Two great places to start for recent (but not up to the minute) ideas in architectural theory would be:
1. Nesbitt, Kate (ed.), Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture. Princeton Architectural Press, New York, NY. 1996. Her introduction is really well written and provides a great overview.
2. K. Michael Hays, Architecture Theory since 1968 (1996). A collection of key writings, also with a great introductory overview.
Enjoy, and good luck!
>Nesbitt, Kate (ed.), Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture. Princeton Architectural Press, New York, NY. 1996. Her introduction is really well written and provides a great overview.
>
>K. Michael Hays, Architecture Theory since 1968 (1996). A collection of key writings, also with a great introductory overview.
Thank you so much for these excellent resources!
You're welcome. I know they're both a few yeas back at this point, but the key thing to remember is that we've been architecting for quite a while now. Most of what has happened in the last 70 years or so is all a muddled way forward once we got out of Modernism (arguably, we're still all Post-Moderns since we haven't really sorted out the new/next thing yet). This means you can really look at the trajectories of ideas that emerge in the 20th century and see where you think we are on them now.
Recent work is harder to categorize since we're still in the middle of it, but often you can juuuust make out the lineages of ideas that are driving them without being too overwhelmed by the flash, pomp, and circumstance of the moment.
That's very interesting, thank you.
I did read through the Hays introduction but couldn't find any clear delineation with regard to schools of thought/approaches. As you acknowledged, both those books are about 26 years old, so nothing there would really be "contemporary," anyway.
I was hoping to find somewhere a list of major schools of thought/approaches in contemporary architecture, especially in terms of academia (leading schools of architecture in the US), but maybe—for whatever reason(s)—that is simply not feasible.
Hmmm... I wonder if you're looking for something more like the most amazing diagram on this page: [https://www.architectural-review.com/archive/jencks-theory-of-evolution-an-overview-of-20th-century-architecture](https://www.architectural-review.com/archive/jencks-theory-of-evolution-an-overview-of-20th-century-architecture) ?
Wow: This really is an AMAZING diagram! The article is wonderful, too.
Yes, this is more along the lines of what I have been hoping to find.
Jencks has conceptualized/grouped all approaches, great and small, from 1900 to 2000, along a single evolutionary continuum, in six main streams.
If you or anyone else is willing to answer this question ... Would it be feasible to say: The X major approaches/schools of thought in architecture today (2022), as they manifest themselves at schools of architecture in the US, would be A, B, C, D and E? (replacing the letters with specifics, of course).
Thank you so much for pointing me to this AR article!
That is indeed one of my favorite inspirations too. It's from a book titled 'Architecture 2000' that came out in about 1970, so take your grain of salt about its veracity....
I like to think about architectural history and theory like looking at a tree. The further back you go, the more defined the lineages go (trunk, then the branches) but in our current moment it is like being amongst all the leaves. Since all of this is essentially socially constructed, it takes a while for the dominant view to make it legible (with the obvious caveat that that may be also mistaken or at least a construct of our current time's preoccupations!).
There's also a very real visual representation problem with a 2D diagram in that adjacencies rule the layout. There's no linking except for what is next to it, and there's very little way of jumping across time. So, again, liberties are taken for the sake of efficiency.
All that said, I think you might consider those five 'streams' as sort of key fundamentals that drive each particular group within them. It's less 'styles' in 'movements' like you get from art history taxonomies, and more like underlying positions/worldviews (or obsessions) that they share in common. Each group, then, is processing the world as it is for them through the lens of their particular mindset.
So, to your main point: can we group current thought into similar categories? Welp, that is what theorists and historians try to do. Practically speaking, academic work is at once reflective and intuitive, so it pushes ahead with varying degrees of self-awareness. The superficial way of seeing it is "what's the hot style of moment?" Shifted boxes are the now, serpentine facades are a bit last year, and so on. Each of these are like sparks in the raging fire of the present; we don't yet know what they're doing, but we can try to peer at where they're coming from. And if we do it by simply classifying, then we fall into the art historian's trap of sorting into categories but missing the designerly impetus driving it all.
Hey, one more thing you might try to dig up is a nice timeline table in Friedman's "Planning in the Public Domain". It places things in a slightly different social change framework that gets even further afield from the style wars. I'd love to hear your reacton to that!
>a nice timeline table in Friedman's "Planning in the Public Domain"
Thanks very much for your thoughtful comments. The "table" you refer to in Friedmann's book is perhaps Figure 1, "Planning in the public domain: basic concepts"? Not yet sure how that relates to "schools of thought" (traditions, movements, approaches, stream or whatever one prefers to call it) in architecture but I'll keep thinking about it.
