Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Reyner Banham

2011; Routledge; Volume: 16; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Dinamarquês

10.1080/13264826.2011.560389

1755-0475

Jared Langevin,

Architecture, Modernity, and Design

Abstract In the 1969 book The Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment, architectural critic and historian Reyner Banham drew from a decade of his own writings about "environments fit for human activities", heralding the possibilities of a technologically-driven, man-made climate that would eliminate the need for "massive" buildings by rendering their physical delimitation of habitable space obsolete. In theorising this "other" architecture, however, Banham appeared to be challenging his own simultaneous praise for the "imageability" of buildings by the New Brutalist and Archigram groups in London. In particular, Banham's celebration of Archigram's formal visions for the technological future conflicted with his concurrent arguments that architecture could shed its traditional concern with formal aesthetics. This paper explores the existence of such theoretical positions in Banham's work during the 1960s and discusses reasons for his willingness to adopt multiple, seemingly contradictory viewpoints. Acknowledgements The author thanks Dr. Kai Gutschow, Associate Professor in Architectural History and Design at Carnegie Mellon University, for his assistance in the development of this paper. Notes 1. Whiteley, Reyner Banham, p. 386. 2. Analogous to the concept of "un art autre", the subject and title of a book written by French art critic Michel Tapie, published in Paris in 1952. 3. Banham, "Machine Aesthetic", p. 225. 4. Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, p. 12. 5. Banham, Age of the Masters, p. 29. 6. Banham. "Machine Aesthetes",p. 27. 7. Banham, Theory and Design, p. 262. 8. Ibid., p. 123. 9. Ibid., p. 11. 10. Quoted in Banham, Theory and Design, p. 128. 11. Ibid., p. 101. 12. Banham, "Primitives of a Mechanized Art", p. 41. 13. Pevsner, Pioneers of Modern Design, p. 26. 14. Banham, Theory and Design, p. 109. 15. Ibid., p. 325. 16. Ibid., p. 10. 17. Quoted in Banham, "Primitives of a Mechanized Art", pp. 44–45. 18. Literally "another art". For origin of term, refer to note 2. 19. Whiteley, Reyner Banham, p. 156. 20. Ibid. 21. Banham, "1960—Stocktaking", pp. 51, 53. 22. Ibid., p. 50. 23. Quoted in Whiteley, Reyner Banham, p. 13. 24. Fuller, "Emergent Humanity", p. 119. 25. Banham, New Brutalism, p. 69. 26. Banham, "1960—Stocktaking", p. 61. 27. Ibid., p. 49. 28. Fuller, Extract from lecture (November 1965), unpaginated. 29. Banham, "Home Is Not a House", p. 75. 30. Ibid., p. 75. 31. Ibid., p. 76. 32. Ibid., p. 71. 33. Ibid., p. 77. 34. Whiteley, Reyner Banham, p. 5. 35. Alloway, "Notes on Abstract Art and the Mass Media", p. 3. 36. "About Aspen and IDCA". 37. "Mission". 38. Banham, "The Great Gizmo", p. 109. 39. Ibid., p. 113. 40. Whiteley, Reyner Banham, p. 170. 41. Ibid., p. 174. 42. Cook et al., "Instant City", p. 86. 43. Whiteley, Reyner Banham, p. 215. 44. Cook, "Control and Choice", p. 68. 45. Banham, "New Brutalism", p. 15. 46. Ibid., p. 12. 47. Ibid., p. 14. 48. Ibid., p. 15. 49. Whiteley, Reyner Banham, p. 132. 50. Ibid., p. 131. 51. Quoted in Whiteley, Reyner Banham, p. 175. 52. Ibid., p. 176. 53. Vidler, Histories of the Immediate Present, p. 137. 54. Quoted in Whiteley, Reyner Banham, p. 176. Emphasis added. 55. Banham, Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment, p. 12. 56. Ibid., p. 21. 57. Ibid., p. 16. 58. Banham, Age of the Masters, p. 6. 59. Banham, Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment, p. 257. 60. Ibid., pp. 260, 262. 61. Ibid., p. 250. 62. Ibid., p. 253. 63. Banham, Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment, p. 252 and p. 262. Whiteley argues in "Banham and 'Otherness'" that this notion of "attitude" towards technology and "technological habits of thought" is critical to understanding Banham's conception of an architecture autre in the 1960s. 64. Whiteley, Reyner Banham, p. 386. 65. See Banham, "Style", p. 191; and Banham, "Black Box", p. 293. 66. Whiteley, Reyner Banham, p. 397. 67. Tournikiotis, Historiography of Modern Architecture, p. 158. 68. Banham, Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment, p. 264. 69. Banham, "History Under Revision", p. 332; Banham, "History of the Immediate Future", p. 252. 70. Vidler, Histories of the Immediate Present, p. 1. 71. Jencks, Modern Movements in Architecture, p. 298. 72. Quoted in Whiteley, Reyner Banham, p. 180. 73. Banham, "1960—Stocktaking", p. 61.