Architecture Commons^™

Making By Taking: An Investigation Of Architectural Appropriation, Victoria Lee

Architecture Senior Theses

The project contends that explicit appropriation can be a legitimate method of architectural production. The scope encompasses four canonical works of architecture: Villa Rotonda, Villa Savoye, Fallingwater, and the Farnsworth House. These works are appropriated as the basis of a retrospective analysis and as the foundation for a speculative, generative design strategy. Following the height of postmodernism, the notion of explicit formal appropriation was characterized in a negative light, seen as inauthentic imitation. However, an increasing number of contemporary artists and architects are utilizing explicit appropriation and historical reference as a primary method of production. This mode of thinking can …

Marcel Breuer And Postwar America, Marcel Breuer, Barry Bergdoll, Jonathan Massey

School of Architecture - All Scholarship

At the center of Slocum Hall, four stories below a large skylight, stands a big shaggy lens - a deep, fur-lined scoop framed by a broad rectangle eight feet high. Between stepped floor and slanted ceiling is a curved wall punctuated by a trapezoidal aperture through which you glimpse a purple-tinted fragment of face. Forehead and cheeks, a nose and two eyes: Marcel Breuer.

The lens, a pavilion encasing deep embrasures, marks an exhibition of material from the archive of this leading 20th century architect. It points you toward the adjacent gallery, where more than 120 drawings and photographs reproduced …

Marcel Breuer And Postwar America, Barry Bergdoll, Jonathan Massey

School of Architecture - All Scholarship

At the center of Slocum Hall, four stories below a large skylight, stands a big shaggy lens - a deep, fur-lined scoop framed by a broad rectangle eight feet high. Between stepped floor and slanted ceiling is a curved wall punctuated by a trapezoidal aperture through which you glimpse a purple-tinted fragment of face. Forehead and cheeks, a nose and two eyes: Marcel Breuer.

The lens, a pavilion encasing deep embrasures, marks an exhibition of material from the archive of this leading 20th century architect. It points you toward the adjacent gallery, where more than 120 drawings and photographs reproduced …

Lessons From Bernard Rudofsky, Jean-François Bédard

School of Architecture - All Scholarship

A review of the exhibition of Bernard Rudofsky's work, organized by the Architekturzentrum Wien and the Getty Research Institute (GRI) in associated with the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CAA). This exhibit outlined Rudofsky's career and theoretical interests. Rudofsky was at the margins of high modernism, but unlike some of his contemporaries, focused on traditional, indigenous vernacular forms.

Ernst May And The Campaign To Resettle The Countryside: Rural Housing In Silesia, 1919-1925, Susan Henderson

School of Architecture - All Scholarship

May's Silesian work chronicles the impact of Modernism and corporatism on Weimar housing

Ideological Contextualism, Richard Curtiss

Architecture Thesis Prep

New Haven, CT

Yale University

Faculty and Cultural Center

""This thesis is an argument of an appropriate attitude toward contextualism in regard to modern monument and the built environment. Architecture should not be the appropriation of superficial architectural styles, but rather the development of a dialogue with the concepts, typologies and physical characteristics of the existing condition."

Cities Of Artificial Excavation: The Work Of Peter Eisenman, 1978-1988 Introduction, Jean-François Bédard

School of Architecture - All Scholarship

In this introduction, Bédard traces American architect Peter Eisenman's evolution as an architect and theorist from his work on houses from 1967 until 1980 to a body of work titled, "Cities of Artificial Excavation," which he completed between 1978 and 1988. In "Cities of Artificial Excavation," Eisenman interrogates a series of fictions by using dissimulation to produce an "artificial" architecture.

The "Modern" Skyscraper, 1931, Carol Willis

The Courier

This article details the history of The Philadelphia Saving Fund Society (PSFS) building, constructed through the partnership of William Lescaze and George Howe in 1932. The author argues the building to this day remains "modern", displaying complexity and a varitey of color and materials. The building is also, the author says, the first skyscraper designed in the International Style. The author also examines the PSFS in the context of other tall buildings of the period, usually described as belonging to the Art Deco style.

The William Lescaze Symposium Panel Discussion, Dennis P. Doordan

The Courier

This article is an adapted form of a panel discussion that took place discussing the architect William Lescaze. Overall, the panel seemed divided between those who judged Lescaze's achievements acoording to the established tenets of orthodox modernism and those who sought a new critical framework for evaluating Lescaze's contribution to the rise of modern design in American based upon typological, professional, and commercial criteria.

European Modernism In An American Commercial Context, Robert Bruce Dean

The Courier

This article seeks to explain why architect Willaim Lescaze's career proceeded the way it did. The author also makes observations about Lescaze's life in America during a secular, materialist age.

William Lescaze And Cbs: A Case Study In Corporate Modernism, Dennis P. Doordan

The Courier

During the period 1934 to 1949, the Columbia Broadcasting System provided William Lescaze with a series of commissions that, considered together, constitute one of the largest, most varied, and most important bodies of work in his entire career.

Lescaze was responsible for the design of a major new broadcasting facility, the interior design of studio and office spaces, the design of a variety of studio furnishings such as microphones and clocks, the design of a mobile broadcasting vehicle, and the graphic design for CBS facilities across the country. A careful review of the material indicates that Lescaze made a major …

William Lescaze Reconsidered, William H. Jordy

The Courier

This article gives a critical look to William Lescaze's architectural career. While he had early success, his later career seems to pale in comparison. Regardless, the author praises Lescaze for remaining eclectic and not adhering too strongly to the orthodoxy of modernism.