Defining the Profession of Architect in the Twentieth Century: France, Italy and the United States

Contemporary European History

Volumn 13, Issue 3, 2004, Pages 345-356

  Scrivano, Paolo ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 85008521348     PISSN: 09607773     EISSN: 14692171     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0960777304001766     Document Type: Review

References (15)

1. Spiro Kostof, ed., The Architect. Chapters in the History of the Profession (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). Curiously, in the same year a history of the profession of architect was published in the German Democratic Republic with the clear intention of addressing an East German audience: Herbert Ricken, Der Architekt. Geschichte eines Berufs (Berlin: Bauakademie der DDR-Henschelverlag, 1977).
2. Dana Cuff, Architecture: The Story of Practice (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 1991).
3. On architectural avant-garde magazines of the early twentieth century see the monographic issue of Rassegna, ‘Architecture in the Avant-Garde Magazines’, Rassegna, 12 (December 1982).
4. As an example of the complexity and intricacy of publishing activity, in particular in the field of architecture, I would like to refer to my study of the case of a small publication of 1931 devoted to the Dutch architect Jacobus Johannes Pieter Oud: Paolo Scrivano, ‘J. J. P. Oud and Dutch architecture in the writings of Henry-Russell Hitchcock’, Zodiac, 18 (September-February 1997-1998), 90-103; idem, Storia di un'idea di architettura moderna. Henry-Russell Hitchcock e l'International Style (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2001), 103-6. The book in question, J.-J.-P. Oud, by the American art and architectural historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock, was a substantial commercial failure, with twenty-two copies sold of 500 printed some months after publication.
5. Worth of mention and of recent publication are: Giorgio Muratore, Daniela Carfagna and Mario Tieghi, eds., Sabaudia, 1934. Il sogno di una citta nuova e l'architettura razionalista (Sabaudia: Comune di Sabaudia, 1999); Libero Andreotti, ‘Oceanic rituals: Mario Sironi and the Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution’, Architecture and Ideas, 2, 2 (2000), 96-109; Maristella Casciato, ‘The Casa all'Italiana and the idea of modern dwelling in Fascist Italy’, Journal of Architecture, 5, 4 (2000), 335-53; Antonello Alici and Maria Teresa Iovacchini, eds., Le nuove provincie del fascismo. Architetture per le citta capoluogo (Pescara: Archivio di Stato di Pescara-Italia Nostra di Pescara, 2001); the monographic issue of Parametro ‘Nuove citta tra le due guerre’: Parametro, 235 (July-October 2001); the 2002 republication of Francesco Garofalo, Adalberto Libera (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1992); Jeffrey T. Schnapp, Anno X. La Mostra della Rivoluzione fascista del 1932 (Pisa and Rome: Istituti Editoriali e Poligrafici Internazionali, 2003).
6. By drawing on a definition coined by Susan Sontag in the early 1980s ('Fascinating Fascism') and referring to the 1990s proliferation of exhibitions devoted to German art and architecture of the 1930s, historian Paul Betts has related the rediscovery of Fascist and Nazi culture to the loss of ‘cultural charisma and/or clear connection to politics’ by contemporary art objects: Paul Betts, ‘The New Fascination with Fascism: The Case of Nazi Modernism’, Journal of Contemporary History, 37, 4 (2002), 541-58.
7. If we exclude Guido Zucconi's La citta contesa (where the issue of the architectural profession was examined in contrast to the world of engineers), works on the profession of architect in Italy are the producs of the last ten years of historical research: Guido Zucconi, La citta contesa (Milan: Jaca Book, 1989); Donatella Calabi, ‘L'architetto’ in Maria Malatesta, ed., Storia d'Italia. Annali 10. I professionisti (Turin: Einaudi, 1996), 339-61; Guido Zucconi, ‘La professione dell'architetto. Tra specialismo e generalismo’ in Francesco Dal Co, ed., Storia dell'architettura italiana. Il secondo Novecento (Milan: Electa, 1997), 294-315. See also Salvatore Adorno, ed., Professionisti Citta e Territorio. Percorsi di ricerca tra storia dell'urbanistica e storia della citta (Rome: Gangemi, 2002).
8. Departments for teaching architecture existed from 1865 and 1866 at the Istituto tecnico superiore of Milan and at the Scuola di applicazione of Turin (later the Polytechnic Schools of Milan and Turin).
