Architecture and Capitalism Architecture and Capitalism tells a story of the relationship between the economy and architectural design. Eleven historians each discuss in brand new essays the time period they know best, looking at cultural and economic issues, which in light of current financial crises you will find have dealt with diverse but surprisingly familiar issues. Told through case studies, the narrative begins in the midnineteenth century and ends with 2011, with introductions by editor Peggy Deamer to pull the main themes together so that you can see how other architects in different times and in different countries have dealt with similar conditions. By focussing on what previous architects experienced, you have the opportunity to avoid repeating the past. With new essays by Pier Vittorio Aureli, Ellen Dunham-Jones, Keller Easterling, Lauren Kogod, Robert Hewison, Joanna Merwood-Salisbury, Robin Schuldenfrei, Deborah Gans, Simon Sadler, Nathan Rich, and Michael Sorkin. Peggy Deamer is a professor of architecture at Yale University, New Haven, USA.
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Architecture and Capitalism 1845 to the Present Peggy Deamer
First published 2014 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business 2014 Taylor & Francis The right of the editor to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Architecture and capitalism : 1845 to the present / [edited by] Peggy Deamer. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Architecture and society History. 2. Architecture Economic aspects. I. Deamer, Peggy, editor of compilation. NA2543.S6A6272 2013 720.1 08 dc23 2012046775 ISBN: 978-0-415-53487-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-415-53488-8 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-49902-3 (ebk) Typeset in Joanna and Univers by Keystroke, Station Road, Codsall, Wolverhampton Printed and bound in the United States of America on acid-free paper. Acquisition Editor: Wendy Fuller Editorial Assistant: Laura Williamson Production Editor: Jennifer Birtill Project Assistant to Peggy Deamer: Dariel Cobb
Contents Notes on contributors Timeline vii xi Preface PEGGY DEAMER xxxi Introduction 1 PEGGY DEAMER 1 Straight lines or curved? The Victorian values of John Ruskin and Henry Cole 8 ROBERT HEWISON 2 The first Chicago school and the ideology of the skyscraper 25 JOANNA MERWOOD-SALISBURY 3 The display window as educator: the German Werkbund and cultural economy 50 LAUREN KOGOD 4 Capital dwelling: industrial capitalism, financial crisis, and the Bauhaus s Haus am Horn 71 ROBIN SCHULDENFREI 5 Big work: Le Corbusier and capitalism 98 DEBORAH GANS 6 The varieties of capitalist experience 115 SIMON SADLER 7 Manfredo Tafuri, Archizoom, Superstudio, and the critique of architectural ideology 132 PIER VITTORIO AURELI
Contents 8 Irrational exuberance: Rem Koolhaas and the 1990s 150 ELLEN DUNHAM-JONES 9 Globally integrated/locally fractured: the extraordinary development of Gurgaon, India 172 NATHAN RICH 10 Spectacular failure: the architecture of late capitalism at the Millennium Dome 189 SIMON SADLER Coda: liberal 202 KELLER EASTERLING Afterword: architecture without capitalism 217 MICHAEL SORKIN Index 221
Contributors Peggy Deamer is Professor of Architecture at Yale University. She is also a visiting scholar at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand. She has taught at Parsons, Columbia, and Princeton as well as The University of Auckland, Unitec, and Victoria University in New Zealand. She received her BA from Oberlin College, her B.Arch from The Cooper Union and her Ph.D. from Princeton University. She is a principal in the firm of Deamer, Studio. She is author of the Millennium House (Monacelli Press, 2004) and co-editor of Rereading Perspecta (MIT Press, 2009) with Alan Plattus and Robert A. M. Stern. She is also the co-editor, with Phil Bernstein, of Building in the Future: Recasting Architectural Labor (Princeton Architectural Press, 2010) and BIM in Academia (Yale School of Architecture, 2011). Dariel Cobb is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Hartford. She received a BA in architecture from UC Berkeley and an M.Arch from Yale where she was also a teaching Fellow in both the School of Architecture and the History of Art Department. Her recent conference publications have focused on ephemeral conceptualizations of space across cultural modes. Robert Hewison has spent a lifetime working on aspects of Ruskin. His first book, John Ruskin: The Argument of the Eye, was published by Princeton University Press in 1976; his most recent in this field is Ruskin on Venice: The Paradise of Cities, published by Yale University Press in 2010. He was Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford and co-curator of the Tate Britain exhibition Ruskin, Turner and the Pre- Raphaelites in Ruskin s centenary year, 2000. He has written on the arts for the Sunday Times since 1981, is an Associate of the think tank Demos, and a Visiting Professor at the Ruskin research center, Lancaster University. He is writing a study of the cultural policies of the New Labour government, 1997 2010. Joanna Merwood-Salisbury is Associate Professor of Architecture at Parsons The New School for Design in New York City. She is author of Chicago 1890: The Skyscraper and the Modern City (University of Chicago Press, 2009) and a co-editor of After Taste: Expanded Practice in Interior Design (Princeton Architectural Press, 2011). She has published essays on architecture and design in a number of journals including The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, AA Files, Grey Room, Technology and Culture, Design Issues, and Lotus International.
