Introduction to Architecture SAPL
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ARC1015: Introduction to Architecture SAPL
‘A very short book like this inevitably has to omit far more than it includes’
Adam Sharr, Modern Architecture: A Very Short Introduction (2018).
In his Introduction to Modern Architecture: A Very Short Introduction (2018), Adam
Sharr proposes that ‘All buildings – bicycle shed or cathedral, banal office building or
obsessively detailed museum… are valid objects of scholarly attention.’ (Sharr, 2018:
8). Indeed he begins each chapter with one such ordinary structure that rarely
features in histories of modern architecture; a bridge, a cowshed, a forgotten villa, a
car industry research building. But as he goes on to explain, there are better known
canonical buildings that ‘you need to know to talk knowledgably with others.’ That,
and the limitations of length of this book, means that most of the buildings, and the
four architect ‘superheroes’ (Sharr, 2018 :10) who feature in each chapter (Mies van
der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Louis Kahn and Buckminster Fuller) are drawn from Europe
and the US. There is a tricky tension, Sharr acknowledges, between communicating
the familiar elements of the story of modern architecture and taking a more diverse,
inclusive approach.
ESSAY QUESTTION
In your seminars you have been examining Sharr’s book closely, and also starting to
look at histories of modern architecture and close readings by other authors. In
semester one, the weekly handouts offered many other suggestions for your reading
about modern architecture, and in your history walks you explored local
architectures that rarely make it into historical overviews like Sharr’s. This essay
question invites you to propose one new building (or it could be a set of closely
related buildings) to add to Sharr’s book; to write the additional new text 500-800
words, and to justify the addition.