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Of Character and Concrete: The Historian's Material
In this essay, the author is interested in the relation between concrete and the ‘words’. Concrete is at one level just like ‘character’. It is what the discipline of architecture conceptualises as a proper substance to be formed in a certain historical period, it is a content in the sense that we say that the content of a letter is its significance or import. But at the same time, concrete is a ‘material’ in the sense that it is the stuff that architects form, each of them recognising and exploiting its varied properties, and it is recognising this twin‐level relationship that seems to me important. Adrian Forty would probably not choose to say that the pages of Concrete and Culture ‘animate’ concrete, but how can we describe the action of a historian on their ‘material’, particularly when that material includes not only beliefs about the stuff of building, but also abstract concepts such as ‘character’? Architects work not only with construction materials but also types, concepts and codified values of the kind described in Words and Buildings – an architect without brief or site can still be working on ‘flexibility’ or ‘structure’.
Of Character and Concrete: The Historian's Material
In this essay, the author is interested in the relation between concrete and the ‘words’. Concrete is at one level just like ‘character’. It is what the discipline of architecture conceptualises as a proper substance to be formed in a certain historical period, it is a content in the sense that we say that the content of a letter is its significance or import. But at the same time, concrete is a ‘material’ in the sense that it is the stuff that architects form, each of them recognising and exploiting its varied properties, and it is recognising this twin‐level relationship that seems to me important. Adrian Forty would probably not choose to say that the pages of Concrete and Culture ‘animate’ concrete, but how can we describe the action of a historian on their ‘material’, particularly when that material includes not only beliefs about the stuff of building, but also abstract concepts such as ‘character’? Architects work not only with construction materials but also types, concepts and codified values of the kind described in Words and Buildings – an architect without brief or site can still be working on ‘flexibility’ or ‘structure’.
Of Character and Concrete: The Historian's Material
Borden, Iain (Herausgeber:in) / Fraser, Murray (Herausgeber:in) / Penner, Barbara (Herausgeber:in) / Macarthur, John (Autor:in)
Forty Ways To Think About Architecture ; 150-154
24.03.2015
5 pages
Aufsatz/Kapitel (Buch)
Elektronische Ressource
Englisch
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