What were the subjects of the contributions published by the journal Architektúra & urbanizmus during its half-century of existence? The present study discusses the importance of the founding personalities (Emanuel Hruška, Tibor Zalčík and Richard Kittler), notes the conception of its program, and specifically treats the most striking shift in the journal’s history, in the early 1990s after the fall of Communism. The subject of statistical analysis is the frequency of occurrence of main thematic areas, clusters of specific themes (e.g. themes of the creation of the living environment or architects’ biographies), proportional shares of domestic and international authors, growth in women’s authorial contributions, or the representation of leading international authorities among the contributors. Also considered is the share of additional scholarly disciplines on shaping the profile of the journal. In conclusion, the author addresses the current direction of the journal, its focus on recent architectural history, and its impact on the broader Central European architectural space.
Author: Dagmar Slámová
Editorial
With the present double issue, the journal Architektúra & urbanizmus celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of its existence. The studies presented here address selected questions of the general topic that we could call, with some simplification writing about architectural and urban design. Here, we mainly hope to recall the writing in our journal, and discuss what previous contributions were published here, how they addressed immediate and long-lasting problems, how the authors published their work, where they were active and what research they addressed. At the same time, there are also studies that investigate the wider ramifications of the term writing, understood as research, investigation and recognition within architecture and urban lanning, and how these new findings are published in scholarly or theoretical periodicals. Our journal has passed through fortunate times and much darker ones. The lines of its development were not always congruous with the themes of the highest levels of European thought and research in the given area, yet still most of the major themes did manage to appear on our pages. Among them were urban-planning/ethical reflections from the first phases, positivistic-factual findings from the natural sciences or engineering, and concepts of what could be called ‘architectural science’, socialist-based yet pioneering environmental-architectural concepts, reflections of postmodernism, investigation and documentation of domestic modern architecture, and advanced research into Central European architectural regionalism. There has been space for sophisticated architectonic discourse and for its counterpart of project-theorising, or the generation of insights directly utilisable in architectural design. Our journal has successfully established itself in the environment of architectural periodicals, and current pressures towards differentiation of quality have ssisted in its integration as a longterm, well-founded and responsibly functioning platform for discussion on new scientific findings in the areas of architecture and urban design. Before you right now is a double issue that stands at the end of a half-century trajectory. The journal remains in good condition and still open for the best writing of architecture and urban issues.
Velký představitel české a slovenské moderny: Adolf Benš (1894 – 1982) – život a dílo architekta, pedagoga
Vladimír Šlapeta: Adolf Benš (1894 – 1982). Architektonicé Dílo
Praha, Nadace Charty 77 2014, 288 p.
ISBN 978-80-2605-727-7
Experimenting with Temporality and Cinematic Techniques as an Alternative Position in Architecture
INTRODUCTIONThe Greek term kinema signifies motion or movement, while contemporary contextualization of the notion cinema denotes the architectural space in which we become part of the visual system that allows us to perceive a sense of movement and which moves us. As the notion cinematic space presupposes an integrated temporality, and since temporality is traditionally seen as a fundamental limitation to the reception and integration of moving images within the institutions of art and art history, a framework for the interpretation of cinematic space in this research can only be opened through the non-representation of space, variable materialization of the image of architectural space, and the general form of its variability and abstractness, in contrast to its static nature. The theoretical implication of temporality of the cinematic space debates since the 1960s displaces the research focus from the specific analysis of the relational apparatus to the negotiation between arts and moving images, and sets the viewing subject in the central position of the analysis. Given the pervasive convergence of art and moving images we are now witnessing the ‘flowering’ of cinematic forms in visual art. These experiments induced spectator-focused forms of image production and circulation, asking “how have moving images redefined what we think of as ‘art’? How might they have affected our viewing experience?” It seems to me that it significantly relates to the issues of architectural space since our viewing experience, widely debated today in their temporal unfolding, stems from the problematizations of maintaining our essentially kinetic relationship with space. If this is accepted, then such a convergence between space, art and moving images is evidenced through an image-based practice.Commitment towards basing the future of architectural design practice to work with images was part of the preparations to move architectural research to the filmstrip, to become part of the montage process. It is essentially related to what Anthony Vidler highlights in the future of architectural practice, particularly that of Agrest and Gandelsonas, Tschumi and Nouvel. Vidler argues that they see architecture not as a form of language per se, but instead as a form of writing, extending this way the cultural system of which architecture and urban space are elements, to incorporate movement. …
