Sara Prat Soto
architecture/design/illustration
SPS
'Premodern' Modernism
Master of Architectural History, Theory and Interpretation
This thesis focuses on the misunderstanding of some of these historical circumstances, so-called nationalist issues, as the key of all the hubbub and quarrels between historicists, new Gothic and classicists among others. From the first manifestations in Pugin’s Catholic ideals, and from Ruskin to Germany’s Judgenstil, a vivid interest has been perpetuated in creating a link to a ‘nation-style’.
One of the most obvious cases is Catalan Modernism which due to the efforts of the nationalist movement called La Renaixença, is claimed to be the most representative element, together with the Catalan language of a society which had lost its origin in the midst of the Middle Ages and struggled to develop a new identity to represent an emerging industrial society towards northern Europe.
Selected Essays
Master of Architectural History, Theory and Interpretation
Human beings have roots. As Ernst Cassirer argues in his essay An essay on man, in 1944: ‘Above all, the concept of above and below stands out, since it is conditioned by the upright posture of the human being. Of this we can indeed say that it arises from nature and not from human arbitrariness; for right and left, front and back, change when theperson turns around, but above and below remain the same, even if the person lies down or moves in space in some other way’. Our entire world is based on his position on earth.
For Deleuze, the system is rootless and this doomed image is the main problem for a society which is too static, stuck in place, stuck in time. He rules out the origin and the time line and puts forward a model based on the image of a map. No start, no end but always in the middle [yet his book has
both introduction and conclusion]. Rhizome means virtual, intangible and also impossible. It is not physical; we can think of it, even imagine it but not live it. Rhizome’s horizontality has much in common with the criticized horizontality of modern architecture which authors such Bachelard consider has lost the essence of axis mundi [earth-sky] or the natural position of the human being on the ground. Sky-scrapers cities, such as New York, are vertically formally proportioned but human beings still live in them in a horizontal way, on layers. To what extend is this horizontality reasonable?
The 'siege' of the tree
Master of Architectural History, Theory and Interpretation
Everybody could find in Chipperfields Neues Museum in Berlin the scenario of the Shinkel’s Romantic Garden, with successive spaces, introspective and nostalgic, historic and contemporary… aiming to rise in the future, to achieve their longed Identity without disturbing and pretending to have erased their painful past. Museum, Romantic final stop and beginning of a new era for a “renew” country, just like the “Wanderer” again. Chipperfield could be claimed as a“new good art historian architect”.
Master of Architectural History, Theory and Interpretation
It seems to me interesting to explore this need to eradicate the historical limits of ritual spaces. Theatre, art and religious rituals are historically rooted in their particular places: a theatre or a simple atrezzo consisting of backcloths; a gallery or an altar of the church. These are the places through which rituals can possibly exist. They are related to the mere essential meaning of the ritual and omitting the space, would result in negating the ritual itself.