Architecture and Modernity : A Critique

32
Pont Transbordeur, Marseilles.
(From Sigfried Giedion,
Bauen in Frankreich, fig. 61.)
4 5
33
Eiffel Tower (1889),
interior of pier.
(From Sigfried Giedion,
Bauen in Frankreich, fig. 2.)
Giedion comments:
“Instead of a massive tower, an
open framework condensed into
minimal dimensions. The
landscape enters through
continuously changing snippets.”
Giedion’s fascination was nothing new or even out of the ordinary. The glass
and iron structures of the nineteenth century—exhibition halls, railway stations, arcades,
conservatories—provoked strong reactions right from the start. They were favorite
subjects for modernist painters, from Manet to Delaunay (figure 6), and they
aroused fierce polemical debate, the Crystal Palace in London being a good example.
21 Neither was it the first time that the importance of these constructions designed
by engineers had been acknowledged in an architectural discourse where
they were seen as the prelude to a future architecture. In the work of Scheerbart and
in Sant’Elia’s and Marinetti’s futurist manifesto, however, these statements sounded
like echoes of distant unattainable visionary dreams, while Giedion succeeded in
combining the lyrical character of his homage with an extremely convincing, sober
analysis of very real and realizable buildings and spaces.
Giedion treated these fascinating spatial experiences in a very specific way,
transforming them into a description of the new architecture that at the same time