di Roberto Dulio

Anxious Modernisms: Experimentation in Postwar Architectural Culture, edited by Sarah Williams Goldhagen, Réjean Legault, Canadian Centre for Architecture/MIT Press, Montreal-Cambridge, Mass.-London, 2000, (336 pages, s.i.p.)

This volume is a partial collection of the proceedings of two conventions. One, ‘Reconceptualizing the Modern: Architectural Culture, 1943-1968’, was held at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in spring 1998; the other, Anxious Modernisms: Postwar Architectural Culture, 1943-1968 took place at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal a year later. The book’s essays are certainly independent, but they cover a period – the two decades after World War II – that has frequently been written off superficially as a kind of interlude between the aesthetic and ideological obsessions of an avant-garde that had run out of steam and the flash in the pan of postmodernism. Sarah Williams Goldhagen and Réjean Legault, the editors of the publication, however, discover tangible evidence of the development – or continuity – of modernism in the work of certain post-war architects.

Anxiously and silently, modernism became richer and multiplied, changing and adapting its forms to the extent that in some cases it became unrecognizable. A precise foreword introduces the 12 essays, which offer a careful examination of an equal number of cases that, depending on how they relate to society, may be considered mediation, resistance or radical criticism. The essay by Maristella Casciato, Neo-Realism in Italian Architecture, analyzes attempts to mediate between modernity and actual conditions. The writer re-reads Italy’s post-war cultural situation, relating the various meanings of the term ‘neo-realism’ at different times in diverse fields: cinema, literature and architecture. Monique Eleb points out other attempts at integration.

In An Alternative to Functionalist Universalism: Écochard, Candilis and Atbat-Afrique, she presents another experience of balancing modern identity and local cultures, this time in Morocco. Sarah Williams Goldhagen’s essay, Freedom’s Domiciles: Three Projects by Alison and Peter Smithson, deals with the necessity of a relationship between architecture and the man on the street. This is similar to the case proposed by Cornelis Wagenaar: his piece on Jaap Bakema and the Fight for Freedom illustrates attempts to combine individual expression with group identity.

Francesca Rogier addresses the relationships between solutions offered by differing political systems. In The Monumentality of Rhetoric: The Will to Rebuild in Postwar Berlin, she compares the examples of Stalinallee and Hansaviertel. As Reinhold Martin points out in Computer Architectures: Saarinen’s Patterns, IBM’s Brains, the complex interaction between the client, architect and project engenders a strange situation. Perhaps unconsciously, the final scheme refers to the computer’s operating mechanisms (the object produced by the building designed). Another mediation is Timothy M. Rohan’s The Dangers of Eclecticism: Paul Rudolph’s Jewett Arts Center at Wellesley. Placing the new building in historical context, the author refers to Ernesto Nathan Roger’s Italian career, albeit in an overly simplified fashion. In the case presented by Sandy Isenstadt, Richard Neutra and the Psychology of Architectural Consumption, we witness the battle against consumerism. The essay stresses how the German-born American architect sought, in the design of his suburban houses, to halt the deleterious psychological effects of consumerism. Felicity Scott’s piece, Bernard Rudofsky: Allegories of Nomadism and Dwelling, covers the same period, but her strategy differs. The essay illustrates Rudofsky’s references to the nomadism of some third-world societies as an alternative to the disease of consumerism.

The book also offers several examples representing the radical revamping of society. One is Jean-Louis Voileau’s A Critique of Architecture: The Bitter Victory of the Situationist International. Mary Louise Lobsinger’s Cybernetic Theory and the Architecture of Performance: Cedric Price’s Fun Palace examines the profoundly unconventional nature of this projected work, a kind of anti-building adaptable to the ever-changing needs of its occupants. Cherie Wendelken’s outlook is even more extreme; her Putting Metabolism Back in Place: The Making of a Radically Decontextualized Architecture in Japan outlines the concept of a practice of architecture fated to vanish and reassert itself with different protagonists and references. The language starts over from scratch for a new society. The book is richly illustrated, with careful graphic design and page layouts, plus copious notes for each essay.

The concluding chapter, Coda: Reconceptualizing the Modern by Sarah Williams Goldhagen, is the weakest section in the volume. The introduction, written by both editors, paves the way for an overview of the paths taken by modernity. Yet the conclusion seems overly anxious to interpret them in a strained way, contradicting the plurality of methods, experiences and interpretations so nicely expressed by the Modernisms of the book’s title.

Roberto Dulio is an architect