Background

Modernism Unplugged, the University of Virginia Department of Architectural History's Fall 2004 symposium, reexamines the roots of twentieth-century modern architecture and design. The reference "Unplugged" refers indirectly to the popular 1990s MTV series of live, acoustic performances by otherwise loud rock and roll performers; the series was designed in part to test musicians by requiring that they convey the essence and actual musicality of otherwise loud electric rock songs in simple, stripped-down, acoustic musical arrangements, performed before a critical live audience. In this spirit, the U VA symposium reexamines many of the philosophies and design approaches that preceded the crystallization of such influential twentieth-century concepts as the International Style, the "machine age," and such broad classifications as the "modern movement" and "modernism" generally. Focusing on European architectural and cultural developments in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the symposium addresses the rich field of "roads less traveled" by architects who were fundamental to the development of later "modernist" thinking in architecture and the arts, but whose ideas either were forgotten, altered, suppressed, or gradually edited out of later heroic accounts of twentieth-century modernism. Please refer to the brief symposium description and schedule below for more details.

Schedule

The symposium will begin with a keynote address by the architectural historian Barry Bergdoll of Columbia University, who will offer a critical outline of some of the major themes of the symposium. His all-school lecture will reconsider the European cultural milieu before 1914, identifying salient figures and ideas that were percolating through the design fields and opening architects to new potential relationships between architecture and regional or national identity, design and technology, and cultural politics generally.

The Saturday morning panel reassesses the importance, impact, and interpretations of the German architect, theorist, and civil servant Hermann Muthesius, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his monumental three-volume history, The English House (Das englische Haus [Berlin: Ernst Wasmuth, 1904-05]). One of more than ten books the architect published over a long and productive career, Muthesius enjoyed great influence as a private practitioner in Berlin, as an applied-arts education reformer in the Prussian Ministry of Commerce and Industry, and as the main founder of the Deutscher Werkbund in 1907. The English House, his best-known publication, reflected Muthesius's government-supported effort to import the historical lessons of British architecture, and especially the Arts and Crafts movement, in order to effect fundamental changes in design, building, and architectural culture in German-speaking Europe. Exactly 100 years after the book's publication, Muthesius is enjoying a revival in a wave of new research (Schneider 1999; Roth 2001; Stalder 2002) that is reassessing the impact of the architect's interrelated fields of activity. This panel invites some of the leading scholars of various facets of Muthesius's seminal work to share new discoveries about Muthesius's contributions to the development of major tenets of twentieth-century architecture and design.

The Saturday afternoon panel welcomes a diverse blend of experts to tackle numerous other important figures and issues in the development of modern architecture before "modernism." Among those who might very well be considered (depending on our speakers) are such architects as Charles-Edouard Jeanneret (Le Corbusier after 1920) Theodor Fischer, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Movements such as the Art Nouveau, the garden city movement, and the relationship between modern architecture and classicism are other themes upon which invited speakers may focus. Reconsidering the multiple contexts in which twentieth-century architectural ideas arose, panelists will provide new ways of understanding the numerous causes influencing the development of architecture in modern industrial society. Taking account of the institutions, government policies, artistic movements, and advances in knowledge from turbulent fin-de-siècle Europe, the panel will place individual achievements and more general developments in a new historical light.

After the two Saturday panels and a concluding discussion, U VA architectural historian and Commonwealth Professor Richard Guy Wilson will lead a tour for symposium participants of Thomas Jefferson's Lawn at U VA. This tour will include numerous pavilion interiors, the Rotunda, and the grounds of U VA's architectural and academic center, and will conclude with a reception hosted by Architecture School Dean Karen van Lengen at the Lawn's Pavilion IX.

We look forward to welcoming students, professional scholars and the general public to this exciting event in Charlottesville this fall!

Program