Gabrielle Schaad, Torsten Lange (eds.)
archithese reader
Critical Positions in Search of Postmodernity, 1971–1976
Book design: Eliot Gisel and common-interest
Euro (D) 68.–, Euro (A) 69.90
English, faksimile pages in German, English, French;
528 pages, ca. 240 images,
17,3 × 21,8 cm, softcover with flaps
Euro (D) 68.–, Euro (A) 69.90
Available
ISBN
978-3-03863-059-3
“This is a remarkable publication for a number of reasons. Not only does it bring back to life and to critical attention a Swiss architectural journal of the 1970s that has remained unread and unstudied until now, providing careful translations into English of a wealth of fascinating and forgotten documents by significant authors alongside facsimiles of the original pages. It also offers rich contextualization and astute commentary by five contemporary scholars, making a significant contribution to the architectural history of postmodernism and demonstrating the continuing relevance of ideas and debates charted in the twenty-four issues published between 1971 and 1976. The volume concludes with an illuminating interview with Swiss art historian Stanislaus von Moos, the primary editor of archithese over the course of its original run. The handsome graphic design and lucid presentation make this book a pleasure to read. Kudos to editors Gabrielle Schaad and Torsten Lange on a major accomplishment.”
– Joan Ockman
Located in its specific context – the heterogeneous and turbulent landscape of debates in the years after 1968 – archithese did not only give local protagonists a voice, but it also established a transatlantic dialogue amongst architects, critics and spatial scientists. Among them were influential figures such as Rem Koolhaas, Aldo Rossi, the architecture collective Superstudio, Alan Colqhoun, Charles Jencks, Denise Scott Brown, Manfredo Tafuri and even Henri Lefèbvre.
The positions gathered here are exemplary for the pluralist approach and thematic openness characteristic for the way in which the art historian Stanislaus von Moos compiled the journal in its founding phase. The thematic spectrum ranges from historicism, realism concepts in architecture, urbanism, user-oriented approaches to interest in informal and spontaneous building.
Arranged in five thematic chapters, the articles illustrate, in different ways, the examination of the incipient postmodernism and, due to their richness of facets, point far beyond a pure concept of style.
With contributions by:
Irina Davidovici, Samia Henni, Torsten Lange, Gabrielle Schaad, Marie Theres Stauffer, Stanislaus von Moos.
Irina Davidovici, Samia Henni, Torsten Lange, Gabrielle Schaad, Marie Theres Stauffer, Stanislaus von Moos.
About the Editors
Gabrielle Schaad Gabrielle Schaad is an art historian and postdoc at the Chair of Theory and History of Architecture, Art, and Design, TU Munich. She coordinates the study program Exhibiting and Making Public at the Zurich University of the Arts ZHdK, where she is a Lecturer and Curator in the Bachelor Fine Arts.
Torsten Lange is Lecturer in Cultural and Architectural History at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Switzerland. He studied architecture as well as the history and theory of architecture at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and The Bartlett School of Architecture in London, where he received his PhD in 2015.
His work focuses on the conditions underpinning the production of the built environment during late socialism and on writing histories of queer spatial practices. He is co-editor of Re-Framing Identities: Architecture’s Turn to History (Basel, Berlin: Birkhäuser, 2017), the special issue “Architectural Historiography and Fourth Wave Feminism” of Architectural Histories (8/2020), and of Care: gta papers 7 (Zurich: gta Verlag, 2022), and published several essays and articles.
Her doctoral thesis received from the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta), ETH Zurich, focused on techniques aimed at emancipation in art and architecture and their pitfalls, transforming space-time in Cold War Japan [“Performing Environmental Textures – Intersected Bodies of Gutai and Metabolism (Japan, 1955–1972)”].
She has been awarded research scholarships by the SNSF, the MEXT Japan (2013–2015), and Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart. In addition to her monograph Shizuko Yoshikawa (Zurich: Lars Müller Publishers, 2018) and academic contributions, she recently co-edited Care: gta papers 7 (Zurich: gta Verlag, 2022).Torsten Lange is Lecturer in Cultural and Architectural History at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Switzerland. He studied architecture as well as the history and theory of architecture at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and The Bartlett School of Architecture in London, where he received his PhD in 2015.
His work focuses on the conditions underpinning the production of the built environment during late socialism and on writing histories of queer spatial practices. He is co-editor of Re-Framing Identities: Architecture’s Turn to History (Basel, Berlin: Birkhäuser, 2017), the special issue “Architectural Historiography and Fourth Wave Feminism” of Architectural Histories (8/2020), and of Care: gta papers 7 (Zurich: gta Verlag, 2022), and published several essays and articles.
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