The Architecture of Continuity: Essays and Conversations"That buildings are made of elements doesn't mean that architecture should be based on elementarism; on the contrary, we should strive for an architecture of continuity that fuses tectonics with textile, abstraction with empathy, and matter with expressivity." This is the crux of the argument Lars Spuybroek makes in this book, the first fully theoretical account of his innovative work. The state of contemporary architecture is the product of a 150-year battle between the Polytechnique and Beaux-Arts schools of design, which has forced us into a stalemate between the radically opposed positions of high-tech and sculpturism. Spuybroek aims to do no less than mend this rift through rethinking technology as an extension of our feeling senses, materiality as the realm of activity and agency, and structure as the result of genesis. Building on Gottfried Semper's materialist theory of architecture, he takes us from a philosophy of technology to a surprisingly historical argumentation that constantly revives the words of John Ruskin, William Hogarth and Wilhelm Worringer. Alongside a number of essays, the book contains extensive conversations in which we witness him refining and sharpening his arguments ("We will see a merging of Art Nouveau and Bauhaus, where empathy has been liberated from manual labor and machines have been liberated from uniform repetition"). In a period of theoretical tranquility in architecture, this book takes a refreshing turn back to the basics, one in which tools, methodology and architectural aesthetics are recalibrated. |
Common terms and phrases
abstract action actually aesthetic archi architects architecture Architecture of Continuity Art Nouveau articulation beauty become behavior body building Cedric Price columns complex concept configurations connected construction constructivism constructivist continuum course create curvature curves deformation diagram elements emerge everything experience façade feeling flexible floor forces Francisco Varela Frei Otto Gaudí geometry Gothic grid haptic Humberto Maturana interaction Koolhaas lines look material matter means ments merge metadesign mobilization morphologies move movement Naum Gabo never object Oliver Sacks ontology organization ornament paintings pattern Peirce perception proprioception pure relations relationship Rem Koolhaas ruled surfaces Ruskin scale Semper sense shift simply Son-O-House space spline Spuybroek Steel and Freedom stereotomy struc surface systemacy techniques tectonics textile texture theory things threads tion topological tower transformation ture Varela variable variation Villa Savoye volume wall whole