Differences: Topographies of Contemporary Architecture

Writing Architecture #3

by Ignasi de Solà-Morales

Differences brings together ten essays written over the past decade by the distinguished Spanish architect and theorist Ignasi de Sola-Morales. Many of the essays have never previously been translated, and the author has provided a new introduction especially for this English edition.

Contemplating the panorama of contemporary art and architecture, de Sola-Morales posits that there is no one way to describe today's practice; instead he concentrates on elucidating the present dynamic of contrast, diversity, and tension.

In an unorthodox pairing, de Sola-Morales derives his inspiration from both phenomenology and Deleuzean poststructuralism. Combining these philosophical inheritances allows him to reinvoke the human subject without referring to classical humanism or announcing the death of the object. His retrospective review of the disciplines of art and architecture, particularly as they have developed since World War II, provokes him to design, draft, and ultimately build a description of Modernism¹s lineage of subjectivity. The result is a provocative construction of fluid "topographies" that articulate, rather than depict, the shaky ground on which our current artistic and architectural production rests.

The essays:
Sado-masochism: Criticism and Architectural Practice. Topographies of Contemporary Architecture. Mies van der Rohe and Minimalism. Architecture and Existentialism. Weak Architecture. From Autonomy to Untimeliness. Place: Permanence or Production. Difference and Limit: Individualism in Contemporary Architecture. High-Tech: Functionalism or Rhetoric. The Work of Architecture in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.

Genres: Architecture

120 pages, Paperback

First published December 4, 1996

Reviews

[Pedro Pozo · Rating 5 out of 5]

En alguna de mis vidas pasadas vividas en esta vida, soñé con ser el sucesor de Solá-Morales

[Olivia]

this is obviously a collection of essays focused on modern and contemporary architects, architecture, and modes of practice/production, but de sola-morales is so finely attuned to the various philosophical and socio-political forces that shaped 20th century architecture that almost every argument he makes can be extrapolated to some other aspect of contemporary society. what a pleasure to read – i felt like i was gaining new frameworks to think through not only architecture but also urbanism, social media, ai, contemporary alienation, etc on almost every page. de sola-morales puts it best, when writing about monuments: "for all its being an opening, a window on a more intense reality, at the same time its representation is produced as a vestige, as the tremulous clangour of the bell that reverberates after it has ceased to ring; as that which is constituted as pure residuum, as recollection" – by this description, differences is somewhat of a monument itself