The modern language of architecture

Abstract

"These pages" writes Bruno Zevi, "have the same goal as any other heretical act: to arouse dissent. If they provoke argument, they will have achieved their aim. Instead of talking endlessly about architecture, we shall finally begin to speak architecture." The Modern Language of Architecture by Bruno Zevi, whom Frank Lloyd Wright called "the most penetrating architectural critic of our time," should be read by anyone with an interest in designing, constructing, buying, selling, looking at, or living in a building. Setting forth seven principles, or "antirules," Zevi attempts, in the first part, to codify the new language of architecture that was created by Le Corbusier, Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, and Wright. In place of the classical language formulated by the Beaux-Arts school, with its focus on abstract principles of order, proportion, and symmetry, he presents an alternative system of communication characterized by a free interpretation of contents and function, an emphasis on differentiation and dissonance, a dynamic multidimensional vision, an independent interplay of elements, an organic marriage between engineering and architecture, living spaces designed to be used, and an inte gration of every building into its surroundings. Part 2, tracing the dialogue between architecture and historiography, demonstrates that the modern language of architecture is not the language of modern architecture, but the real system of communication of all creative architecture. A survey of the literature of the past century on architecture from ancient Greece through the Baroque reveals that each historical contribution had two opposite effects: the negative one of stimulating a revival and the positive one of enriching the modern language of architecture. Thus we find striking analogies between Le Corbusier and Greek town planning, Louis Kahn and Roman architecture of the age of Hadrian, the Arts and Crafts movement and medieval idioms, and, most notably, the two spirals of Borromini's church of Sant'Ivo alia Sapienza in Rome and Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum in New York.