Otto Wagner, Adolf Loos, and the Road to Modern Architecture

This 2002 volume examines the origins of 'tectonics' as concept and ideal in early Modern architecture.

Werner Oechslin (Author), Lynnette Widder (Translated by)

9780521623469, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 4 July 2002

282 pages, 111 b/w illus.
25.5 x 18.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.76 kg

"Those interested in a narrative review of writings on architecture, presented with intensity and in detail, will be pleased with, informed by, and interested in Oechslin's offering." Centropa

Contemporary architectural theory emphasizes the importance of 'tectonics', the term used to articulate the relationship between construction, structure and architectural expression. Despite the term's currency, little consideration has been given to its origins or historical significance. In this 2002 study, Werner Oechslin examines the attempts by early modern theoreticians of architecture to grapple with the relationship between appearance and essence, which is crucial to the discourse of tectonics. Referring to the writings of Joseph Lux, Karl Bötticher, and Adolf Loos, Oechslin follows this development from theories of a classical architecture without columnar orders to a Modern architecture upholding the 'truth'of its own architectural expression. Oechslin locates the culmination of this discourse in the work of Adolf Loos and in Le Corbusier's frequent references to Ancient Greece as the precedent of Modern architecture's honesty. This volume includes an anthology of primary texts by several theorists published in English.

Preface
Introduction
1. The opposite of the issue of style: necessity, unity, immanent coherence, the naked, simple and true
2. 'Tectonics' and the 'theory of raiment'
3. Disenchantment with 'Bötticher's overly intellectual work' and the postulation of a way to overcome the 'Semperian mechanistic conception of the essence of art'
4. 'Stilhülse und Kern': from theory to metaphor - and its deployment by Otto Wagner
5. Adolf Loos - against the Zeitgeist
6. '… ad usum Delphini' - the 'element event' of the Raiment Dissolved, and the ineluctable return - or recognized tenacity - of the Hull
Anthology of primary sources.

Subject Areas: Architectural structure & design [AMC], Theory of architecture [AMA]