The Baroque in Architectural Culture, 1880-1980

In his landmark volume Space, Time and Architecture, Sigfried Giedion paired images of two iconic spirals: Tatlin's Monument to the Third International and Borromini's dome for Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza. The values shared between the baroque age and the modern were thus encapsulated on a single page spread. As Giedion put it, writing of Sant'Ivo, Borromini accomplished 'the movement of the whole pattern [...] from the ground to the lantern, without entirely ending even there.' And yet he merely 'groped' towards that which could 'be completely effected' in modern architecture-achieving 'the transition between inner and outer space.' The intellectual debt of modern architecture to modernist historians who were ostensibly preoccupied with the art and architecture of earlier epochs is now widely acknowledged. This volume extends this work by contributing to the dual projects of the intellectual history of modern architecture and the history of architectural historiography. It considers the varied ways that historians of art and architecture have historicized modern architecture through its interaction with the baroque: a term of contested historical and conceptual significance that has often seemed to shadow a greater contest over the historicity of modernism. Presenting research by an international community of scholars, this book explores through a series of cross sections the traffic of ideas between practice and history that has shaped modern architecture and the academic discipline of architectural history across the long twentieth century. The editors use the historiography of the baroque as a lens through which to follow the path of modern ideas that draw authority from history. In doing so, the volume defines a role for the baroque in the history of architectural historiography and in the history of modern architectural culture.

Andrew Leach is Professor of Architectural History at Griffith University, where he holds an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship. John Macarthur is a professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Queensland, where he is Director of the research centre ATCH. Maarten Delbeke is Professor of Architectural History and Theory at Ghent University and head of the research project 'The Quest for the Legitimacy of Architecture in Europe, 1750-1850' at the Leiden University Institute for Cultural Disciplines.

Chapter 1 Defining a Problem: Modern Architecture and the Baroque Chapter 2 Engaging the Past: Albert Ilg's Die Zukunft des Barockstil Chapter 3 Großstadt as Barockstadt: Art History, Advertising and the Surface of the Neo-Baroque Chapter 4 The "Restless Allure" of (Architectural) Form: Space and Perception between Germany, Russia and the Soviet Union Chapter 5 Geoffrey Scott, the Baroque, and the Picturesque Chapter 6 Against Formalism: Aspects of the Historiography of the Baroque in Weimar Germany, 1918-33 Chapter 7 Riegl and Wölfflin in Dialogue on the Baroque Chapter 8 Beyond the Vienna School: Sedlmayr and Borromini Chapter 9 Pevsner's Kunstgeographie: From Liepzig's Baroque to the Englishness of Modern English Architecture Chapter 10 The Future of the Baroque, c. 1945 Chapter 11 Giedion as Guide: Space, Time and Architecture and the Modernist Reception of Baroque Rome Chapter 12 Reading Aalto through the Baroque: Constituent Facts, Dynamic Pluralities, and Formal Latencies Chapter 13 Taking the Sting out of the Baroque: Wittkower, 1958 Chapter 14 Pierre Charpentrat and Baroque Functionalism 15 From Spatial Feeling to Functionalist Design: Contrasting Representations of the Baroque in Steen Eiler Rasmussen's Experiencing Architecture Chapter 16 From Michelangelo to Borromini: Bruno Zevi and Operative Criticism Chapter 17 Between History and Design: The Baroque Legacy in the Work of Paolo Portoghesi Chapter 18 Steinberg's Complexity Chapter 19 The "Recurrence" of the Baroque in Architecture: Giedion and Norberg-Schulz's Approaches to Constancy and Change Chapter 20 The Future of the Baroque, c. 1980