GSD 4401 TRANSPARENCY Spring 2008Instructor: Eve BlauMonday 2:00-5:00 517 Gund Hall

Course Description

The concept of transparency is critical, not only to understanding early and mid-20th century modernism, but also to engaging current architectural concerns with mediation, density, surface, light, movement, and information. The purpose of the course is twofold: to recover the theoretical, ideological, and formal complexity of transparency in the discourses of modernism, and to explore the significance of the concept of transparency for architecture today.

This exploration is founded on two working propositions: First that the discourse of transparency constitutes a kind of subtext of the discourses of modernism – a text that continuously negotiates between the technological, aesthetic, social, and psychological dimensions of architecture. Second, that modes of representational discourse outside architecture – film, photography, electronic and digital media – have figured in important ways in the architectural conception of transparency.

The first part of the course is concerned with the conceptualization of “abstract space,” in the early decades of the 20th century. This includes models of “kinesthetic” and “haptic” modes of perception and space formation around 1900 and the development in the 1920s and 1930s of an anti-perspectival conception of “relational space” or “space-time” by architects, artists, and theorists associated with the Bauhaus (van Doesburg, Moholy-Nagy, Gropius, Giedion, etc.); by experimental cimematographers (Hans Richter, in particular); as well as Le Corbusier’s “plans libres” (or free plans) and the “betonte Leere” (or heightened emptiness) of Mies’s interiors in the late ‘20s.

The Second part of the course will examine the art/science of camouflage, theories of pattern recognition, as well as Rowe and Slutzky’s seminal articles (in Perspecta, 1963, 1971) on “phenomenal transparency” and their impact on design and architectural education in the 1960s and ‘70s: Peter Eisenman and the New York Five as well as connections to media studies (Marshall McLuhan) and “object” art in the 1960s.

The course ends with the conception of transparency in the 1990s and 2000s – what Terry Riley called “light construction” (1995) and others have characterized as manifestations of “dematerialization and diffusion,” of “deep surface,” of “environment become information.”

Prerequisites: GSD 4201-4206 or equivalent or post-professional-degree status [MArch 2, MDesS, etc]

Requirements/assignments: Course requirements include weekly readings and informed participation in class discussions. A careful preparation of the assigned reading for each week is expected of everyone. Throughout the semester students will be responsible for initiating discussion of selected weekly readings or topics relating to the

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readings.

The principal assignment is a 10 page research paper on a topic chosen by you in consultation with me. [Abstract due April 21; paper due May 16]

Syllabus and Reading:(schedule subject to change)

2/04 Introduction: Concerns, problematics, methods, structure of the course; assignments; schedule

2/11 Shifting Eyes, Moving Bodies: Spatial Paradigms at the Turn of the 20th CenturyReading:Adolf Hildebrand, “Visual and Kinaesthetic Ideas,” “Form and Effect,” “The Idea Of Space and its Expression in the Appearance,” The Problem of Form in the Fine Arts, in H.F.Mallgrave and E. Ikonomou (eds) Empathy, Form, and Space (Santa Monica: Getty Center, 1994): pp. 229-243.

August Schmarzow, “The Essence of Architectural Creation,” in H.F. Mallgrave and E. Ikonomou (eds) Empathy, Form, and Space (Santa Monica: Getty Center, 1994): pp. 281-296.

Camillo Sitte, City Planning According to Artistic Principles (1889) in Collins and Collins, Camillo Sitte: The Birth of Modern City Planning (NY: Rizzoli,1986), pp. 243-250, 271-278.

2/18 [PRESIDENTS DAY: NO CLASS]

2/25 Abstract Space, “Figured Ground”: Stereography, Cubism, De Stijl Reading:Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer (MIT Press, 1990), pp. 97-150.

Rosalind Krauss, “Analytic Space: futurism and constructivism,” Passages in Modern Sculpture (The MIT Press, 1981), pp. 39-67.

Yve-Alain Bois, “Metamorphosis of Axonometry,” Daidalos #1 (1981), pp. 40-59.

Also Recommended:Yve-Alain Bois, “Kahnweiler’s Lesson,” in Painting as Model (The MIT Press, 1990), pp.65-97.

3/03 Museum Visit: Busch-Reisinger [Bauhaus Collection]Reading:Rosalind Krauss, “Grids,” The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (The MIT Press, 1986), pp. 8-22.

