The Last Blog and Final Submission

You are asked to add one more concluding blog to your series of eleven. This last blog is an opportunity for you to sum up what you have learnt, and possibly see the links between the different texts. You are allowed to acknowledge your favourites and those which proved more elusive to comprehension. There is no secret code to break, no magic secret, no mystical link, but it should be obvious to you that certain themes connect the choice of texts; hopefully providing a roadmap for your own critical thinking.
Some of these themes you might like to pursue further in your dissertation, which we shall begin to discuss next semester.

Final Submission: You are asked to print out your twelve blogs as hard copy in reverse order to the way they appear on the screen; starting with your first blog and ending with your summing up just as you would a book. Bind your submission to A4 and submit one copy to the Faculty Office on the 3rd Floor of the Tower Block. Use one of the submission forms provided outside the office, and make sure it's marked clearly for my attention.

Date for Submission: First thing before studio teaching Monday 11th January 2016. The submissions will be collected at 11am.

Session Eleven: The Epic II

You will be relieved that this week you do not have a reading task, you simply have to come along to the session and enjoy (?!) a speedy rendering of Ayn Rand's book The Fountainhead as a movie. You should note that the tone here, that of the triumph of the individual, is markedly different to that of Dos Passos. You should also note that the publication of both book and release of the film correspond with the period when McCarthyism was prevalent across the USA; when the 'red menace' had to be stopped in it's tracks.

My own opinions on the Roark phenomenon are articulated in the Reputations feature in the December 2013 edition of Architectural Review. Go to architecturalreview.com and it's an easy search once you sign up (for free).

Session Ten: The Epic

The last two texts are in many ways the opposite of each other, but they share the same epic quality, and the same doorstop level in size. Therefore it is impossible to make a reading of the whole book 'USA' or 'The Fountainhead', but for the latter we can at least watch the film, and to appreciate the former we can select certain sections, since part of it's epic quality is to try and do everything; in turn novel, newsreel, snapshot and biography, in turn both fact and fiction; in short 'the Great American Novel'.

In both cases the intension is to lodge both of these books in your mind for future reference. You never know when you might just need reference to them.

The first section I would like you to read/research/google is the chapter 'The Bitter Drink' (pg 806) a portrait of the thinker Thorstein Veblen, author of 'Theory of the Leisure Class'(1899). 

The second his portrait of Frank Lloyd Wright in the chapter 'Architect' (pg1076).

The third his portrait of Henry Ford in the chapter 'Tin Lizzie' (pg769).

These are all sections of the same, relatively short and concise, 'biographical' type.

Session Nine: Parody

This novel, set in the roaring twenties in Britain, is a parody of England's class ridden society. The architect, Professor Silenus, is (of course) and emigre from Eastern Europe where things are far more progressive. You are asked to read Part Two of the story. Our overall question here is rather the opposite of the questions we might ask of Mcluhan; have things changed at all?

Session Eight: Marshall McLuhan

This week I'm going to try something even more different, but perfectly in tune with the themes discussed in last weeks session on 'Counterculture' (which, as you will recognise, is not quite the same as 'revolution' and certainly miles away from Le Corbusier's remarkable call of the 1920's 'Architecture or Revolution').
So we are going to deflect ourselves for one week only from 'readings' to 'browsings' in the spirit of Marshall McLuhan. You are asked to browse YouTube for material on McLuhan's 'media is the message' (even clips from 'Annie Hall'), Reyner Banham's love of Los Angeles and William Burrough's paranoia. Spend about an hour doing doing this, and select your favourite clip so that when we discuss this arena further in the class, you can contribute by saying 'look at this!' I tried it this morning and it was amazing how much interrelated material came up, from Norman Mailer ranting about Clinton's 'sexgate' to Hunter S Thompson interviewing Keith Richards. I started somewhere, but I ended up somewhere else that was somehow in the same field.

Our aim is to:

a) get some kind of grip on what the hell Marshall McLuhan was talking about
and
b) ask the poignant question 'what if he's right?'

I suspect this is an ever more important task for our age.

Please note: We shall be returning to real books (two novels) for the next sessions. You might like to think of buying them cheap on abe books.com or eBay. They are:

Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh
USA by John Dos Passos.

Session Seven: Counterculture

And now for something completely different. Berman wonders that 'Faustian development', as a driving concept, might have been over by the 1960's. What topples it over? Is it the arrival postmodernism in collusion with consumerism (see previous post) or the rejection of such hierarchical society in itself? Certainly 'counterculture' becomes the word we use to describe the hippies and their antecedents, the beatniks, who challenged so called civilisation on their own terms, equipped with cars that worked, emergent freeways to drive them on, pills to keep them awake, contraceptives to keep them free, money in their pockets and that intense desire to leave the world of Mom and Pop behind.
If you are wondering at the architectural consequences we might discuss, think Woodstock, think Archigram, Reyner Banham, Superstudio and so on, and think of the origins of that 'dematerialisation' of architecture conference we saw Rowe speak at during the last session (hosted by Peter Cook of Archigram).
This powerful poem, Howl (1956) on the subject of freedom, spirituality and madness, is easily downloadable for free. It would be a crime if it wasn't. Those of you who fancy yourselves as 'angel headed hipsters' might learn something here!

Session Six: Postmodernism

In this reading we will discuss the work of historian and postmodern theorist Colin Rowe. We have jumped over the Faustian imperative in Le Corbusier for a moment, and will study, in particular, Rowe's essay 'Mathematics of the Ideal Villa' (1947) and take a glance at his essay on La Tourette.

I wrote about Rowe for Reputations in the Architectural Review in the August edition this year. I suggest you read it; it's easily downloadable on-line, then focus on the 1947 text.

Hint:

It is a good idea not to read too much Rowe in one go and to read it carefully. This will be especially difficult to do in class. I suggest you read MOIV in two parts, and you will become aware of the great fastidiousness of the argument, as well as perhaps thinking it almost too good to be true!

Postscript:

Please note that we are once more concerned with the great 'Corbu', but this time in a very different sense; since all the Faustian energy has been dismissed. Here we are picking over the formal moves, and returning L-C to the academy. 

Do not underestimate the importance of the first quote by Christopher Wren here, regarding 'natural' and 'customary' beauty. Indeed where does this beauty reside, and how has it's conception changed over the years? When Rowe, Palladio or Le Corbusier hark back to the splendour of Roman times, of antiquity, what exactly do they mean; to the republic? or to timeless proportion? In what ways are they nostalgic or sentimental? In what ways 'modern' or 'postmodern'? These are complex questions you might register rather than answer at this stage.