Interpretations of the Architectural and Cultural Values of Heritage in the Revitalization Process
The starting point for the cultural interpretation of an architectural work with respect to its potential revitalization can assume a decisive role in terms of determination of the guidelines for evaluation, protection and/or revitalization of architectural heritage. Starting in the 19th century, when the fundaments of a theory of architectural heritage were laid down, two main approaches might be discerned regarding architectural heritage’s evaluation and revitalization: Viollet-le-Duc’s interpretative (stylistic) position, presented in ‘Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architeture franςaies du XIe au XVe siècle’ (1854 – 1868) and John Ruskin’s view of heritage as a living organism, presented in ‘The Seven Lamps of Architecture’ (1849). Up to the present, we might say that the theoretical positions and practical policies and legislatives on protection and revitalization of heritage are determined by those two different standpoints on the substantial value of architectural heritage. Nonetheless, it can be noticed that at the heart of the question of what characteristics of heritage take precedence – the material features or the immaterial significance, lasting from Viollet-le-Duc’s and Ruskin’s times up to modern heritage-protection policies and contemporary revitalization approaches, there lies the problem of the construction/delimitation of cultural identity. And this matter, in its own turn, forms the core of national, regional or cultural politics. Therefore, the reinterpretation of the characteristics and particularities of architectural discourse in specified period(s) throughout the process of heritage revitalization reveals the efforts of societies to deploy both architecture and cultural identity towards ideological needs. If ‘culture’ is defined as a collage of “the ideas, customs, and social behavior of a particular people or society;” or “the attitudes and behavior characteristic of a particular social group” and the concept of ‘identity’ as “the characteristic determining who or what a person (group, society) or thing is” /3/, then a cultural identity can be defined as the collective characteristics, or more accurately the categories for belonging that determine one’s place within a cultural category or, in other words, the features that characterize the group/society. In this context, architecture, as a form of cultural achievement and identity manifestation, might be interpreted as material heritage that gathers, exhibits and transmits non-material ideas, beliefs, traditions for the ways that we inhabit and perceive the world.In those terms, the process of cultural identity (re)definition can be correlated to the process of revitalization of architectural heritage. …
Towards a New Monumentality: The Creation of an Urban Cultural Landscape
The Lisbon headquarters and park of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (FCG), located in the Parque de Santa Gertrudes, created the public image of the Gulbenkian Foundation: an expression of culture that became synonymous in Portugal with social progress and thus a sign of a new monumentality. This aspiration was defined at the outset by its commissioner, the chairman of the foundation, José de Azeredo Perdigão (1896 – 1993), and brought to fruition by an extensive team of technical staff, through a process lasting from 1956 until its opening in 1969. Alberto Pessoa (1919 – 1985), Pedro Cid (1925 – 1983) and Ruy Jervis d’Athouguia (1917 – 2006), the architects of the building complex, together with the landscape architects António Viana Barreto (1924 – 2012) and Gonçalo Ribeiro Telles (1922 –), translated Calouste Gulbenkian’s legacy into a modern version of an epic cultural landscape. Within this landscape, best described as a designed environment of natural and manmade topography, of hard and soft landscaping, of interlocking spaces and forms, the diffusion of culture has been understood by the public as a voluntary “offering”, reversing the enshrined tradition of imposed, doctrinaire cultural values. Involving art, architecture and landscaping, the built ensemble anticipated the modernisation of Portuguese society, which was still immersed in the dictatorial regime of Antonio Salazar’s Estado Novo. The creation of the Gulbenkian Foundation hinted at the free and democratic world that would only become a reality for Portugal after 1974. Everything in the realm of culture undertaken by the Foundation up to that point – which included scholarships that enabled Portuguese active in the arts or sciences to work in the main research hubs of the world, as well as social assistance and support of the arts and sciences within Portugal – had been steeped in a discourse of modernity still unknown to the Portuguese until that time. This new discourse would spread as the Foundation’s work began to benefit the community. The expression “when ‘modern’ was not a style but a cause”, frequently used to express the transforming power of architecture, gained particular significance in the Portugal of the 1960’s, because the Gulbenkian Foundation was indeed a “cause” of culture and was understood to be an engine of urban progress. As such, the Gulbenkian Building and Park signalled a new understanding of the values of monumentality, even on an international level. The concept of a monument that conveys from within itself a sense of representation, symbolic value, creates an architectural image that conveys a civic, cultural, political and ethical agenda. …
