Gabrielle Schaad, Torsten Lange (eds.)
archithese reader
Critical Positions in Search of Postmodernity, 1971–1976
Book design: common-interest, Basel
Euro (D) 68.–, Euro (A) 69.90
English, faksimile pages Geman, English, French,
ca. 506 pages, ca. 240 images,
17,3 × 21,8 cm, softcover with jacket
Euro (D) 68.–, Euro (A) 69.90
pre-order. Release date: November 2023
ISBN
978-3-03863-059-3
• The journal as a platform where different attitudes and perspectives meet – what role did archithese play in its time, what role does it play today?
• A critical look at current and historical topics in architecture
• In 2021, a joint event for the 50th anniversary of archithese is planned
This publication presents a selection of ground-breaking contributions, grouped thematically in a new way, which originally appeared in the journal archithese, accompanied by critical essays by contemporary authors.
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 Lefébvre.
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 is a Postdoc at the Chair of the History and Theory of Architecture, Art, and Design, TU Munich and studied art history in Zurich, Paris and Tokyo. She is the author of numerous catalogue contributions and essays on art and design work since the 1960s, at the interface of architecture and urbanism in a transcultural context. Her research interests include the spatialization of power and gender relations.
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. In addition to academic contributions, he co-edited the anthology Re-Framing Identities: Architecture`s Turn to History (2017) and the special issue "Architectural Historiography and Fourth Wave Feminism" (2020) of the open-access journal Architectural Histories.
