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against ugliness, noise, the distortion of colours caused
by poorly adapted lighting, vulgarity – everything that
keeps people from being themselves. In short, it is
a fight very close to that of Henry van de Velde in his
Formules d’une esthétique moderne (Systems for
a Modern Aesthetic),
20
but one that now relies on
a technology that the great Art Nouveau theorist
could only glimpse.
1
Philippe Samyn and Pierre Loze, Devenir Moderne? Entretien sur l’art
de construire, Liège, Mardaga, 1999.
2
Jean-Claude Garcias, Sullivan, Paris, Hazan, 1997.
3
J.B. Bakema, ‘L’Urbanisme dans la seconde révolution industrielle’,
L’architecture d’aujourd’hui, 115, Paris 1964.
4
Jacques Aron, Anthologie du Bauhaus, Brussels, Didier Devillez, 1995.
5
Hilde Heynen, Architecture and Modernity, Cambridge,
ma
,
The
mit
Press, 1999.
6
Team 10 consisted of Aldo van Eyck, J.B. Bakema, Georges Candilis,
Sadrach Woods, Giancarlo De Carlo, Ralph Erskine and a few others.
Like them, the Finnish-inspired review Le Carré bleu favoured a less
authoritarian direction for modernism in favour of an architecture that
was participatory and concerned with local cultures, without falling into
the trap of regionalism.
7
Jane Jacobs, Death and Life of Great American Cities,
usa
,
Random House, 1961.
8
Camillo Sitte, L’art de bâtir les villes, Paris, H. Laurens, 1912.
9
Louis Van der Swaelmen, Préliminaires d’art civique mis en relation
avec le 'cas clinique' de la Belgique, Leiden, Sijthoff, 1916.
10
Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, New York,
The Museum of Modern Art, 1966.
11
Charles Jencks, The Language of Post-Modern Architecture, London,
Academy Editions, 1977.
12
Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour, Learning from
Las Vegas, Cambridge,
ma
, The
mit
Press, 1977.
13
Maxwell Hutchinson, The Prince of Wales, Right or Wrong?
An Architect Replies, London, Faber & Faber, 1989.
14
Jean Duvignaud, Pour entrer dans le
xx
e
siècle, Paris, Grasset, 1960.
15
Philippe Samyn and Pierre Loze, Devenir moderne? Entretien sur l’art
de construire, Liège, Mardaga, 1999.
16
Adolf Loos, ‘Ornement et Crime’ in Paroles dans le vide,
Paris, Champ Libre, 1979.
17
This is the exact opposite of Niemeyer or Le Corbusier’s approaches
to architecture, both of which were above all concerned with the expres-
sive qualities of materials, and even that of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe,
who often used ingenious means to create his aesthetic project, going so
far as to clad steel in concrete, before hiding the concrete beneath steel.
18
See the bibliography of Philippe Samyn’s writings at the end
of the present volume.
19
Idem.
20
Henry van de Velde, Formules d’une esthétique moderne, Brussels,
L’Equerre, 1923.
Victor Horta
Tassel house, Brussels, 1893
01-000
Wing building project, 1972