Modern and Contemporary Architecture

Amidst the criticism of Modern ideology, held since the mid-1960s, Dan Graham’s career emerges as paradigmatic. Acting in the frontier between Art and Architecture, the artist mobilized overriding aesthetic principles in both fields to unveil their own limits and contradictions, questioning the very terms of artistic and architectural practice and thinking engendered by the modernist discourse – hitherto hegemonic. The way he employed the language codes of main production trends in the USA outlined some 'resemantization' strategies of their respective aesthetic prerogatives. Graham thus questions the perception of their formal and conceptual meanings. This article intends to demonstrate how the fundamental aesthetical aspects for the Minimalist 'specific objects', which are very close to the High Modernism formula 'Form follows Function' according to the artist, will be subverted to reveal the institutional context (political and ideological) focused on the object, the audience and the space they are inserted in. Such issues led the artist to think about the hermeticism of those political-aesthetic programs, as well as to develop a work that intended to deal critically with the new social insertion of culture in mass society. The analysis of Graham’s main proposals and texts focusing on this issue will help to clarify the way the artist offers unique views on the aesthetic thought that guided the cultural production of his time. He acted within its own discourses and practices, not disregarding the urgency to experiment new ways of thinking about contemporary artistic and architectural productions from the gaps left by Modernism discourses and practices.

Il volume, primo di una serie istituita per presentare i temi scelti nell’ambito del Progetto T.E.S.I. (Tesi Europee Sperimentali Interuniversitarie), è predisposto come supporto scientifico per illustrare il luogo e la storia del Campus Universitario di Bari, area in cui si ipotizza la realizzazione del Sistema Palazzo delle Biblioteche.

"La arquitectura turística de la Costa del Sol concebida como un estilo particular, bajo la denominación de El estilo del relax, y entendida como la peculiar aclimatación del Movimiento Moderno a una región del Sur de Europa.
Editado por primera vez en 1987 por el Colegio de Arquitectos, El Estilo del Relax fue un singular estudio, resultado de un curioso trabajo colectivo que supo ver en la arquitectura del turismo de masas una riqueza escondida en el ruido de un crecimiento urbano caótico. Unos valores de la “civilización del ocio” que se muestran en el volumen original con una selección de edificios y objetos en tormo a la carretera Nacional 340 con un parentesco reconocible, y que en su edición extendida se amplían hasta los años 20 y 70, introduciéndose una mirada más amplia al impacto que el turismo tuvo en el territorio y la Economía de Málaga y la Costa del Sol, de acuerdo con la idea original de Diego Santos. Maite Méndez ha redactado el capítulo de "El relax expandido""

Elaborado por profesores e investigadores del Departamento de Historia del Arte de la Universidad de Málaga y de la Escuelta Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Sevilla, este libro recorre la historia de la arquitectura y el urbanismo de Málaga durante el siglo XX y la primera década del siglo XXI.

The present work aims to recover the part of Le Corbusier´s theoretical production that can be defined as Manifesto to analyze it since its comparison with the analogue written by Rem Koolhaas. Due to the brevity of the present paper it will be focus on the analogies between two main Manifestoes: Towards an Architecture (Le Corbusier, 1923) and  Delirious New York (Rem Koolhaas, 1978). The dialectic between these two Manifestoes is summarized in four main points: the intention of the text -rasion d´être-, its structure, the tone they used for the correspondent Manifesto and the relationship with the architectonic work of the authors. As we will see, theoretical and audiovisual strategies are duplicated from the master to the pupil who, on top of that, is able to reinterpret and manipulate them in a way that makes possible for his Manifesto to be considered even more efficient than Le Corbusier´s, at least, in its intention to involve the largest number of people. This is possible thanks to  the knowledge that Koolhaas has over media, cinema and latests technologies that allows him to express what could be identified with Le Corbusier´s original ideas but in a contemporary way, so they seem to be brand new and much more understandable for today´s society. In this way, Koolhaas could be understood also as a kind of Le Corbusier living in the world Through the Looking-Glass organized as Lewis Carroll did in his famous book Alice´s Adventures in Wonderland. Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There.

Architectural atlas of Zagreb contains overview of the history of Zagreb architecture and 900 entries on buildings from all parts of the city.
The buildings are grouped according to Zagreb’s neighborhoods: Upper Town, Kaptol, Lower Town - Centre, Lower Town - West, Lower Town - East, Savska street, Vukovarska street and Slavonska avenue, New Zagreb, etc. Each of these neighborhoods has been split into streets, and the buildings are organized according to their official street number. Along with each city area, a map showing the locations of all the marked buildings mentioned in the atlas is also attached.
The buildings in this atlas have been selected primarily according to their importance to the history of Zagreb’s architecture, while also bearing in mind their interest to the average visitor to Zagreb. The city center (Lower Town, Upper Town, and Kaptol) has been covered in most detail.