9. On the same subject see Paolo Nicoloso, ‘I concorsi di architettura durante il fascismo’, Casabella, 64, 683 (2000), 4-7.
10. An exception to this tendency is represented by works that try to analyse the architectural language of so-called Fascist architecture in connection with Italian social dynamics or popular culture of the time: see Brian L. McLaren, ‘The Italian colonial appropriation of indigenous North African architecture in the 1930s’, Muqarnas, 19, 19 (2002), 164-92; idem, ‘The Tripoli Trade Fair and the Representation of Italy's African Colonies’, Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts, 24 (2002), 170-97.
11. There is a consolidated bibliography on the subject; for instance, on the School of Architecture of Columbia University see Richard Oliver, ed., The Making of an Architect, 1881-1981. Columbia University in the City of New York (New York: Rizzoli, 1981); on schools located in the Boston area see Margaret Henderson Floyd, Architectural Education in Boston. Centennial Publication of the Boston Architectural Center, 1889-1989 (Boston: Boston Architectural Press, 1989); on the School of Architecture of the University of Texas at Houston (with a focus on the postwar years) see Alexander Caragonne, The Texas Rangers. Notes from an Architectural Underground (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 1995). Slightly outside the broad theme of architectural education within the world of US academia-but still concerning some aspects of it-are Janet Parks and Gwendolyn Wright, eds., The History of History in American Schools of Architecture, 1865-1975 (New York: The Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture-Princeton Architectural Press, 1990); Vincent Katz, ed., Black Mountain College. Experiment in Art (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 2002).
12. On the Harvard Graduate School of Design between the second half of the 1930s and the early 1950s see Jill Pearlman, ‘Joseph Hudnut's Other Modernism at the “Harvard Bauhaus”’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 56, 4 (1997), 452-77; idem, ‘Joseph Hudnut and the unlikely beginnings of post-modern urbanism at the Harvard Bauhaus’, Planning Perspectives, 15, 3 (2000), 201-39.
13. Many publications are available on the intellectual emigration from Europe to the United States during the course of the twentieth century, e.g., The Cultural Migration. The European Scholar in America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1953), that contains an important testimony by Erwin Panofsky on the subject of art history; Donald Fleming and Barbara Bailyn, eds., The Intellectual Migration: Europe and America, 1930-1960 (Cambridge,MA: CharlesWarren Center for Studies in American History, 1968); Dante Della Terza, Da Vienna a Baltimora. La diaspora degli intellettuali europei negli Stati Uniti d'America (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1987). More recently see Margrit Kentgens-Craig, The Bauhaus and America. First Contacts 1919-1936 (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 1999); Mariuccia Salvati, Da Berlino a New York. Crisi della classe media e futuro della democrazia nelle scienze sociali degli anni trenta (Turin and Milan: Paravia Bruno Mondadori, 2000).
14. A recently published six-volume biographical dictionary of the architecture of the twentieth century lists not more than twenty entries on female architects and about thirty on women who are or were in partnerships: Carlo Omo, ed., Dizionario dell'Architettura del XX Secolo (Turin and London: Umberto Allemandi, 2000-2001).
15. To count the number of book-length publications on the presence of women in twentieth century architecture is particularly depressing; not much seems to have been issued since the late 1970s: Susana Torre, ed., Women in American Architecture: A Historic and Contemporary Perspective (New York: Whitney Library of Design, 1977); ‘That Exceptional One’: Women in American Architecture 1888-1988 (Washington, DC: American Architectural Foundation, 1988), catalogue of an exhibition organised by the American Architectural Foundation and the American Institute of Architects; Elen Perry Berkeley and Matilda McQuaid, eds., Architecture. A Place for Women (Washington, DC and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989); Clare Lorenz,Women in Architecture. A Contemporary Perspective (London: Trefoil Publications, 1990).