Architecture without Architects

by Bernard Rudofsky

Genres: Architecture

128 pages, Hardcover

Published June 1, 1972

About the author

From http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/...

Bernard Rudofsky (Austrian-American, 1905–1988) was an architect, curator, critic, exhibition designer, and fashion designer whose entire oeuvre was influenced by his lifelong interest in concepts about the body and the use of our senses. He is best known for his controversial exhibitions and accompanying catalogs, including Are Clothes Modern? (Museum of Modern Art [MoMA], 1944), Architecture without Architects (MoMA, 1964), and Now I Lay Me Down to Eat (Cooper-Hewitt Museum, 1980). He was also famous for his mid-20th-century Bernardo sandal designs, which are popular again today.

Reviews

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a catalogue of the 1965 MoMa photo-exhibition. It has a brief introduction and then explanatory notes for the photographs, which are cursory at best. Most of the architecture is ‘anonymous’ or ‘vernacular’ built by locals throughout time, reminding us that interesting forms and functional buildings need not be designed by a ‘starchitect’ to be impressive and worthwhile. It extols the ‘lesser’ people who are neither princes nor princely, instead recroding an insight into the work of the non-elite, the “vernacular, anonymous, spontaneous, indigenous, rural” and real.
The whole book is a wonderful reminder that there is nothing wrong with home-grown ‘normal’ architecture, especially when seen through the lens of time or a tourist. Perhaps even our most frustratingly cookie-cutter suburbs with their no-trees-but-big-pool ‘McMansions,’ will seem bearable one day and take on a scintillating pattern when seen from future drone-shots.

The photos are often very grainy, which is symptomatic of their age and era, and I think adds to the book’s charm. The writing is also often dated, (and definitely not always ‘politically correct’ by today’s standards), but it is often so brief as to be vague, and sometimes even a little bit cryptic. In his discussion of ‘nature as architect’ he writes: “Our tendency to look at stalactite caves with cathedrals in mind, or to see castles in eroded rocks, betrays neither exceptional imagination nor artistic insight. Ciudad Encantada, the Enchanted City, about 120 miles east of Madrid, is a formation of cretaceous deposits covering 500 acres. The fantastic shapes, boldly cantilevered, are an astonishing site and need no fanciful comparisons with architecture to be appreciated.” I think that he is saying that nature’s metaphoricity is a given and so obvious that it need not even be mentioned when describing the landscape. Which may be true, but even overt metaphoricity assists transfer meaning, and pretending otherwise won’t alter the message.

My favourite revelations were the folklore tales of the quasi-sacral granaries of northern Spain (built on rat-proof pilotis) ‘going for walks at night’ as well as the pictures of the moving houses (because in 'primitive' cultures it is too humiliating to live in something built and previously inhabited by others) which reminded me of Vitruvian caryatids.

The books wisdom hints at ways to live as well as build - a sentiment which should never go out of date.

PS – great photos on the MoMA website of the actual exhibition – I especially love the photo of the exhibition’s mounted shots of arcades and colonnades which effectively turns the photos (mounted on black stick-frames) themselves into colonnades through which the tourist-visitors-guests have to walk.

PPS - It would be curious (or perhaps terrifying) to see a ‘where are they now’ exhibition of these same locations in the 21st century, in colour, to determine how much has survived the 50 odd years that have passed since the exhibition.

[Aneta Vasileva]

Architecture as written and taught in the Western world has never been concerned with more than a few select cultures.