Planning the Unplanned City: Modern Urban Conceptions in a Traditional Urban Structure
In our thinking about the city and about city regulations, land-use and/or spatial planning, several independent lines of argument have emerged. One of them is the artistic-compositional stance, derived from the traditional central principle of architectonic creation, focusing on the production of an aesthetically pleasing functional-structural whole. This result has the character of an inclusive artefact, evaluated as an artwork. The second line is the scientific-analytical, focusing on the rational side of the examination and planning of cities. It combines spatial and urban planning, grounded on extensive data sources and thus on the possibility of scientific quantification. Third in the series is the line that looks neither to a rationally quantifying scientific basis nor to the realm of artistic creation, but to the area of history. It emerges from an attitude of respect and a conservative adherence to tradition, with its essential basis lying in the protection of heritage.The first two lines, in short the artistic and the scientific, set off in notably separate directions, differing in their trust in the possibility of an analytical-rational comprehension of the problem. The analytical-scientific line took its stance on quantitative research: e.g., in investigating urban processes through computer-simulation models, the planning of cities made its shift from the design of “physical structures regarded as artistic work” towards planning based on inductive science. The third possibility represents a kind of alternative. In reaction to the modernist refusal of the traditional city and the gradual destruction of its substance, it upholds the importance of memory, bringing to mind history, often quite specifically local narratives and tales.The currents of opinion that we have here attempted to articulate and define within contemporary urban practice have been, and still are, reflected not only in the urban plans and the discussions surrounding them. No less can we find their traces directly within the urban organism. In essence, plans are not the only area, despite their growing power, extent and complexity, where urban activities are formed.An essential impact on the transformation of the urban structure was also had by the mechanism of planning. In the first half of the previous century, the construction of the city was determined by regulatory plans. After 1948, these were replaced by more complex tools in the form of urban studies and land-use plans. …
The Boulevard as a Type of Urban Linear Space
FORMULATION OF THE PROBLEMLinear landscaping structures occupy a special position among the range of urban green areas. Running through particular parts of the city, they form relatively narrow but elongated strips of urban greenery. This scheme of planning provides the residents of the neighborhoods with a brief daily recreation, gathering them in the local areas, attracting them to urban public facilities or parks and coastal zones. Today, these places not only constitute urban interior spaces, but also serve as a platform for environmental experiments related to the integration of natural elements, or even the testing of technological innovations. The spatial organization of cities has studied by a number of authorities; particularly noteworthy are the works of K. Lynch, R. Venturi, A. Brinkmann, V. Shymko, B. Hlazychev and others. The results of the studying architectural composition and aesthetic features of separate structural components (including linear pedestrian zones or narrower walkways) have beeen highlighted in the theoretical writings of C. Sitte D. Brooks, A. Verhunov, M. Belov, V. Petrov and others. Contemporary studies are aimed at the organization of the object-spatial environment of linear green spaces, based on a “total synthesis” of design with different kinds of design and artistic activities – architecture, urban design, landscape and graphic design, monumental and decorative art. The landscape of the urban environment is addressed in the works of J. Simonds L. Verhunova, A. Mikulina, L. Zaleska, I. Rodichkina, A. Belkin, V. Kucheryavyi, N. Kryzhanovska and others. Further information about these objects is partially covered in online resources, or journals such as Proektinternational, and Landscape Design.LINEAR SPACES IN THE CITY STRUCTUREOrganizing harmonious comfortable spaces in the structure of dense modern cities, or creating conditions for public recreation in a polis, are important issues nowadays, whether for architects, urban planners, or urban and landscape designers, or in fact for ordinary citizens. The place of the human individual in these spaces changes over time, as do the physical parameters and the ideas about the convenience of object-space environment. Today, with technology an increasing force in our lives, we can see the attraction of new comfortable urban spaces, such as free public space, that were popular within Europe in the postwar period. …
