History and Theory of Architecture IX (Gnehm)

Abstract

Between Cosmos and Chaos: Gottfried Semper’s Theory of ArchitectureThe lecture discusses Gottfried Semper’s complex approach to architecture as the «small world» created by mankind within a global scope framing history and the present between a cosmological totality and chaotic fragmentation.

Objective

Knowledge of Semper’s theory and practice in the disciplinary context of ninteenth-century historicism and present-day architectural discourse.

Content

The seductiveness of Semper’s theory of architecture lies not least in the fact that he exploded world art histories popularized around the mid-nineteenth century through multifarious disciplinary borrowings ranging from anthropology to aesthetics and including natural sciences and linguistics, physiology and psychology, art and industry. This parallels his linking the smallest object and detail to the largest monumental building and his addressing philosophical questions centred around architecture such as those of the relation between nature and culture, the universal and the local, the material and the immaterial, body and soul, image and language, art and interpretation. In doing so, his global scope provokes political questions regarding the relation of identity and foreignness, of the West to the rest of the world.

Resources