70464 - History of Architecture 2

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course, students will be able to recognize, place historically and do a critical valuation of major architectures of the modern and contemporary era, from XVIIIth century to the XXth century, therefore place them in the right geographic and urban context and knowing the main costruction features.

In particular, students will be able to: - do a bibliographical research - carry out a critical path of historical studies - recognize the main forms systems - describe and comment, in oral and written form, an architecture belonging to the historical time studied in the course

Course contents

PART 1 - BETWEEN EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURY - QUESTIONS OF STYLE AND SHAPE

Introduction. Questions of style, structure, decoration, shape

Giovan Battista Piranesi

Revolutionary architects in France. Etienne-Louis Boullée. Claude-Nicolas Ledoux

The neo-Palladianism in England and USA. John Soane and Thomas Jefferson

Germany between neo-gothic and neo-classical. Karl Friederich Schinkel. Leo von Klenze

 

PART 2 - ECLECTICISM, NEW TECHNIQUES AND URBAN RENEWAL IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
London, Paris and Barcelona during the nineteenth century

New urban visions: the utopian socialism

Neoclassicism in Italy: Piermarini and Milan. Valadier and Rome

Eclecticism - historicism. Definitions and Italian specificities

Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, John Ruskin. Gottfried Semper and Wien

Iron and glass architecture in England. The Crystal Palace

Iron and glass architecture in France

The Chicago School and the origins of the skyscraper

 

PART 3 - APPLIED ART AND INDUSTRY BETWEEN NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURY

Arts and Crafts Movement. William Morris. Hermann Muthesius. Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Art Nouveau in Belgium and France: Victor Horta, Henry van de Velde, Hector Guimard

Wien - from the Ringstrasse to the Secession. Otto Wagner. Joseph Maria Olbrich

Wien - from Art Nouveau to the ornament condemnation. Josef Hoffmann. Adolf Loos

The Catalan Modernism and Antoni Gaudí

The Liberty Style in Italy

 

PART 4 - TWENTIETH CENTURY - AVANT-GARDE ART AND ARCHITECTURE

Expressionism and De Stijl

Futurism and Dada

Cubism and Constructivism

 

PART 5 - THE MASTERS

Deutsche Werkbund. Peter Behrens

Walter Gropius

Hendrik Petrus Berlage and the Amsterdam School

Tony Garnier and Auguste Perret

Frank Lloyd Wright

Le Corbusier

Outside the Modern Movement: Eileen Gray, Robert Mallet-Stevens, Pierre Chareau

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

CIAM (1928-1959) and International Style

Gunnar Asplund and Alvar Aalto

Louis I. Kahn

 

PART 6 - ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY

Classicism and rationalism in Italy in the ’20s and ’30s.

Architecture under the regime. Marcello Piacentini and Giuseppe Terragni.

The reconstruction of Italy after the Second World War

Tradition and environmental preesistence

 

PART 7 - AFTER THE MODERN MOVEMENT

Modernity in crisis. Prototypes and models for the reconstruction in Europe.

Radical architectures and Megastructures.

Italy on the large scale, from Superstudio to the Corviale

 Engineering and Industry: Richard Buckminster Fuller and Jean Prouvé

Engineering and Industry in Italy: Pier Luigi Nervi

The end of the utopias: Venturi-Scott Brown. Rem Koolhaas

Contemporary panorama 

 

Readings/Bibliography

For the examination of the course of History of Architecture II, the student has the pdf of the lessons and the bibliography indicated below. It is also recommended to supplement this bibliography using the main architectural monographs available at the library.

• Leonardo Benevolo, Storia dell’architettura moderna, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2001, capp. I-VII, pp. 11-232 (incluso il capitolo “La cultura architettonica in America”)
• Marco Biraghi, Storia dell’architettura contemporanea I 1750-1945,Piccola Biblioteca Einaudi, Torino 2008
• Marco Biraghi, Storia dell’architettura contemporanea II 1945-2008,Piccola Biblioteca Einaudi, Torino 2008, Vol. 2 capp. IV, V, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII
• William J.R. Curtis, L'architettura moderna dal 1900, Mondadori, Milano 1999 (I ed. Phaidon, London 1982), capp. I-XXV e XXVIII
• Luciano Patetta, L'architettura dell'eclettismo, Mazzotta, Milano 1975, pp. 9-39, 217-244, 260-310 (ovvero i capitoli: Prime influenze della poetica del Pittoresco; Neogotico e Rundbogenstil in Germania; La tendenza medievalista in Italia)

For any further question, please contact the professors by email.

Teaching methods

Lectures and seminars.

Assessment methods

1. Oral exam
The exam consists of an interview on the totality of the topics of the lessons and contents of the bibliography. During the exam, the student is required to describe architectures, movements and figures, to establish thematic links, to draw an explanatory sketch (plan, elevation, section, details, etc...) of the main architectures presented in class and to recognise and analyse some images from the lectures.

 

2. Exercise: Carnet of hand drawings

During the academic year, students are required to produce a script, in the form of a re-drawing notebook. It requires the student to produce a notebook presenting a graphic re-reading, accompanied by written notes and legends, of some of the main architectures presented in class. During the days of classroom overhaul and oral exams, the student should bring his own notebook of re-drawings. Professor will verify the exercises during some classroom reviews and will evaluate it during the oral exam. In relation to the final evaluation, the exercise will only have the value of a corrective.

 

Teaching tools

Students will receive the images projected during the lessons in pdf format.

Office hours

See the website of Silvia Berselli