The Lifespan of Large Prefabricated Housing Estates in Post-communist Cities: an International Comparison
he future of large prefabricated housing estates is one of the key problems of sustainable urban development in post-Communist countries. In Western Europe, there are only 1.8 million such flats; in the countries, however, which lie between the former East Germany and the Russian Far East, there are more than 53 million panel flats, inhabited by approximately 170 million people. As globalised products of 20th century urbanism, these housing estates have widely different lives thanks to their position in economic and human geographies (on the global, national, regional and local scales), and even due to their built-up and natural environments. The majority of studies on large prefabricated housing estates focus on their economic and social aspects; this paper, therefore, intends to approach the subject from the vantage point of the built-up environment, analyzing the urban planning and design solutions while also attempting to understand and re-evaluate this modern urban fabric. In post-Communist countries there is often no other housing choice, since the buildings themselves stand up well; this type of housing remains predominant for a long time. The estimated proportion of prefabricated housing to the national housing stock varies between 15 and 70 % in view of the various Communist housing policies (for example, only 20 % of overall housing stock in Hungary, but more than 65 % in Lithuania). Also, cities have a different “panel” ratio according their previous development policies (for example, 30 % in Budapest, 40 % in Prague, 50 % in Vilnius, and over 80 % in some industrial cities). Although large housing estates appear to be identical from an exterior point of view, their individual stories and futures are ever more divergent.This paper compares three concrete examples – at the EU, national, city, and estate levels – in order to make the differences plain. The comparison of case studies allows us the opportunity to define the common and various pasts of these locales, their global (international and Soviet) and local (national and city) factors of development, as well as their existence today, confronted with special challenges. The case studies represent three parallel post-Communist lifespans from three different corners of the European Union: firstly, the Žirmūnai Housing Estate in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, which was one of the first large prefabricated estates to be built in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) at the end of the 1960s; secondly, the Havanna Housing Estate in the Hungarian capital Budapest, a result of the mass-production of the 1970s; and thirdly, one of the last housing estates to be constructed before the political and economic changes in the Democratic German Republic, Neu Ovenstedt in the city of Magdeburg. …
Thansformation of an Inner City in the Postsocialist Period, Case Study Holešovice, Prague
The text addresses the issue of the spatial arrangement of new office and residential complexes built in the inner part of Prague during the post-socialist time. After 1990, the transformation of the Eastern bloc state of Czechoslovakia into the present Czech Republic led to the implementation of major economic and social changes, as reflected in the use of new spatial forms and development organisation.First, the economy was transformed from a centrally planned system to a liberal market model. As a consequence, local production was confronted with global competition. Many of the local factories did not succeed in the competition and were closed down, while others moved to the outskirts of the city. At the same time, cities started to lose their industrial character and emerge as centres of services, offices and culture.The construction sites in the inner parts of Prague that became available after the factories were removed had great development potential and exceptional value. Their close distance to the historical centre of the city, good accessibility by public transport and the open space left by the industrial footprint made them attractive for exclusive office and residential construction.Compared to the planned development that dominated the socialist area, the building process is now different. Development is not organized by the state or a cooperative but by private developers. In the case of inner parts of Prague the developers are typically strong companies embedded in the global network. Moreover, such a typology of investment shifts the development process from meeting the social and spatial needs of local people, such as housing, building schools, kindergartens or shops, towards an understanding of architecture primarily as a way of reinvesting the yield from other business activities. Consequently, architecture is understood as any other commodity on the stock market that serves towards the saving and recapitalization of financial recourses. Therefore, the important “value” of architecture has become its exclusive character, original solutions and distinctive design. Architecture as a commodity focuses on a small segment of clients who are economically well situated and globally networked. Sometimes called the ‘new middle class’, this is the group that brings the gentrification processes into the area. …
