A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
'Primitive wisdom' and modern architecture
From November 1944 to March 1945 a curious exhibition entitled Are Clothes Modern? was on show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, directed and designed by Viennese emigre architect and author, Bernard Rudofsky. The exhibition, and subsequent book, produced a critique of the codification of modern architecture in the US through the somewhat unlikely vehicle of a study of apparel. Following the rejection of his proposal to exhibit 'primitive' architecture at MoMA, Rudofsky came to realise that such concerns did not characterise modern architecture in the US, thereby excluding his own modernist formation. Through a series of visually compelling, if pseudomorphic, juxtapositions between ethnographic artefacts and visually similar artefacts from industrial culture, Are Clothes Modern? set out to expose the illegitimacy of the opposition between practices considered to be 'primitive' and those considered to be modern. Moreover, invoking lessons afforded by the tools and disciplinary concerns of anthropology and ethnography, Rudofsky proposed the 'readjustment' of International Style architecture through the incorporation of alternative domestic habits. The historical and cultural determination of apparel, along with that of practices of decorating and deforming the human body, opened the way for such a readjustment, by insisting that such habits were not so much organically necessary as culturally functional. Apparel and the appearance of the body were to provide both allegorical lessons regarding architecture - exposing both as cultural formations and thereby available for reworking - and instances of more functional relations.
'Primitive wisdom' and modern architecture
From November 1944 to March 1945 a curious exhibition entitled Are Clothes Modern? was on show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, directed and designed by Viennese emigre architect and author, Bernard Rudofsky. The exhibition, and subsequent book, produced a critique of the codification of modern architecture in the US through the somewhat unlikely vehicle of a study of apparel. Following the rejection of his proposal to exhibit 'primitive' architecture at MoMA, Rudofsky came to realise that such concerns did not characterise modern architecture in the US, thereby excluding his own modernist formation. Through a series of visually compelling, if pseudomorphic, juxtapositions between ethnographic artefacts and visually similar artefacts from industrial culture, Are Clothes Modern? set out to expose the illegitimacy of the opposition between practices considered to be 'primitive' and those considered to be modern. Moreover, invoking lessons afforded by the tools and disciplinary concerns of anthropology and ethnography, Rudofsky proposed the 'readjustment' of International Style architecture through the incorporation of alternative domestic habits. The historical and cultural determination of apparel, along with that of practices of decorating and deforming the human body, opened the way for such a readjustment, by insisting that such habits were not so much organically necessary as culturally functional. Apparel and the appearance of the body were to provide both allegorical lessons regarding architecture - exposing both as cultural formations and thereby available for reworking - and instances of more functional relations.
'Primitive wisdom' and modern architecture
Scott, Felicity (author)
The Journal of Architecture ; 3 ; 241-261
1998-01-01
21 pages
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
Unknown
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