ARC5933: Historiographic Methods in Architecture
(listed as Special Topics)
Seminar/3 credit hours
Spring 2011
Florida International University School of Architecture
Professor David Rifkind [david.rifkind@fiu.edu]
PCA341, Monday, 1:00 – 3:30
Office hours, PCA383b, Wednesday and Friday, 1:30 – 4:00
This seminar course is designed to introduce graduate students to historiographic
methodologies in architecture. The course will examine the way histories are framed
and will revolve around close readings of major texts representing such key
positions as formalism, social histories, “operative” and “critical” histories,
Marxist historical analysis, feminist historical analysis, multiple modernities and
architecture in the context of the history of ideas. The class will consider the
formation of canons and the writing of the survey, and will explore the
relationships between observation, description, analysis and interpretation.
Students enrolled in the seminar will take turns leading weekly discussions based on
the assigned readings. Students will also prepare several written assignments over
the course of the semester: a formal analysis of a Miami-area building or
landscape, an expanded analysis of the same work in its social and cultural
contexts, an exhibition review, and a book review. Students will be evaluated on
the basis of their written assignments and class participation.
The course’s expected outcomes include a profound understanding of the key historical
texts listed as assigned readings, an acute understanding of the broad range of
historiographic methodologies employed by architectural historians, and an advanced
ability to examine, analyze and interpret architecture. The course aims to help
students develop an ability to read architectural history critically, and to write
architectural history incisively.
The only prerequisite for the course is graduate standing. There are no co-requisites;
however, students are encouraged to register for, or attend, ARC2701: History of
Design from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century. The seminar is a required core
class for the Graduate Certificate in Architectural History, Theory and Criticism.
There is no course textbook. Required readings are available online at:
http://web.mac.com/davidrifkind/fiu/library.html.
Schedule of classes:
1 [8.22]
introduction
reading: Panayotis
Tournikiotis, The Historiography of Modern Architecture. Cambridge, 1999.
Chapter 1: The Art Historians and the Founding Genealogies of Modern
Architecture, 21-50.
optional: “On the Methodology of Architectural History,” ed. Demetri
Porphyrios, Special Issue, Architectural Design (1981).
2 [8.29]
Kaufmann
reading: Emil Kaufmann, “Three Revolutionary Architects, Boullée, Ledoux,
and Lequeu,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, V. 42,
N. 3. (1952), 431-564.
optional: Anthony Vidler, Histories of the Immediate Present: Inventing
Architectural Modernism. Cambridge, 2008. Chapter 1: Neoclassical
Modernism: Emil Kaufmann, 17-60.
Heinrich Wölfflin, Principles of Art History: The Problem of the
Development of Style in Later Art. (1915). Translated by M.D.
Hottinger. New York, 1950.
[9.5]
Labor Day – no class
3 [9.12]
Wittkower
reading: Rudolph Wittkower, “The Centrally Planned Church and the
Renaissance,” in Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism, New
York, 1949, pp.3-32.
optional: Erwin Panofsky, “The Neo-Platonic Movement and Michelangelo,”
in Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance,
New York, 1939.
Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form. (1927). Cambridge, 1993.
First writing assignment due
4 [9.19]
Pevsner
reading: Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, Pioneers of the modern movement from
William Morris to Walter Gropius. London, 1936.
optional: Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History. New
York, 1980.
5 [9.26]
Giedion
reading: Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture. Cambridge, 1941.
optional: Detlef Mertins, “Transparencies Yet to Come: Sigfried Giedion
and the Prehistory of Architectural Modernity” (PhD diss., Princeton
University, 1996).
Detlef Mertins, "Sigfried Giedion," Encyclopedia of Aesthetics. New
York, 1998. v. 2, 301-304.
Detlef Mertins, "System and Freedom: Sigfried Giedion, Emil Kaufmann and
the Constitution of Architectural Modernity." In Robert Somol, ed.
Autonomy and Idoeology: The Origins of the Avant-Garde in America, 19231949. New York, 1997, 212-31.
Hilde Heynen, Architecture and Modernity: A Critique. Cambridge, 2000.
Chapter 2: Constructing the Modern Movement, 20-70.
Sigfried Giedion, “History and the Architect,” Journal of Architectural
Education, vol. XII:2, Summer 1957, p. 14-16.
6 [10.3]
Rowe
reading: Colin Rowe, “The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa” (1947), in The
Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and other Essays. Cambridge: MIT Press,
1976, pp. 1-27.
optional: Anthony Vidler, Histories of the Immediate Present: Inventing
Architectural Modernism. Cambridge, 2008. Chapter 2: Mannerist Modernism:
Colin Rowe, 61-106.
Michael Fried, "Modernist Painting and Formal Criticism," American
Scholar 33 (1964): 642-648. Expanded version in Fried, Three American
Painters. Cambridge, 1965.