Contributors Lauren Kogod earned BFA and B.Arch at the Rhode Island School of Design, MS in Architecture at Columbia University, and is Ph.D. candidate in architectural history and theory at Harvard University, writing on reforms in the spatial organization and stylistic representation of middle-class German domestic life, 1890 1918. Kogod most recently was Lecturer in Architectural History and Theory at Yale University. Robin Schuldenfrei is Junior Professor of Art History at Humboldt University, Berlin. Her publications include the edited volume Atomic Dwelling: Anxiety, Domesticity, and Postwar Architecture (Routledge, 2012) and with Jeffrey Saletnik, Bauhaus Construct: Fashioning Identity, Discourse, and Modernism (Routledge, 2009). Her research focuses on the points of convergence between design, architecture, and interior architecture, with an emphasis on the history and theory of the object, particularly its status in society. She is currently working on a full-length study of luxury and modernism in architecture and design in early twentieth-century Germany. Deborah Gans is the author of The Le Corbusier Guide, now in its third edition, as well as numerous articles on Le Corbusier including the introduction to his Talks With Students. She is currently Professor in Architecture at Pratt Institute and has taught frequently as a visiting critic at Yale School of Architecture. She is an architect and principal of Gans studio. Simon Sadler is Professor of Architectural and Urban History in the Department of Design at the University of California, Davis. Formerly he taught at the University of Nottingham in the UK; Trinity College, University of Dublin, Ireland; Birmingham City University, UK; and the Open University, UK. His publications include Archigram: Architecture without Architecture (MIT Press, 2005); Non-Plan: Essays on Freedom, Participation and Change in Modern Architecture and Urbanism (Architectural Press, 2000, co-editor Jonathan Hughes); and The Situationist City (MIT Press, 1998). He serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Architectural Education and the advisory board of The Architect s Newspaper and is a past UC Davis Chancellor s Fellow and Fellow of the Paul Mellon Center for Studies in British Art. Pier Vittorio Aureli is an architect and educator. He teaches at the Architectural Association in London and he is Visiting Professor at Yale School of Architecture. His writing and teaching focus on the relationship between architectural form, political theory, and urban history. He is the author of publications including The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture and The Project of Autonomy: Politics and Architecture Within and Against Capitalism. Aureli studied at the Istituto di Architettura di Venezia (IUAV), before obtaining his PhD. from the Delft University of Technology. He has taught at the Berlage Institute, Columbia University, the Barcelona Institute of Architecture, and Delft University of Technology. Together with Martino Tattara, Aureli is the co-founder of DOGMA, an office focused on the project of the city. viii
Contributors Ellen Dunham-Jones is a Professor of Architecture and Coordinator of the MS Urban Design degree at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her work seeks to cross-fertilize the worlds of contemporary theory and contemporary development. She is co-author with June Williamson of Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs (Wiley, 2009/2011) and serves as Chair of the Board of the Congress for the New Urbanism. Nathan Rich is an architect in New York City. He is currently a Project Architect at Steven Holl Architects where he works on both regional and global projects. In 2004 2005 he was a Henry Luce Scholar in Beijing, where he worked on the preservation of China s traditional hutongs. Nathan attended Wesleyan University and the Yale School of Architecture. Keller Easterling is an architect and writer from New York City and a Professor at Yale University. Her book, Enduring Innocence: Global Architecture and its Political Masquerades (MIT, 2005) researches familiar spatial products that have landed in difficult or hyperbolic political situations around the world. A previous book, Organization Space: Landscapes, Highways and Houses in America, applies network theory to a discussion of American infrastructure and development formats. A forthcoming book, Extrastatecraft: Global Infrastructure and Political Arts, examines global infrastructure networks as a medium of polity. Michael Sorkin is Principal of the Michael Sorkin Studio, President of Terreform and of the Institute for Urban Design, Distinguished Professor of Architecture, and Director of the Graduate Program in Urban Design at The City College of New York. ix
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Timeline 1750 1760 1770 Marc-Antoine Laugier: Essai sur l Architecture Giovanni Battista Piranesi: Campo Marzio Benjamin Franklin perfects the lightning rod Matthew Boulton builds Soho Manufactory, first modern factory James Watt perfects the steam-engine: First Industrial Revolution British brokers trading stock in coffee houses coin the term, Stock Exchange Stamp Act imposes taxation on British colonies; Sons of Liberty protest in America, helping foment revolution Sons of Liberty stage Boston Tea Party to protest the Tea Act tax
1780 1790 1800 Jeremy Bentham designs the Panopticon Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations Claude Nicolas Ledoux: Royal Saltworks Final collapse of US continental currency leads to gold and silver clause of the Constitution Etienne-Louis Boullee: Newton s Cenotaph US adopts silver standard Jeremy Bentham, Defense of Usury Jacques-Germain Soufflot: Panthéon US issues first patent New York Stock & Exchange Board founded Sir John Soane: Bank of England Rotunda Eli Whitney patents the cotton gin Thomas Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population US Declaration of Independence Philadelphia charters the first US commercial jointstock bank American Revolutionary War French Revolutionary War