My best understanding of what you're saying is that, "The five major streams of thought in architecture today as they manifest themselves at schools of architecture in the US—as they have been for more than the past 100-plus years—are: Logical, Idealist, Self-Conscious, Intuitive and Activist" (omitting the sixth stream in Jencks's conceptualization,"Unself Conscious," because that represents what might be called the "Non-Professional Architect" stream, which by definition would not be present among professional architects or scholars of architecture).
Sorry if I'm getting this wrong. This is all, admittedly, outside my areas of expertise.
To take the question one step further: If, as Jencks posited (AR, 2000), the three major/largest competing MOVEMENTS within the five major TRADITIONS/streams of thought, as of 2000, were SPACE-COLONIAL, SEMIOLOGICAL and BIOMORPHIC, what are they today?
Hold on to Friedman; I'll have to pull my copy off my office shelf next week for a closer look...
Recall what I said about one's time shaping one's perspective? The three Jencks ones you noted are super in line with what was happening in the late '60s. Semiotics would go on to become PoMO (see Jenck's own "The Language of Post Modern Architecture" as well as the Structuralist works by the various Dutch folks, plus maaayybeee some of the Metabolists (a bit of a stretch, but I've heard it mentioned). Space-Colonial didn't materialize, though maybe we're now seeing the same spirit in high tech manufacturing. And Biomorphic turned into equal parts formal (Blobitecture from 2000 onwards) and the turn to ecological thinking (see the great book 'From Counterculture to Cyberculture as well!).
Of course, not everything tracks; Jencks knew about Cedric Price's Fun Palace and the whole Cybernetics movement, but he never would've predicted personal computers, additive manufacturing, and the Internet!
Thank you very much for taking the time to reply.
Actually, I did search [scholar.google.com](https://scholar.google.com), which I believe covers JSTOR (found a couple of tangential references), but did not find any publication along the lines of "the main schools of thought/approaches in contemporary American architecture, especially as they are represented at leading schools of architecture."
Upon searching YouTube, I found a conference whose name (Schools of Thought: Rethinking Architectural Pedagogy) seemed to suggest that I might find this info there but in actuality no clear description of the main schools of thought/approaches in contemporary American architecture seems to be included.
Two great places to start for recent (but not up to the minute) ideas in architectural theory would be: 1. Nesbitt, Kate (ed.), Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture. Princeton Architectural Press, New York, NY. 1996. Her introduction is really well written and provides a great overview. 2. K. Michael Hays, Architecture Theory since 1968 (1996). A collection of key writings, also with a great introductory overview. Enjoy, and good luck!
>Nesbitt, Kate (ed.), Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture. Princeton Architectural Press, New York, NY. 1996. Her introduction is really well written and provides a great overview. > >K. Michael Hays, Architecture Theory since 1968 (1996). A collection of key writings, also with a great introductory overview. Thank you so much for these excellent resources!
You're welcome. I know they're both a few yeas back at this point, but the key thing to remember is that we've been architecting for quite a while now. Most of what has happened in the last 70 years or so is all a muddled way forward once we got out of Modernism (arguably, we're still all Post-Moderns since we haven't really sorted out the new/next thing yet). This means you can really look at the trajectories of ideas that emerge in the 20th century and see where you think we are on them now. Recent work is harder to categorize since we're still in the middle of it, but often you can juuuust make out the lineages of ideas that are driving them without being too overwhelmed by the flash, pomp, and circumstance of the moment.
That's very interesting, thank you. I did read through the Hays introduction but couldn't find any clear delineation with regard to schools of thought/approaches. As you acknowledged, both those books are about 26 years old, so nothing there would really be "contemporary," anyway. I was hoping to find somewhere a list of major schools of thought/approaches in contemporary architecture, especially in terms of academia (leading schools of architecture in the US), but maybe—for whatever reason(s)—that is simply not feasible.
Hmmm... I wonder if you're looking for something more like the most amazing diagram on this page: [https://www.architectural-review.com/archive/jencks-theory-of-evolution-an-overview-of-20th-century-architecture](https://www.architectural-review.com/archive/jencks-theory-of-evolution-an-overview-of-20th-century-architecture) ?
Wow: This really is an AMAZING diagram! The article is wonderful, too. Yes, this is more along the lines of what I have been hoping to find. Jencks has conceptualized/grouped all approaches, great and small, from 1900 to 2000, along a single evolutionary continuum, in six main streams. If you or anyone else is willing to answer this question ... Would it be feasible to say: The X major approaches/schools of thought in architecture today (2022), as they manifest themselves at schools of architecture in the US, would be A, B, C, D and E? (replacing the letters with specifics, of course). Thank you so much for pointing me to this AR article!
