Bad Books

Bad Books

Close reading of a canonical text on architecture

Invited lecturers: Maarten Delbeke, Silvia Groaz

This is a methodological PhD course focused on the history and close reading of a book that has been important in the history of architecture. The course is the second episode of a cycle of lectures and seminars on the studies of Microhistory.

Books on architecture have always been crucial mediums since the profession of the architect exists. The separation in the 15th century of the intellectual worker, the architect, from the master builder, implied the use of writing no longer for technical communications, but for intellectual and poetical purposes. With the rise of printing, communication about architecture and project was no longer addressed to workers in the building site but to a larger and more erudite audience, like patrons and humanist thinkers. From Vitruvius' De architectura and Leon Battista's Alberti's De re aedificatoria to Andrea Palladio's Four Books of Architecture, from Le Corbusier's Vers une architecture to Adolf Loos's Spoken into The Void, or from Aldo Rossi's The Architecturre of the City to Rem Koolhaas's Delirious New York, the text would become as powerful as drawings and renderings in legitimizing and spreading certain architecture ideologies, endorsing one's own architecture and attracting clients. Very often architects would use historical references in order to make their argument more convincing and graphically institutionalize their work. Institutionalization worked even more when there were historians to write about their own favorite architects, what Manfredo Tafuri called 'operative criticism,' referring to important texts of historians like Sigfried Giedion, Bruno Zevi or Paolo Portoghesi, who used history for supporting design ideas on which they believed.

While in the last years some texts of this sort had undergone processes of revisionism, others have been simply forgotten, because they are out of print or do not fit anymore the agenda of contemporary discourse. Yet, good or bad, their importance as canonical texts in architecture is undeniable, and it is an intellectual duty from who is conducting doctoral or postdoctoral research on architecture to at least read them once, in the perspective of a teaching career.

The aim of the course is to go back and shed light on some of these books by close reading and putting them into the historical context of the time of their publication, or in the time when they had a major success and impact, even decades or centuries after first editions. PhD students can propose or will be assigned one book according to their research interests, and they will be asked to construct the historical context of the publication, disclose its structure, extrapolate and close read the architectural examples used by the author.

Provisional program

Day 1: Monday 31/03/2025 (20 min presentations)

Marson Korbi,

Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, De Architectura, 30-20 BC

- PhD Candidate presentation

- PhD Candidate presentation

- PhD Candidate presentation

Day 2: Monday 07/04/2025 (20 min presentations)

- Marson Korbi,

Manfredo Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia, 1973

- (possible guest)

Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, Project of a Historical Architecture, 1721

- PhD Candidate presentation

- PhD Candidate presentation

Day 3: Monday 14/04/2025 (20 min presentations)

- Marson Korbi,

Françoise Choay, The rule and the model, 1997

- (possible guest)

Nikolaus Pevsner, Pioneers of Modern Design, 1936

- PhD Candidate presentation

- €”PhD Candidate presentation