1800 WORLD POPULATION: 1 BILLION 1810 1820 Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand, Precis Inclosure Consolidation Act in UK Louisiana Purchase from France allows US to double in size US UK War of 1812 Robert Owen, ANew View of Society Richard Trevithick builds the first steam locomotive
1830 1840 1850 Augustus Pugin begins work on Houses of Parliament Thomas Jefferson: University of Virginia Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) forms John Ruskin, Modern Painters John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture Erie Canal opens Authorization of commercial jointstock banks in the UK President Jackson sells off vast quantities of public land British Reform Act alters system of parliamentary representation Slavery Abolition Act enforced throughout British Empire, except colonial India Massachusetts Supreme Court rules that labor unions are legal and have the right to strike First US wagons head west from Missouri Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles, The Communist Manifesto John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy UK Bank Charter Act restricts currency creation, establishes centralizing banking Start of California gold rush First Opium War between UK and China sparked by trade imbalance Joint Stock Act expands access to incorporation in UK European nationalist revolutions
1850 1855 1860 Gottfried Semper, Four Elements of Architecture John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice American Institute of Architects (AIA) forms John Ruskin, Unto this Last, a critique of capitalism Joseph Paxton: The Crystal Palace John Ruskin, The Nature of Gothic Elisha Otis demonstrates the safety elevator Philip Webb and William Morris: Red House The Communist Manifesto translated into English Henry Bessemer patents Bessemer Process for mass production of steel; Second Industrial Revolution After Indian Rebellion, UK takes control of India from East India Company Edward Drake starts the world s first oil boom in Pennsylvania Morrill Tariff Act US Homestead Act grants land temporarily to farming families Limited Liability Act allows the public to create LLCs in UK Treaty of Tientsin opens China Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species Legal Tender Act allows the US government to issue bonds to the public John Stuart Mill, On Liberty Obstructed trade and refusal to accept Western ambassadors leads to Second Opium War US Civil War
1865 1870 1875 Alexandre Laplanche: Magasin au Bon Marché, world s first department store building Charles Garnier: Paris Opera House Thirteenth US Constitutional Amendment abolishes slavery Karl Marx, Das Kapital Meiji Restoration accelerates Japan s industrialization Knights of Labor, first significant US labor union, forms John D. Rockefeller founds Standard Oil Germany unified into a single nation, Second Reich begins European Long Depression follows collapse of demand for silver British East India Company, founded in 1600, dissolves International Telegraph Union forms US completes Transcontinental Railroad Paris Commune government Coinage Act moves US to a de-facto gold standard Chicago Union Stockyards built Suez Canal completed Panic of 1873; credit crisis leads to widespread bank and railroad failure US Civil War Christopher Sholes s typewriter is mass-produced by Remington
1875 1880 1885 William Morris, Manifesto of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, Lectures on Architecture Daniel Burnham and John Root: Montauk Block Guiseppe Mengoni: Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II George A. Fuller Company implements Chicago construction system Western Association of Architects founded (WAA) William Le Baron Jenney: 10-storey Home Insurance Building is world s first steel skyscraper Europe adopts the gold standard; Monometalism International Working People s Association (IWPA) established in London Chicago Haymarket Bombing leads to anarchists death sentences British Merchandise Act requires German products to be labeled, Made in Germany Prohibition in Georgia leads to development of Coca-Cola Karl Marx, Das Kapital translated into English Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
1890 1895 1900 Gustave Eiffel: La Tour Eiffel Daniel Burnham and John Root: Monadnock Building William Morris, News from Nowhere Ebenezer Howard, Garden Cities of To-Morrow US passes Sherman Antitrust Act General Electric forms Panic of 1893 results from a run on gold precipitated by poor railroad financing and bank collapse World s Columbia Exhibition in Chicago J.P. Morgan helps bail out the US Federal Reserve Berlin Trade Exhibit Start of Klondike gold rush Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams
1900 1905 1910 Le Corbusier: Villa Scwhob McKim, Mead and White: Pennsylvania Station Peter Behrens appointed AEG official designer Antonio Gaudí: Casa Milà Edwin Lutyens appointed to design New Delhi Louis Sullivan, Kindergarten Chats Willis H. Carrier builds first modern air conditioner Louis Sullivan: Carson, Pirie, Scott Building Deutscher Werkbund forms Adolph Loos, Ornament and Crime F.T. Marinetti, The Futurist Manifesto Frank Lloyd Wright: Robie House Georges Chedanne and Ferdinand Chanut: Galeries Lafayette US adopts gold standard J.P. Morgan founds US Steel Henry Ford incorporates Ford Motor Company Max Webber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism Georg Simmel, The Philosophy of Money Ford Motor Company develops the assembly line Frederick Taylor The Principles of Scientific Management Republic of China forms, ending imperial rule International Electrotechnical Commission (EIC) founded Computing Tabulating Recording Company (CTR) founded will become IBM