A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
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.
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.
Reyner Banham
Langevin, Jared (author)
Architectural Theory Review ; 16 ; 2-21
2011-04-01
20 pages
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
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