Visions, Planning and Strategic Urban Development: the Example of Prague
States are born from certain visions; they are formed and legitimised by them. Cities as well form their own visions, and they attempt to project them in development concepts and strategies. In the history of Czech cities, the footprints of visions linked to strategic decisions can be noted in particular when radical changes of their functional and spatial organisation were needed. Unprecedented growth in medieval Prague under the reign of Charles IV and the transformation of Czech towns stimulated by the 19th century industrial revolution can serve as examples. Political ideas and endeavours played a key role in the process, which made its imprint on the spatial pattern of cities, the location and arrangement of edifices as symbols for temporary ideas.The political transition of 1989 initially took the stance of a farewell to ideologies and to city visions as their imprints. However, soon a new wave of visions arrived, connected to the advent of strategic planning. In the long run, strategic plans became a parallel to statutory physical planning, being less tangible and also viewed as less rigid. The example of Prague demonstrates how the originally well-grounded strategic plan from the end of the 1990s gradually came to lose its sense in the course of the process of its approval and implementation, finally declining to the level of a mere device for the support of too many controversial and questionable projects. Recently, the emerging Metropolitan Physical Plan assumed a conceptualising role, but its vision of urban “implosion” lacks wider support, being generated outside of public debate as an author´s manifesto. A new elaboration of the Strategic Plan, which was initiated by the debates on the Metropolitan Plan, has given up on any promotion of a spatial vision.The gap is widening between “top-down” visions, strategies and plans on one hand, and public opinion on the other, which strongly demands city governance that should promote citizens´ interests. Strengthening the institutional capacity of public administration is required not only to enforce and implement difficult programmes already present in existing strategies and plans, but also to face new challenges: climate change, access to resources, ageing populations and increased social barriers. A strong and shared urban vision and a strategy that manages to use the challenges and local potentials may turn to be a substantial competitive advantage.
The Sense of a Hous. On Levinas’s Importance for Thinking about Architecture
Emmanuel Levinas (1906 – 1995), one of the greatest phenomenologically oriented philosophers of the 20th century, is not an author whom we encounter often when reading texts about architecture. Despite his extensive body of writings on art, he never produced any text directly concerning architecture. However, if we measure the importance of works by other criteria than their explicitness or volume, we might come to a different conclusion… The present text addresses the sense of a house and housing for the human subject; the sense, hence, not its usefulness. It adheres faithfully to the phenomenological approach, asking what is the essence of the experience of space and place, what is found in the essence given to us in the original sense. The essence of experience presumes that the experience lies within the relation to the experienced subject. We do not ask how the experience of space develops, but rather what lies within it, what it demonstrates, what can be concluded from it and what sense could be inferred from the experience as a given phenomenological quantity. Within such an attitude, clues to relations and relationality may be revealed; consequently, these clues may lead us to discover the sense of space and things for human experience. It is a topic close to the philosophical discipline of generative phenomenology, focusing on the research of a generative constitution of the inner as well as the external life-world. In our opinion, this phenomenological feature of space and place relating to the subject is the target of critical remarks from Levinas, which may have a significant influence in the process of architectural works, too. According to him, place should not be understood as an arbitrary “somewhere”, but rather as a foundation and a condition of every human being. An individual commits himself or herself to a place that forms a foundation and condition. Going to bed may be a remarkable testimony to this fact, since in the act of resting one attaches oneself to the place and confirms the distance from what affects him from outside. Hence the question arises: is it necessary to reverse the order of justification? The conscious world is not the cause of a house’s establishment; on the contrary, a house establishes consciousness and unlocks its possibilities. …
Form and its Reception in Architecture. On the Example of the Agricultural University Campus in Nitra
