Archaeology vs. History: Heinrich Hubsch's Critique of Neoclassicism and the Beginnings of Historicism in German Architectural Theory

Bergdoll, Barry

doi:10.1093/oxartj/5.2.3

Cited by 8 publications

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“…Hübsch's idiosyncratic defence of Rundbogenstil has been thoroughly analysed by Bergdoll (1983) and Herrmann (1992), among others. For our purposes, the structure of Hübsch's argument is more interesting than his particular stylistic preferences.…”

Section: Schlegel's Compromisementioning

confidence: 99%

Style: Notes on the Transformation of a Concept

Hvattum

2019

Architectural Histories

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Section: Schlegel's Compromisementioning

confidence: 99%

Style: Notes on the Transformation of a Concept

Hvattum

2019

Architectural Histories

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“…The edited collection of Caroline van Eck, James McAllistar, and Renée van de Vall, The Question of Style in Philosophy and the Arts from 1995, was vital in bringing style back into focus, building on previous efforts such as Berel Lang's The Concept of Style (1979) and seminal essays by, for example, Meyer Schapiro (1953); James Ackerman (1962); Friedrich Piel (1963); Ernst Gombrich (1968);and Nelson Goodman (1975 Object (2012). See also Germann (1973); Hager and Knapp (1977); Bergdoll (1983); and Hvattum (2013Hvattum ( , 2017.…”

Section: Notementioning

confidence: 99%

Mere Style?

Hvattum

2018

Architectural Histories

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Introduction In a recent conference session, a young scholar declared that she was looking at her subject matter-the architecture of the New York Five, if I remember correctly-not merely as style, but rather as a complex nexus of cultural and material conditions. The audience nodded knowingly. To 21st century architects and architectural historians, style, it seems, stands for superficiality, formalism, and obsolete periodization; a grand narrative past its sell-by date. Wittingly or unwittingly, the conference speaker placed herself in a long tradition. To reject style(s) was a favourite pastime for 20th century architects and architectural historians alike. From Hermann Muthesius to Rem Koolhaas, style has been associated with lies, deceit, and masquerade. According to Muthesius, modern architecture had to break free from the chains of style, replacing a stifled Stilarchitektur with a 'living building art' (1902: 67). 'The "styles" are a lie,' proclaimed Le Corbusier in 1923 (2007: 147), a verdict repeated ad verbatim some seventy years later by Koolhaas in his S,M,L,XL glossary, in an entry squeezed in between 'stupid' and 'suicide' (1995: 1188). Ludwig Mies van der Rohe warned not only against recycling old styles but also against seeking new ones, since ' even the will to Style is formalism' (1923: 1). Enjoying a brief recovery during 1970s and '80s postmodernism, style was soon rejected with renewed vigour-just look at Mark Wigley's vehement defence of deconstructivist architecture against accusations of being a style (1988). If modernist architects drove style out of architectural practice, historians followed suit, chasing it out of the history books. Few self-respecting architectural historians use style as their ordering principle any more. Instead, we write histories of types, materials, mediations, constructions, uses-anything to avoid the sword. In a recent debate on how a new general history of Norwegian architecture might be structured, the organizers stated that their foremost ambition was to get away from the art historians' 'style-histories' in order to give a truer account of architectural structures and processes. The ambition is in no way unique. Even though the matrix of epochs and styles survives in some architectural history survey courses, students are soon taught to distrust it. If style plays any role at all in contemporary education, it is as a kind of scaffold: an unsightly structure to be dismantled as soon as possible. Style, as Georg Kubler forcefully stated, is ' a word to avoid' (1979: 163).

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“…There could be no symbolic primitive ideal or essence, no unique architectural golden age.' 25 It is in this historical/theoretical analysis that Botticher could claim that the truth of architecture does not rest in the form, but 'in the bringing about of a new static principle out of material. This alone,' he wrote, 'makes possible the creation of a new spatial roofing system and herewith calls forth at the same time a new formal, artistic vocabulary.'…”

Section: Style In Makingmentioning

confidence: 99%

In What Style Could They Have Built?

Hartoonian¹

2007

Fabrications

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Archaeology vs. History: Heinrich Hubsch's Critique of Neoclassicism and the Beginnings of Historicism in German Architectural Theory

Cited by 8 publications

References 0 publications

Style: Notes on the Transformation of a Concept

Style: Notes on the Transformation of a Concept

Mere Style?

In What Style Could They Have Built?

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