Style In The Technical And Tectonic Arts Or Practical Aesthetics

Download or read book Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts, Or, Practical Aesthetics written by Gottfried Semper and published by Getty Publications. This book was released on 2004 with total page 996 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The enduring influence of the architect Gottfried Semper (1803-1879) derives primarily from his monumental theoretical foray Der Stil in der technischen und tektonischen Künsten (1860-62), here translated into English for the first time. A richly illustrated survey of the technical arts (textiles, ceramics, carpentry, masonry), Semper's analysis of the preconditions of style forever changed the interpretative context for aesthetics, architecture, and art history. Style, Semper believed, should be governed by historical function, cultural affinities, creative free will, and the innate properties of each medium. Thus, in an ambitious attempt to turn nineteenth-century artistic discussion away from historicism, aestheticism, and materialism, Semper developed in Der Stil a complex picture of stylistic change based on scrutiny of specific objects and a remarkable grasp of cultural variety. Harry Francis Mallgrave's introductory essay offers an account of Semper's life and work, a survey of Der Stil, and a fresh consideration of Semper's landmark study and its lasting significance.

Download or read book The Four Elements of Architecture and Other Writings written by Gottfried Semper and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-02-17 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gottfied Semper was the most important German theorist of the nineteenth century. From his first published essay on Greek polychromy in 1834 to his final lecture on the origin of architectural styles in 1869, Semper persistently endeavoured to fashion a comprehensive architectural theory explaining the meaning and transformational nature of architectural form. The breadth and richness of his ideas, both applauded and opposed at the turn of the twentieth century, proved enormously influential in the development of modern theory. Originally published in 1989, this book provides an English translation of a number of Semper's published writings. The introduction seeks to trace the course of Semper's theoretical development over thirty-five years. Semper's ideas, like those of his contemporaries, John Ruskin and Eugene Viollet-le-Duc, had enormous influence on the genesis of modern architectural theory and will appeal to both architectural historians and architects.

Download or read book Perspectives on Musical Aesthetics written by John Rahn and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1994 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 30 lively and diverse essays brought together in this volume--all drawn from the journal PERSPECTIVE OF NEW MUSIC--suggest possible answers to the age-old question: Why does music affect us so strongly? The writers include many of the most prominent names in both modern music and aesthetic theory, including Pierre Boulez, John Cage, Iannis Xenakis, Eric Gans, Michel Foucault, and Delmore Schwartz.

Download or read book Architecture and Spectacle: A Critique written by Gevork Hartoonian and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on six leading contemporary architects: Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, Bernard Tschumi, Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas and Steven Holl, this book puts forward a unique and insightful analysis of "neo-avant-garde" architecture. It discusses the spectacle and excess which permeates contemporary architecture in reference to the present aesthetic tendency for image making, but does so by applying the tectonic of theatricality discussed by the 19th-century German architect Gottfried Semper. In doing so, it breaks new ground by opening up a dialogue between the study of the past and the design of the present. The work of each discussed architect is seen as addressing a historiographical problem. To this end, and this is the second important aspect of this book, the chosen buildings are discussed in terms of the thematic of the culture of building (the tectonic of column and wall for example) rather the formal, and this through a discussion that is informed by the latest available theories. Having set the aesthetic implication of the processes of the digitalization of architecture, the book's conclusion highlights "strategies" by which architecture might postpone the full consequences of digitalization, and thus the becoming of architecture as ornament on its own right.

Download or read book Material Theories written by Elena Chestnova and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-06-20 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Material Theories takes a radically new approach to well-established thinking on nineteenth-century architecture and design by investigating Gottfried Semper’s classic ideas about dressing, metamorphosis of material, and cultural development, culminating in his two-volume publication Style. This book demonstrates how Semper’s theories crystallised among his encounters with material things of the late 1840s and early 1850s. It examines several discursive frameworks and phenomena which shaped the attitude to artefacts in Europe in the mid-nineteenth century, and which were specifically pertinent to Semper’s evolution: archaeology and antiquarianism, the domestic interior, print media, collections, and the embodied relationship between the designer and their work. For the first time, this book examines the construction of a design theory not only as an intellectual endeavour but also as a process of confrontation with material things. It employs recent approaches to material culture, in particular Thing Theory, in order to show that Semper’s artefact references constituted his ideas, rather than simply giving impetus to them. It will be an important investigation for academics and researchers interested in interior design history, as well as scholars of material culture and history of design theory.

Download or read book Richard Riemerschmid's Extraordinary Living Things written by Freyja Hartzell and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2022-11-01 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How Richard Riemerschmid’s designs of everyday—but “extraordinary”—objects recalibrate our understanding of modernism. At the beginning of the twentieth century, German artist Richard Riemerschmid (1868–1957) was known as a symbolist painter and, by the advent of World War I, had become an important modern architect. This, however, the first English-language book on Riemerschmid, celebrates his understudied legacy as a designer of everyday objects—furniture, tableware, clothing—that were imbued with an extraordinary sense of vitality and even personality. Freyja Hartzell makes a case for the importance of Riemerschmid's designed objects in the development of modern design—and for the power of everyday things to change the way we live our lives, understand history, and design our future. Hartzell offers for the first time an interpretive history of Riemerschmid's design practice embedded in a fresh examination of modernism told by the objects themselves. Hartzell explores Riemerschmid's early drawings, paintings, and prints; his interiors and housewares, which represent a modernist shift from exclusive image to accessible object; his designs for women's clothing; his immensely popular wooden furniture; his serially produced ceramics and their appeal to German nationalism of the period; and his complex and compelling pattern designs for textiles and wallpapers, the only part of his creative practice that spanned his entire career. Riemerschmid, Hartzell writes, was at his most inventive, playful, and free when designing things for everyday use. His uniquely designed forms allow us to recognize the utilitarian object not just as a tool but as an individual being—a thing with a soul.

Download or read book The Autopoiesis of Architecture, Volume I written by Patrik Schumacher and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-04-20 with total page 487 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Take a theoretical approach to architecture with The Autopoiesis of Architecture, which presents the topic as a discipline with its own unique logic. Architecture's conception of itself is addressed as well as its development within wider contemporary society. Author Patrik Schumacher offers innovative treatment that enriches architectural theory with a coordinated arsenal of concepts facilitating both detailed analysis and insightful comparisons with other domains, such as art, science and politics. He explores how the various modes of communication comprising architecture depend upon each other, combine, and form a unique subsystem of society that co-evolves with other important autopoietic subsystems like art, science, politics and the economy. The first of two volumes that together present a comprehensive account of architecture's autopoiesis, this book elaborates the theory of architecture?s autopoeisis in 8 parts, 50 sections and 200 chapters. Each of the 50 sections poses a thesis drawing a central message from the insights articulated within the respective section. The 200 chapters are gathering and sorting the accumulated intelligence of the discipline according to the new conceptual framework adopted, in order to catalyze and elaborate the new formulations and insights that are then encapsulated in the theses. However, while the theoretical work in the text of the chapters relies on the rigorous build up of a new theoretical language, the theses are written in ordinary language ? with the theoretical concepts placed in brackets. The full list of the 50 theses affords a convenient summary printed as appendix at the end of the book. The second volume completes the analysis of the discourse and further proposes a new agenda for contemporary architecture in response to the challenges and opportunities that confront architectural design within the context of current societal and technological developments.