“The Death of the Author” by Roland Barthes does not explicitly have anything to do with architecture but can be applied to architecture, while still maintaining its meaning. Barthes says “the writer can only imitate a gesture forever anterior, never original; his only power is to combine the different kinds of writing, to oppose some by others,” and in this case, the writer or the author can be understood as the architect (Barthes 4). This is similar to in Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s “Thoughts on Architecture” when Didascalo is saying that “to vary the ornament is not the same thing as creating a new order” when referring to columns (Piranesi 18). Both of these are saying that new styles are not created, instead they are byproducts of application of the old style. The example made by Piranesi was that adding new ornamentation to columns does not create a new order otherwise “one can easily say that there are as many orders as there are monuments” because each building with an Ionic or Corinthian order column will have at least slight variations in form (Piranesi 18).
This idea of utilizing what is already there and making it your own is what the “Grays” did in their Post-Modernist architecture. In class we saw an image of Charles Moore’s Piazza d’Italia (seen below) which utilizes “the old” being traditional columns and makes it his own by collaging forms and adding striking colors. Charles Moore was considered a “Gray” architect.
In Robert A.M. Stern’s “Gray Architecture as Post-Modernism, or, Up and Down from Orthodoxy” he outlines the strategies and attitudes used by “Grays” that make them different from the “Whites.” These include: the use of ornament; the manipulation of forms to introduce an explicit historical reference; the conscious and eclectic utilization of the formal strategies of orthodox Modernism, together with the strategies of the pre-Modern period; the preference for incomplete or compromised geometries, voluntary distortion, and the recognition of growth of buildings over time; the use of rich colors and various materials that effect a materialization of architecture’s imagery and perceptible qualities; the emphasis on intermediate spaces; the configuration of spaces in terms of light and view as well as of use; and the adjustment of specific images charged with carrying the ideas of the building (Stern 244-245).
I would say that Charles Moore’s Piazza d’Italia utilizes all of these aforementioned techniques. While he did not invent the columns, he utilized them to make his design unique, illustrating the points made in Barthes and Piranesi’s writings that in a sense, today architecture is a culmination of what architecture was.
Citations:
Barthes, Roland. The Death of the Author, 1967.
Fisher, Thomas. “Postmodern Postmortem.” Architect Magazine. Hanley Wood Media, Inc, April 28, 2011. https://www.architectmagazine.com/design/buildings/postmodern-postmortem_o.
Piranesi, Giovanni Battista. Thoughts on Architecture, 1765.
Stern, Robert A. M. Gray Architecture as Post-Modernism, or, Up and Down from Orthodoxy, 1976.
Great way to tie in all of the readings in a pretty concise synopsis. While all of your points are accurate to the texts, what ideas/arguments do you agree with (or not)? I’d be curious to hear your take on both the intellectual and aesthetic efficacy of the movement.