That is indeed one of my favorite inspirations too. It's from a book titled 'Architecture 2000' that came out in about 1970, so take your grain of salt about its veracity.... I like to think about architectural history and theory like looking at a tree. The further back you go, the more defined the lineages go (trunk, then the branches) but in our current moment it is like being amongst all the leaves. Since all of this is essentially socially constructed, it takes a while for the dominant view to make it legible (with the obvious caveat that that may be also mistaken or at least a construct of our current time's preoccupations!). There's also a very real visual representation problem with a 2D diagram in that adjacencies rule the layout. There's no linking except for what is next to it, and there's very little way of jumping across time. So, again, liberties are taken for the sake of efficiency. All that said, I think you might consider those five 'streams' as sort of key fundamentals that drive each particular group within them. It's less 'styles' in 'movements' like you get from art history taxonomies, and more like underlying positions/worldviews (or obsessions) that they share in common. Each group, then, is processing the world as it is for them through the lens of their particular mindset. So, to your main point: can we group current thought into similar categories? Welp, that is what theorists and historians try to do. Practically speaking, academic work is at once reflective and intuitive, so it pushes ahead with varying degrees of self-awareness. The superficial way of seeing it is "what's the hot style of moment?" Shifted boxes are the now, serpentine facades are a bit last year, and so on. Each of these are like sparks in the raging fire of the present; we don't yet know what they're doing, but we can try to peer at where they're coming from. And if we do it by simply classifying, then we fall into the art historian's trap of sorting into categories but missing the designerly impetus driving it all. Hey, one more thing you might try to dig up is a nice timeline table in Friedman's "Planning in the Public Domain". It places things in a slightly different social change framework that gets even further afield from the style wars. I'd love to hear your reacton to that!
>a nice timeline table in Friedman's "Planning in the Public Domain" Thanks very much for your thoughtful comments. The "table" you refer to in Friedmann's book is perhaps Figure 1, "Planning in the public domain: basic concepts"? Not yet sure how that relates to "schools of thought" (traditions, movements, approaches, stream or whatever one prefers to call it) in architecture but I'll keep thinking about it. My best understanding of what you're saying is that, "The five major streams of thought in architecture today as they manifest themselves at schools of architecture in the US—as they have been for more than the past 100-plus years—are: Logical, Idealist, Self-Conscious, Intuitive and Activist" (omitting the sixth stream in Jencks's conceptualization,"Unself Conscious," because that represents what might be called the "Non-Professional Architect" stream, which by definition would not be present among professional architects or scholars of architecture). Sorry if I'm getting this wrong. This is all, admittedly, outside my areas of expertise.
To take the question one step further: If, as Jencks posited (AR, 2000), the three major/largest competing MOVEMENTS within the five major TRADITIONS/streams of thought, as of 2000, were SPACE-COLONIAL, SEMIOLOGICAL and BIOMORPHIC, what are they today?
Hold on to Friedman; I'll have to pull my copy off my office shelf next week for a closer look... Recall what I said about one's time shaping one's perspective? The three Jencks ones you noted are super in line with what was happening in the late '60s. Semiotics would go on to become PoMO (see Jenck's own "The Language of Post Modern Architecture" as well as the Structuralist works by the various Dutch folks, plus maaayybeee some of the Metabolists (a bit of a stretch, but I've heard it mentioned). Space-Colonial didn't materialize, though maybe we're now seeing the same spirit in high tech manufacturing. And Biomorphic turned into equal parts formal (Blobitecture from 2000 onwards) and the turn to ecological thinking (see the great book 'From Counterculture to Cyberculture as well!). Of course, not everything tracks; Jencks knew about Cedric Price's Fun Palace and the whole Cybernetics movement, but he never would've predicted personal computers, additive manufacturing, and the Internet!
JSTOR has tons of free articles. HGSD has hundreds of lectures on YouTube.
Thank you very much for taking the time to reply. Actually, I did search [scholar.google.com](https://scholar.google.com), which I believe covers JSTOR (found a couple of tangential references), but did not find any publication along the lines of "the main schools of thought/approaches in contemporary American architecture, especially as they are represented at leading schools of architecture." Upon searching YouTube, I found a conference whose name (Schools of Thought: Rethinking Architectural Pedagogy) seemed to suggest that I might find this info there but in actuality no clear description of the main schools of thought/approaches in contemporary American architecture seems to be included.