Architecture and Modernity : A Critique

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tecture’ can have any future” is no longer raised. Nor are the liberatory character of
modern architecture and its social dimension in any way highlighted. Explicit references
to a sociopolitical purpose are no longer present. Instead of Durchdringung, an
expression with a range of connotations, the notion of space-time appears. This concept
does not have any obvious social connotations; instead it suggests that developments
within architecture correspond to those on a “deeper” level of reality—the
“secret synthesis” that lies hidden behind chaotic appearances. Behind the two apparently
parallel terms, Durchdringung and space-time, two different notions about
the scope of architecture and its social role lie concealed.
The second shift has to do with the whole tenor of the text, its tone. In contrast
with his earlier books that represented a genuine inquiry, accompanied by
doubts and a sense of wonder, Space, Time and Architecture sounds like the incantatory
discourse of a prophet who does not doubt that he knows the truth. Due to
this self-assurance, a programmatic concept of modernity ends up pervading the
whole book. This programmatic concept has less to do with a specific political idea
than with the conviction that modern architecture contains the potential for building
a new world, one in which the evils of the present time will be vanquished and where
the challenge of the future will be taken up. In Bauen in Frankreich and in Befreites
Wohnen an attempt was made to formulate a transitory vision that saw the new architecture
as a constant quest to give expression to change and evanescence. This
endeavor is much less important in Space, Time and Architecture. Giedion still refers
here to a transitory experience of dynamics and movement, but it is no longer decisive
as a concept for his view of architecture. His description of the rise of the new
architecture as “the growth of a new tradition” puts the emphasis on the programmatic
aspect: he conceives of modern architecture here not so much as a paradoxical
“tradition of the new” but much rather as the unqualified inauguration of a “new
tradition.” 45 This “new tradition” constitutes the most authentic expression of the
underlying unity that he discerned in the apparent chaos of the time, and he therefore
also combated every tendency toward superficiality and all attempts to reduce
modern architecture to a fashionable trend. 46 Instead he stressed the rootedness of
architecture in the past and its intimate involvement with the deepest essence of his
own time. These elements form the crux of his argument that space-time architecture
is the only viable contemporary form of architecture.
This double shift maps out a path by which the architecture of the modern
movement gradually becomes disconnected from the logic of the avant-garde, which
was first of all one of negation and destruction. In Space, Time and Architecture and
in Giedion’s later work, one can still see minor traces of an avant-garde concept. The
diagnosis of the “fissure between thinking and feeling” and the rejection of the
kitsch culture of the “prevailing taste” are arguments that Giedion had in common
with the pioneers of the avant-garde. 47 He has, however, abandoned one of the more
fundamental concept of the artistic avant-garde—that of transitoriness. 48
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