The title of this paper refers to the polarity between formalism and reception aesthetics, emerging in the 1960s yet implicitly formulated much sooner, for example in Czech and Slovak structuralism. The aim of this text is to demonstrate how this polarity shaped the contextual background of architectural thinking in the second half of the 20th century in Slovakia with the specification that despite minor exceptions, it did not develop into individual formal or structural analyses of architecture nor did into research of the social impact and history of reception. Nonetheless, the majority of texts on architecture of that period are dominated by thinking about the form or the social mission/function of architecture, even if the deeper interrelation of both poles in the above-mentioned polarity has never resulted in a new concept of an architectural work or an implicit author or user as formulated by the reception theories of the Konstanz School (Hans Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Iser), Umberto Eco or the ideas on reception aesthetics by František Miko in Slovakia. The Agricultural University Campus (AUC) in the city of Nitra (project by Rudolf Miňovský and Vladimír Dedeček, designed in 1959 – 1961, built in 1960 – 1963) is chosen as an example. Not only do a variety of existing texts tackle this important work from the aspects of both poles of the abovementioned polarity, it is also possible to demonstrate if and to what extent these texts develop the possibilities of the approach chosen by their authors and, at the same time, the consequences of the inconsistent utilization of formal analysis and analysis of reception or social function (e.g., in the case that formal analysis is replaced by a recourse to the genuine model/pattern of applied form, or the study of reception is replaced by the worship of acceptance in international journals). The paper is divided into two parts: the first part is concerned with the form of the AUC and the second with the reception of the AUC’s form. Here, focus is applied to the preliminary analysis of architectural form by confronting the process of formal analysis suggested by the author of this paper with the processes formulated by other authors. The second part tries to offer a typology of reception of the AUC’s form. …
The Analysis of Interpretational Procedures in Peter Eisenman‘s Book ten Canonical Buildings
The present paper is concerned with the interpretational procedures in Peter Eisenman’s book Ten Canonical Buildings. This book offers ten interpretations of architectural works from the period between the years 1950 – 2000 as well as a meta-interpretation of these interpretations. This latter meta-interpretation has both ontological and architectural-historiographical consequences, as it inevitably touches upon modes of existence and the inner order of architectural works, with the aim of constructing developmental phases that do not follow established styles. It offers a revision of certain current specifications of architectural styles, especially in modern and postmodern architecture. The paper is divided into three areas of focus. The first part deals with the reconstruction of the interpretational procedures in Ten Canonical Buildings. The second aims to categorize them into methodological interpretational contexts and characterizes their categorical apparatus. Finally, the third part points out the ontological and architectural-historiographical consequences of these procedures. The reconstruction is based on the findings that, despite declared changes of interpretation procedures, certain steps are repeated from one work to another. It is possible to say that Eisenman seeks a method that forms an ordered sequence but is capable of variability in dealing with the specific character of architectural works. In this way, he seeks to avoid the traps of certain art-historical interpretation methods (e.g., iconology) that function quite well in the case of the so- called pictorial works or object-based works, but fail in the case of non-pictorial and non-object-based works. The variability of Eisenman’s method is secured by the aim of the interpretation. Eisenman is not interested in deciphering extra-architectural meanings, which he also terms semantic and symbolic analysis. Nor is he a follower of a purely formal analysis addressing solely the geometrical, physical, functional and aesthetic qualities of works. Quite on the contrary, from the very beginning Eisenman is concerned with conceptual relations that he names, after Chomsky, the deep structure or syntactic relations either 1) identifiable in a work or 2) preceding a work or initiated by a work itself. …
Invisible Architects: The First Generation of Women in Slovak Architecture
The present study devotes attention to the activities of the women architects who were the first graduates of the Faculty of Architecture and Construction at the Slovak Technical University in Bratislava and started their careers in design work in the midpoint of the 20th century. Through several personalities selected on the basis of their authorial oeuvre and lifestories, it sketches an image of the social situation, work possibilities and creative legacy of the first women to practice architecture in Slovakia. The first university department of architecture opened in Slovakia in 1946. As a result, the first women architects to arrive on the Slovak scene made their appearance in 1950, the year of the first graduating class, which included four women. In the following decades, the number of women enrolled gradually increased, yet the proportion between male and female graduates was always unequal and varied