Architecture and Modernity : A Critique

keep a minimal escape route open. In Aesthetic Theory, too, Adorno continues to adhere
to the possibility of art being able to exercise a critique of the increasing one-dimensionality
of the system; in this respect as well, his ideas are different from those of Tafuri.
186 Carla Keyvanian, “Manfredo Tafuri’s Notion of History and Its Methodological Sources”
(master’s thesis, MIT, Cambridge, Mass., 1992).
187 Manfredo Tafuri and Francesco Dal Co, Modern Architecture, trans. Robert Erich Wolf
(New York: Abrams, 1979), p. 7; translated from Architettura contemporanea (Milan:
Electa, 1976).
188 Llorens, “Manfredo Tafuri: Neo-Avant-Garde and History,” p. 90.
189 Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History.”
190 Manfredo Tafuri, “The Historical Project,” in Tafuri, The Sphere and the Labyrinth: Avant-
Gardes and Architecture from Piranesi to the 1970s, trans. Pellegrino D’Acierno and
Robert Connolly (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987), pp. 1–21; translated from La sfera e il labirinto.
Avanguardie e architettura da Piranesi agli anni ‘70 (Turin: Einaudi, 1980).
191 For an interesting comment on Tafuri’s position see Joan Ockman, “Postscript: Critical History
and the Labors of Sisyphus,” in Ockman, ed., Architecture, Criticism, Ideology, pp.
182–189.
192 Tafuri, “The Historical Project,” p. 16.
193 Ibid., p. 9.
Architecture as Critique of Modernity
4
Epigraph: Theodor W. Adorno, “Functionalism Today,” Oppositions, no. 17 (1979), p. 41;
translated from “Funktionalismus heute” (1965), in Adorno, Gesammelte Schriften, vol.
10, pt. 1 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1977), p. 395: “Schönheit heute hat kein anderes Mass als
die Tiefe, in der die Gebilde die Widersprüche austragen, die sie durchfuhren und die sie
bewältigen einzig, indem sie ihnen folgen, nicht indem sie sie verdecken.”
1 Max Bill, “Education and Design,” in Joan Ockman, ed., Architecture Culture 1943–1968
(New York: Rizzoli, 1993), pp. 159–162.
2 Max Bill, ed., Robert Maillart (Erlenbach and Zurich: Verlag für Architektur, 1949).
3 Cobra (an acronym for Copenhagen-Brussels-Amsterdam) was founded in 1948 by Asger
Jorn, Christian Dotremont, and Constant. The movement originated in dissatisfaction with
the approach of the surrealists who dominated the avant-garde art world at the time. The
members of Cobra considered that the surrealists attached too much importance to psychic
automatism (the technique involving the quasi-automatic production of impulses from
the subconscious). Cobra, on the contrary, stood for a belief in experimental and spontaneous
works of art. Only these would give one access to genuine needs and sensual desires.
Typical of the artistic and literary products of the Cobra group is an unrestrained
freedom and a rejection of all accepted norms. There is a fascination in their work with motifs
from children’s drawings, myths, and folk art. The paintings of the Cobra artists teem
with a motley collection of animals, symbolic themes, and carnival figures. For Jorn and
Constant, this preoccupation had to do with their desire for a social revolution. Both of
them in their Cobra period defended the thesis that the creativity of the artist should be
linked to the struggle to achieve social freedom. The fact that this “political” attitude was
not shared by all the members of Cobra was one reason why the group disintegrated after
a few years. For the history of the Cobra movement, see Willemijn Stokvis, Cobra: An International
Movement in Art after the Second World War (New York: Rizzoli, 1988).
4 Asger Jorn, “Notes on the Formation of an Imaginist Bauhaus,” in Ken Knabb, ed., Situationist
International Anthology (Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets, 1981), pp. 16–17.
5 On Constant’s oeuvre, see Jean-Clarence Lambert, Constant. Les trois espaces (Paris:
Cercle d’Art, 1992).
6 For the history of the Situationist International, see Elisabeth Sussmann, ed., On the Pas-
Notes to Pages 136–151