Second writing assignment due
7 [10.10] Banham
reading: Reyner Banham, Theory of Design in the First Machine Age, 1960.
optional: Anthony Vidler, Histories of the Immediate Present: Inventing
Architectural Modernism. Cambridge, 2008. Chapter 3: Futurist Modernism:
Reyner Banham, 107-156.
optional: The History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture. ed. Marcus
Whiffen, Cambridge, 1964. Essay by Banham.
Nigel Whiteley, Reyner Banham: Historian of the Immediate Future.
Cambridge, 2002.
8 [10.17] Tafuri
reading: Manfredo Tafuri and Francesco Dal Co, Modern Architecture, 2
vols. New York, 1986.
optional: Anthony Vidler, Histories of the Immediate Present: Inventing
Architectural Modernism. Cambridge, 2008. Chapter 4: Renaissance
Modernism: Manfredo Tafuri, 157-190.
Hilde Heynen, Architecture and Modernity: A Critique. Cambridge, 2000.
“The Venice School, or the Diagnosis of Negative Thought,” 128-.
Fredric Jameson, "Architecture and the Critique of Ideology," in
Architecture Criticism Ideology, eds. Joan Ockman et al, Revisions,
Princeton, 1985, 51-87.
Raymond Williams, “Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory,”
New Left Review 82, (November-December 1973), 3-16.
9 [10.24]
Tafuri II: operative and critical histories
reading: Manfredo Tafuri, Theories and History of Architecture [1968]
London, 1980.
optional: Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction," and "Theses on the Philosophy of History," in
Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, New York, 1968.
Third writing assignment due
10 [10.31]
redressing modernity
reading: Peter Collins, Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture, 17501950. London, 1965.
optional: Alberto Pérez-Gómez, Architecture and the Crisis of Modern
Science. Cambridge, 1983.
The History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture. ed. Marcus Whiffen,
Cambridge, 1964. Essay by Collins.
11 [11.7]
redressing history
reading: Dana Arnold, Reading Architectural History, London, 2002.
Excerpted texts from E. H. Carr and Hayden White, plus Arnold’s
introductions.
optional: Carlo Ginzburg, Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method.
trans. John and Anne Tedeschi, Baltimore, 1986.
Mark Jarzombek, “A Prolegomenon to Critical Historiography,” Journal of
Architectural Education, 52, no. 4 (1999): 197-206.
12 [11.14]
redressing history II
reading: Linda Nochlin, “Why have there been no great women artists?”
(1971) in Women, Art, and Power and Other Essays. New York, 1988, 145178.
optional: Nochlin, “Women, Art, and Power,” (1988) in Women, Art, and
Power and Other Essays. 1-36.
T..J. Clark, The Painting of Modern Life. New York, 1985. “Olympia's
Choice,” 79-146.
Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy.
Oxford, 1972. “Conditions of Trade,” 1-28.
Fourth writing assignment due
13 [11.21]
The Survey
reading: Stanford Anderson, “Architectural History in Schools of
Architecture,” The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians,
Vol. 58, No. 3, Architectural History1999/2000. (Sep., 1999), 282-290.
Susana Torre, “Teaching Architectural History in Latin America: The
Elusive Unifying Architectural Discourse,” The Journal of the Society
of Architectural Historians, Vol. 61, No. 4. (Dec., 2002), 549-558.
14 [11.28]
The Survey II
reading: Michel Foucault, ”Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” and “What
is an author?” (1969) in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice. ed.
Donald F. Bouchard, Ithaca, N.Y., 1977.
Mark Jarzombek, “The Disciplinary Dislocations of Architectural
History,” The Journal of the Society of Architectural
Historians (Winter 1999), 488-493.
ARC5933: Historiographic Methods in Architecture
Class policies:
Course Evaluation
Grading will be based on the University System. The final grade will be determined on
the following basis:
Class Participation
Written assignments
formal analysis
expanded analysis
exhibition review 22%
book review
22%
12%
88%
22%
22%
Grades
94-100= A 87-89= B+ 80-83= B- 74-76= C 67-69= D+ 60-63= D90-93= A- 84-86= B 77-79= C+ 70-73= C- 64-66= D 0-59= F
Class Standards
Attendance and class participation are required at all class meetings (see Course
Schedule). Four (4) unexcused absences automatically result in a failing grade for
the course. An acceptable excused absence is defined by the student having missed
class due to extraordinary circumstances beyond his or her control and must be
accompanied by written proof.
Student Rights and Responsibilities
It is the student’s responsibility to obtain, become familiar with, and abide by
all Departmental, College and University requirements and regulations. These
include but are not limited to:
- The Florida International University Catalog Division of Student Affairs
Handbook of Rights and Responsibilities
- Departmental Curriculum and Program Sheets
- Departmental Policies and Regulations
Student Work
The School of Architecture reserves the right to retain any and all student work for
the purpose of record, exhibition and instruction. All students are encouraged to
photograph and/or copy all work for personal records prior to submittal to
instructor.