sharply from year to year. The successful working career of women architects depended to a large extent on their support from male colleagues. For this very reason, the majority of women who did manage to make names for themselves in the profession were the wives or partners of architects. Moreover, the greater number of them over time retreated from the front lines of professional standing into obscurity. Only a few women were able, during the 1960s, to escape this convention, and even so there were wide differences as to what level of autonomy they could gain. The strategies of their self-presentation within professional life could be divided into two basic typologies, depending on their working environment, family background, and above all personal characteristics. The first and more numerous type is represented by the women who chose the architectural role of the less-visible part of authorial pairs or teams. Though often playing significant roles in their working teams, they nonetheless submitted to male authority and their joint work was mostly seen through the personality of the men involved. Through these personal strategies, they either deliberately or through circumstance fulfilled the idea that they would never “vehemently design and successfully realise great architecture”. To name only the best-known of such women, we should cite Katarína Chudomelková, as the working partner of her husband Karol Chudomelek, Gabriela Cimmermannová, who worked in the same team as her husband Anton Cimmermann, Eva Vítková, who worked with her husband Jaroslav Vítek, or Štefánia Krumlová, employed in the teams led by Ľudovít Jendreják or Imrich Ehrenberger. …
Interpretive Residues in Architecture and the Baťa House of Services in Bratislava
The significance of historic events is never unequivocally clear, but instead always subject to change along with the methods of their understanding. In every era, the problem of producing historiography invariably rises again and again, and thus history always needs, in a sense, to be rewritten. Even art history cannot interpret a work of art in an ahistorical sense “in and of itself”, but always brings to its interpretation its own preunderstandings. The explication-interpretation of any work has been brought into philosophy in connection with the revival of the problem of hermeneutics by Arno Azenbacher. Against the interpretation of explications and events, Anzenbacher understands it as the interpretation of facts that emerge from the individual narratives of the human life. Hence the precursors to the interpretation of a work leading towards its understanding must be great in number. According to Hans-Georg Gadamer, conditionality on history is not a loss, but a gain: always the meaningful posing of questions that predict the future. And this is true even though the individual “pre-step” of the interpretation is often a different understanding. “Difference” thus in essence grounds a critical view of the interpretive approaches, which in turn stimulates the new asking of questions, the openness and indeed the endlessness of the interpretive problem. Historiographic interventions into the interpretation of works in the past invariably came up against disputes that cast doubt on their justifiability and legitimacy. Art criticism and art history form a kind of eternal return to the work – the subject of cultural history, to its origins and anchoring, as well as to its evaluating, investigating and receiving subject. Here, though, there start to appear the serious doubts of the ability of mere historical understanding of a work and the possibility of its exhaustive explication. Indeed, Umberto Eco directly indicated the excess of interpretive results as the danger of “overinterpretation” of the work. On the opposite side, every interpretation should have a foundation in the reconstruction of the intent or the intellectual basis of the creator, of his or her authorial strategy, hence with the necessary presupposition that the work is simultaneously the expression of a certain mental phenomenon – a thought or idea, conception, belief, program, ideology, conscious or unconscious, personal or collective reflection. …
INTERPRETATION BY MONOGRAPH The Biographical Genre in New Scholarly Publications on Important Slovak Architects
During the period that has elapsed since the publication of the present author’s previous survey (Dulla, Matúš: Personalities and influences. Contribution to the study of modern architecture in Slovakia. Architektúra & urbanizmus 41, 2008, 1 – 2, pp. 5 – 20), a significant shift has been noticed in the practice of Slovak architectural monographs. In short, three extensive publications have appeared devoted to the architects Dušan Jurkovič, Emil Belluš and Friedrich Weinwurm, as well as three shorter monographs (concerning the architects L. Oelschläger, L. Hudec and M. M. Harminc). The appearance of these publications came roughly twenty years after the wide-ranging changes in Slovak society in 1989, which had a notable effect on architectural historiography as well. It is clear that a full evaluation of these changes requires not years but decades to become clear: the genre of the monographic work on Slovak architects is thus a chance for good comparison with similar areas in more advanced cultural scenes. At the same time, it allows for a richer judgment of the interpretative level on which the authors of these works, whether consciously or