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Yve-Alain Bois, “The De Stijl Idea,” Painting as Model (The MIT Press, 1990): 101-122.

3/10 Space-Time: Giedion, Moholy-Nagy, and the BauhausReading:Sigfried Giedion, Building in France, Building in Iron, Building in Ferro-Concrete (1928) reprint (Santa Monica: Getty Center, 1995): 85-93, illustrations and captions throughout the book.

Sigfried Giedion, Space Time and Architecture (1941) Sixth printing. (Harvard U. Press, 1976): 491-496.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, “Space”, The New Vision (1929), reprinted (NY: Wittenborn, 1947): 55-64, 77-85.

Also recommended:Sergei M. Eisenstein, “Montage and Architecture,” including Introduction byYve- Alain Bois, Assemblage 10 (December 1989): 111-131.

Detlef Mertins, “Transparency:Autonomy & Relationality” AAFiles 32 (1996):3-11.

3/17 The Film Thickened Moment: Richter, Le Corbusier, Mies and theRemembering Eye Reading:Eve Blau, “Transparency and the Irreconcilable Contradictions of Modernity,” PRAXIS 9 (fall 2007): 50-59

Bruno Reichlin, “Jeanneret-Le Corbusier, Painter-Architect,” in Eve Blau and Nancy Troy (eds) Architecture and Cubism (MIT, 1997): 195-218.

Robin Evans, “Mies van der Rohe’s Paradoxical Symmetries,” Translations from Drawing to Building (London: AA, 1997): 233-276.

Hans Richter, “The Badly Trained Sensibility” in P.Adams Sitney (ed) The Avant-Garde Film (NYU Press, 1978), pp. 22-23.

3/24 [SPRING BREAK: NO CLASS]

3/31 The Aerial Perspective: Camouflage + Pattern RecognitionReading: Roy R. Behrens, “Camouflage, Art and Gestalt,” Art & Camouflage: Concealment and Deception in Nature, Art, and War. (Cedar Falls: Univ of Northern Iowa, 1982): 9-20

Gyorgy Kepes, “The three dimensional field, The spatial forces, Fields of spatial forces” Language of Vision (Dover, 1944), pp. 19-29.

Marshall McLuhan, “The Invisible Environment: The Future of Erosion,” Perspecta 11 (1967): 162-167.

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Also recommended:Marshall McLuhan, “The Medium is the Message,” Understanding Media (NY:The New American Library, 1967): 23-35.

4/07 Rowe and Slutzky + Phenomenal Transparency: The Birth of a ParadigmReading: Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky, “Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal,” Perspecta 8 (1963): 45-54. [reprinted in Todd Gannon, editor, The Light Construction Reader (NY: Monacelli, 2002), pp. 91-101.]

Rowe and Slutzky, “Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal. Part 2,” Perspecta 13/14 (1971): 286-301. [repr. Light Construction Reader, pp.103-113.]

Rosalind Krauss, “Death of a Hermaneutic Phantom: Materialization of the Sign in the Work of Peter Eisenman,” in Eisenman, Houses of Cards (Oxford U. Press, 1987), pp. [repr. Light Construction Reader, pp.157-169.]

Jeffrey Kipnis, “P-tr’s Progress,” (1996), [repr. Light Construction Reader, pp. 147-155.]

Also Recommended: Bernard Hoesli, “Transparency – Instrument of Design,” in Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky, Transparency (Basel: Birkhäuser, 1997), pp. 97-119.

4/14 “Light Construction” Reading:Anthony Vidler, “Transparency,” The Architectural Uncanny (1992), [repr. LightConstruction Reader, pp.267-273]]

Terence Riley, “Light Construction” Light Construction (MoMA,1995), pp. 9-32.

Alejandro Zaera, “Herzog and de Meuron: Between the Face and the Landscape,” El Croquis 60 (1993): 24-36

Hans Ibelings, Supermodernism: Architecture in the Age of Globalization (Rotterdam: NAI Publishers, 2002): 55-127

4/21 Transparency Today [Paper Abstracts due]Reading:Alejandro Zaera, “A Conversation with Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa,”El Croqius: Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa 1995-2000 (2000): 8-20

Ben Van Berkel, “Afterimage,” UN Studio Design Models: Architecture, Urbanism, Infrastructure (London: Thames and Hudson, 2006): 370-379.

Michael Speaks, “Intelligence After Theory,” Perspecta 38 (2006): 103-107.

4/28 Individual Meetings re. Papers

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