England, he studied architecture at the Edinburgh College of Art and the Architectural Association in London. Colqhuoun began his career at London County Council.

Essays in Architectural Criticism: Modern Architecture and Historical Change. (1981). MIT Press

Modernity and the Classical Tradition: Architectural Essays 1980-87. (1991). MIT Press

Modern Architecture. (2002). Oxford University Press

wikipedia & Princeton University News: Architecture critic and 'superb educator' Alan Colquhoun dies, Jan.29, 2013

Pillwood House in Cornwall by Colquhoun & Miller

Grafe, C. & Avermaete, T. (2012). A Conservation with Alan Colquhoun. OASE Journal for Architecture. 87. 124

www.architectsjournal.co.uk : 'Great educator' Alan Colquhoun dies aged 91 ; Dec. 14, 2012

TYPE AND ITS TRANSFORMATIONS

MODERN ARCHITECTURE AND THE SYMBOLIC DIMENSION

Preface by Kenneth Frampton

Formal and Functional Interactions

design method of the Modern Movement:

biotechnical determinism: teleological and functionalist

expressionist theory: intuitions

"The French Embassy building in Brasilia and the Hospital in Venice seem to represent two extremes in the work of Le Corbusier. The Embassy refers to directly to the concept of simple volumes intended to 'release constant sensations' and to the related idea of the 'surface', which forms the basis of Le Corbusier’s classicising tendencies. The Hospital, on the other hand, seems to derive from opposing tendencies which are typified in his investigations into patterns of growth, his interest in the irregular and spontaneous forms of folk architecture, and the direct transformation of a functional organism into its appropriate form" (31).

"There is a tendency in criticism to distinguish between moral criteria, on the one hand, and aesthetic criteria, on the other. According to this conception aesthetics is concerned with the 'form', while the logical, technical and sociological problems of building belong to the world of empirical action. This distinction is false, because it ignores the fact that architecture belongs to a world of symbolic forms in which every aspect of building is presented metaphorically, not literally". (pg. 28)

essentialist

(pg. 31)

culturalist

“at whatever stage in the design process it may occur, it seems that designer is always faced with making voluntary decisions and that the configurations which he arrives at must be the result of an intention and not merely the result of a deterministic process." (pg. 46)

(pg. 36)

Introduction: Modern Architecture

And History

"the genetic view of type entails a normative view of history, while the notion of type as image, or as the availability of styles to eclectic choice, entails a relativistic view of history" (pg. 18)

ARCHITECTURE AND THE CITY

HISTORY AND ARCHITECTURAL SIGN

(pg. 85)

two critical attacks on modern city:

a configuration whose meaning is given by culture, whether or not it is assumed that this meaning ultimately has a basis in nature (pg. 190)

study of aesthetics

Figure:

&

Form:

Semiology

(architectureal sign)

a configuration that is held to have either a natural meaning or nor meaning at all (pg. 190)

City as Process - cybernetic model

the aesthetic of the city has no independent existence but must derive from social criteria (pg. 97)

City as Form - formal model

urban aesthetics constitute a general ‘science’, grounded either in fundamental psychological laws or in meanings inherent in the typology of the traditional city (pg. 97)

The MIT Press

Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England

1981

(pg. 192)

(pg. 196)

pure formalism

the Renaissance

excluding figure

Failure of housing residental superblock (Habitat 67)

the Modern Movement

SUPERBLOCK

"The superblock is more than a building. It has implications of size and complexity but also of the lowering of architectural voltage, unlike the representational buildings of the past, the superblock is unable to acquire the status of metaphor". (pg. 98)

classical figurative rhetoric

Raising of the Son of Theophilus and St. Peter Enthroned

1. In asserting the individual, it only succeeds in

exaggerating the mass.

2. It projects into the public realm(that is shared by all individuals as a collective possession) those signs of privacy which can never be belong to it.