The Meaning of Modern Architecture: Its Inner Necessity and an Empathetic Reading

ISBN-13: 9781138572348 / Angielski / Miękka / 2017 / 168 str.

Hans Rudolf Morgenthaler

Opis

Using empathy, as established by the Vienna School of Art History, complemented by insights on how the mind processes visual stimuli, as demonstrated by late 19th-century psychologists and art theorists, this book puts forward an innovative interpretative method of decoding the forms and spaces of Modern buildings. It proposes that Modern architecture is too diverse to be reduced to a few common formal or ornamental features. Instead, by relying on the viewer’s innate psycho-physiological perceptive abilities, the sensual and intuitive understandings of composition, form, and space are emphasized.

Spis treści

Contents:

O autorze

Dr Hans R. Morgenthaler began studying art history at the University of Zürich, Switzerland. He finished his education at Stanford University in the US with the Ph.D. degree. He is an associate professor in the College of Architecture and Planning at the University of Colorado Denver, where he teaches architectural history lecture courses and seminars in 20th-century architectural history and theory. His main research interests lie in 20th-century Central European architecture with a special emphasis on theoretical questions. Within this field, he focuses particularly on interdisciplinary projects, which investigate architecture as a part of culture. He has published articles and books on the career of the German Expressionist architect Erich Mendelsohn, including two chapters in the book Eric Mendelsohn Architect 1887-1953, which was published in 2000. Current projects reach from an effort to update Vitruvius’s architectural treatise and an architectural guide to the buildings of Colorado, USA.