Traditional Architecture is that built environment determined mainly by the interaction of the Ecological and Cultural constraints. Nowadays, the reinterpretation of our Heritage leads to the development of the Advanced Building Technology as means to overcome the climatic and cultural constraints. In these last fifty years and mainly since the metamorphosis of the urban development, whether in terms of culture and densification, was done with an unexpected rapidity and with the objective to reflect their Westernization on the detriment of the use and traditions of the historical and urban area. While attention was on the rapid growth and development, cultural heritage was under threat as the built environment was seen as a reflection of a TIME rather than of a PLACE, and from the architectural point of view the focus was mainly on how it looks rather than how it works. The new typologies of the Post-modern buildings whether in terms of scale or technology in most cities of the G.C.C. are characterized by their insensitivity to cultural norms and associated typologies and urban morphology. However, recent and contemporary buildings are developed with reference to the pre-existing matrix and its generative values. The paper discusses the use of the ecological and cultural issues in the development and production of the contemporary urban space in the G.C.C. The method used for the exploration is after selecting some major civil public buildings in different cities of the G.C.C., we proceed to their analysis and we discuss the correlation existing between historic and contemporary buildings and urban areas. By way of conclusion, it is argued that the acceptable meaning of post-modern urban space has been to imply the role of cultural environment in shaping social relations, the modes of thought, norms and the total range of customary, which influences people's adaptation. Therefore, patterns of growth, town morphology, in short urban phenomenon, evolved characteristics from the interaction between ecology, culture and cognitive structure.

La Cattedra di Storia dell’architettura del Politecnico di Bari, in collaborazione con AAM Architettura Arte Moderna di Roma, dal 2014 ha avviato una linea di ricerca sulle arti espositive in Europa e in Italia, con l’obiettivo di costruire una «Enciclopedia delle Arti espositive», dedicata all’arte di ex-porre nelle sue multiformi declinazioni e conseguenze, nella storia e nella contemporaneità. La ricerca (i cui materiali sono concepiti per essere riversati in un archivio web multimediale) si propone essa stessa come «collezione» in divenire, come «museo progressivo» del Moderno e del Contemporaneo, predisposto per accrescersi mediante accumulazione di contributi interdisciplinari sotto forma di saggio, disegno, progetto, fotografia, opera d’arte. Concepita come un rizoma, che procede per multipli e senza gerarchie interne, la ricerca è orientata a uscire dalla dimensione teorica per espandersi extra moenia, aprendosi cioè alla verifica dell’operatività progettuale

Arnold Berlant’s writes that: “Sense perception lies at the etymological (history of words) core of aesthetics (Gr. aesthesis, perception by the senses), and is central to aesthetic theory, aesthetic experience, and their applications. Berlant finds in the aesthetic a source, a sign, and a standard of human value”. It is this human value which is one leg of the metaphor and the very basis for the view that metaphor is the foundation for both art, architecture and aesthetics, and why I have spent over forty years researching the stasis to architecture being an art (because it too makes metaphors) it can also be shown that this same stasis is the commonplace to the works of aesthetic thought and investigation. . This coincidence (between aesthetics and art) confirms the intrinsic nature of this study of epistemology of architecture and aesthetics. The metaphoric evidence I believe will prove both useful to the creation, teaching and valuation of works of art as well as their architectural off-spring.  In fact metaphor is the driving parte for most creative arts and architectural works.
Some contemporary aesthetic theory differs with how best to define the term
“art”, What should we judge when we judge art?, What should art be like?, The value of art, things of value which define humanity itself; contrasted to Raymond Williams who argues that there is no unique aesthetic object but a continuum of cultural forms from ordinary speech to experiences that are signaled as art by a frame, institution or special event. Conversations about aesthetics, metaphors and architecture reassess current and traditional issues by providing a scientific analysis for the way metaphors work in architecture.
This is the “stasis” (the state of equilibrium {equipoise}  or inactivity caused by opposing equal forces) of the controversy of architecture being an art; that if architecture behaves, acts, looks and works like art than it too must be an art. Why? Because it, too, makes metaphors, and those metaphors are varied in depth, kind, scope and context. It is the stasis because it is where art and architecture meet. The metaphor is the conceptual focal point. While many claim that the architect is the “techne” artist being a crafts man point has been conceptual and so useful as to bridge, carry-over and provide both artist and architect a common authority over the making of the built environment.