Week 8

A lot of extraordinary architects made different architecture plans, city plans and devoted themselves to develop the architecture from its classical type to pre-modernism, high modernism and finally the post-modernism. They build the basic structure of the cities to make the world look better during decades. The architects are not the developer of its style. Like Roland Barthes said in his text:” the writer can only imitate a gesture forever anterior, never original; his only power is to combine the different kinds of writing.” (Roland, 4). This book is more like a philosophical book which describes writers’ aspect of writing. It does have some relationship to architecture. Conversely, in Roland’s text: “succeeding the Author, the writer no longer contains within himself passions, humors, sentiments, impressions, but that enormous dictionary, from which he derives a writing which can know no end or halt: life can only imitate the book, and the book itself is only a tissue of signs, a lost, infinitely remote imitation.” (Roland, 5) I don’t think architects will end their works like those authors. They made up their own styles to pave the way for the following architects to develop the whole system of design.

The difference between architects and writers is what Piranesi wrote in his text. He believes although the architects develop their own styles on others’ architectural works, but they are making new things from the old styles. (Piranesi, 18). It is interesting to get the good things from multiple different styles and add something new to build an architect’s own style of design, which is different from writers just combine the opinions and styles from others. Architects develop different styles to make the architectures what the architectures should be for adapting the world’s culture development such as what Bauhaus did.

Barthes, Roland. The Death of the Author, 1967.

Piranesi, Giovanni Battista. Thoughts on Architecture, 1765.