unconsciously, chose to stand. Dana Bořutová compiled her first monograph on Dušan Jurkovič (1868 – 1947) as early as 1993, though she evidently realised that it was not merely possible but indeed necessary to issue a significantly expanded re-edition. The result was the first of these three large-scale monographs: The Architect Dušan Samuel Jurkovič. Life and Work. (Architekt Dušan Samuel Jurkovič. Život a dielo. Bratislava, Slovart 2009). Even in its first incarnation, the work was the most extensive and detailed book about this architect, far exceeding any previous efforts. The author then expanded it and further refined its argumentation, drawing additional connections and bringing the reader more deeply into the relationships, influences and human background of this significant creator’s life. Moreover, she placed further stress on her thesis of the underrated value of the final phases of his oeuvre. Additionally, she drew addition to the formulating influences of Jurkovič’s studies in Vienna and the exciting architectonic discourse in the heart of the Hapsburg monarchy. …
Reception and Architectural Interpretation: The Television Tower and Hotel Ještěd and The Prague-Žižkov Television Tower
- The paper focuses on the problem of the public or architectural interpretation and reception of two extraordinary buildings: the combined hotel and television tower on Mt. Ještěd near Liberec and the Žižkov Television Tower in Prague. The paper is divided into three chapters: 1) Architecture and the Historic Context, 2) Architecture and the Topological (Landscape or Urban) Context, 3) “Architecture – Technology – Context” Relations. Both of the buildings addressed are discussed in terms of their program (television transmission, hotel, skyline restaurant, etc.). Each of them was designed and built under different social circumstances: either at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s (TV-Tower and Hotel Ještěd, designed and built 1966 – 1973) or at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s (TV-Tower in Prague-Žižkov, designed and built 1985 – 1992). The public reception of these buildings demonstrates minor similarities alongside the prevailing dramatic differences, forming the subject of further description, analysis and interpretation. The Ještěd TV tower had to face public disagreement, negative criticism and a definite aversion during the public presentation or the “nomination” of its architectural project. Extraordinary technical and engineering solutions were developed for this tower (among them the special pendulum designed by structural engineer Zdeněk Patrman). After the completion of the tower, it nonetheless won both the continuing sympathy of the public and highly positive architectural assessments. Designed by architect Karel Hubáček, the Ještěd TV tower is widely acclaimed for reconciling the viewer to its own monumentality, thanks to the complex and delicate formal, structural, technical and technological
intricacy. It also reconciles both the public and architects to all the possible meanings proven over time to form its inherent canonical values. This building at the peak of Ještěd – a hyperboloid volume growing from the mountain top towards the sky – was predestined by its topos at least as much as Fallingwater – the Kaufmann Residence by Frank Lloyd Wright. Nature and landscape context became an intrinsic inner quality of this architectural work. The meaning of Hubáček’s and Patrman’s Ještěd building is not reduced to the acceptance of the “high-tech” elements – even if the adoption of high-tech architecture is an important event in the history of Czech architecture. …
Editorial
This issue focuses on the problem of the interpretation and meta-interpretation of architecture. The prevailing approaches are metainterpretational, that is those, which do not interpret architectural works themselves but existing interpretations of architectural works. We have chosen various, mostly borderline interpretational positions. Two papers focus on the subject of meta-interpretation concerning non-professional or amateur interpretations, or relations between a non-professional and professional interpretation of architecture with the aim of finding characteristic procedures in both of them and explore the broad scale of interrelations between the interpretation or use and the abuse of a work of architecture. In the two other papers prevail meta-interpretations of both the form analysis and the prevailing reception or “interpretational sediments” of a specific architectural work. The third pair of papers are “meta-interpretations” of interpretational possibilities of writing genres dealing with architecture as well as the procedures of marginalization and the rediscovery of the work of women architects. Finally, the two closing metainterpretational procedures explore the interpretational methods of an architect and a philosopher: Peter Eisenman’s method of close reading and Emmanuel Levinas’ phenomenological method. These meta-interpretational methods thus deal with both interpretational methods themselves as well as with borders between interpretation and formulated experience; personal attitude; the judgments based on taste and interpretation and forms of writing on architecture. On the basis of the professional training of the involved metainterpreters we have categorized their papers into three groups: the historiographical, the theoretical and the philosophical meta-interpretations.