The Journal of Architecture

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Beyond formalism: the quiescent art of formal

analysis in architecture

Andrew Peckham

To cite this article: Andrew Peckham (2016) Beyond formalism: the quiescent art
of formal analysis in architecture, The Journal of Architecture, 21:5, 679-689, DOI:
10.1080/13602365.2016.1207441

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 679

The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 21
Number 5

Beyond formalism: the quiescent art

of formal analysis in architecture

Andrew Peckham Department of Architecture, The University of

Westminster, London, United Kingdom (Author’s
e-mail address: [email protected])

Introduction or within’ the subject of criticism, for what lies

The choice of papers (2004–2013) for the second ‘beside, above and in front of’ the constructed
supplementary issue of The Journal of Architecture façade.2 Whether he was co-opting an overlooked
is focussed on the study of individual buildings, aspect of the subject or constructing a novel per-
and this review essay considers the reciprocal spective towards it, his was an inquisitive line of
relationship between different critical perspectives enquiry.
as they adapt and alter the nature of their engage- With a mind to architects’ own explanations of
ment with the building as built-form. What kind of their buildings, there is the extreme case of the
investigation or analysis is pursued, how is it ‘little zoo of terminologies’ with which, Evans
written as a text and what relationship may it have argued, Peter Eisenman erected a defensive
comparatively to the criticism of the recent past? armour around his early conceptual architecture;
One can point to two extremes: first, a tendency conversely. Eisenman described his own formal
to rubber-stamp an ideological or interpretive case, analysis of Giuseppe Terragni’s Casa del Fascio as
which is then found to be evident in the form, erecting a ‘secondary’ scaffolding around the build-
appearance or organisation of the building; and ing. Evans’ point was not to denigrate an architect’s
second, a preoccupation with form that reverses view of their work, but to question the way in which
that approach, scrutinising formal and material ownership comes, in a complicit relationship, to
facts before proceeding to interpretation. The define the building. The character of Eisenman’s
latter may be limited to a summary of the preceding analysis assumed the logic of the ‘building as
description or analysis, but essentially takes a retro- object’: constituting a ‘total work of art’, privileging
spective view to reflect on what has gone before. formal consistency and the value of a degree of
In contrast, there is also the critic or architect who ‘autonomy’ (bête noir of anti-formalist criticism).
ignores the evidence of the building beyond it Yet scaffolding, to reiterate his metaphor, is
being a Trojan horse for infiltrating their own ideol- designed to be removable and he retrospectively
ogies. views the political history of the building as its
Neither premature judgement, nor its deferral, is initial scaffold, paralleling the well-worn schism
necessarily categorical, and conviction may surface between formalist art theory and the new (now fam-
in a compromise, or an oscillation, between the iliar) social history of art that sought to displace it.3
two. Robin Evans’ approach to Daniel Libeskind’s The seven papers identified with the ‘Building as
Chamberworks,1 jettisoned the search for depth artefact’ theme, sample the diverse attitudes preva-
and meaning ‘assumed to exist behind, beneath, lent during the ten-year period with which they are

# 2016 RIBA Enterprises 1360-2365 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13602365.2016.1207441

 680

Beyond formalism: the

quiescent art of formal
analysis in architecture
Andrew Peckham

associated, and embrace the realist (Gissen), polem- a parallel grey area, indebted to practice and support
ical (Spencer), ideological (Yacubi), chronological from the RIBA, but responsive to the fluctuations of
(Thomas), historicist (Delbeke), philosophical (Xie) the research culture it embodies.
and mediated (Massey). Yacubi’s and Massey’s How should The Journal editors’ initiative be
papers additionally present an explicit or implicit reg- viewed in relation to the content of the building
ister of architecture associated with national identity. studies published? What are the implications of
The texts were chosen as representative and, with the ‘review’ model? ‘Viewing’ the building in a
Evans’ discursive conceptual positioning in mind, revised perspective or placing it within a broader
are not necessarily those studies most inclined overview? But in adopting a ‘critical’ purchase they
towards formal issues. Consequently, while this locate the study somewhere between an essay and
review is primarily focussed on the papers selected, the conventions of an academic research paper.7
reference is made to corresponding building That is to say, distinct from the more exclusive, or
studies (or those collected under the other editorial moderated, accounts of buildings typically published
themes) in order to broaden an inclusive discussion, in, or as, architectural monographs identified with a
one pitched beyond the ‘post-critical’ milieu of the particular architect or their practice.8
period and framed by the wider principle of formal
analysis. Setting out
An architectural journal whose content is primarily The building studies included in the earlier anthology
research based or inclined towards critical theory (2006),9 selected from the first ten years of The Jour-
tends to have an ambivalent relationship with the nal’s publication, included several representing an
concept of a ‘case study’. Towards the end of the orthodox and detailed approach to modern architec-
publication period reviewed here, the editors of ture: acted out, for example, in the relationship
The Journal, aware perhaps of a certain disregard, between tectonic rhetoric and realism in Berlage’s
chose to address the genre obliquely in a new initiat- Beurs or the exigencies of the relationship between
ive during 2011.4 This aimed to foster ‘critical slab and column, informing the structure of Frank
reviews’ of buildings and projects in re-examining Lloyd Wright’s Johnson Wax office building.10 If
the legacy of the 1980s, a categorisation that these researched the structural constitution of cano-
avoided the connotation of a typically pragmatic or nical modernist buildings, Isabel Allen’s ‘construc-
empirical account of a building, its process of tion’ of a fictional Regency House consolidated, at
design, procurement, construction and realisation. the other extreme, an inventive approach to a
Untainted by too direct an appeal to theory, criticism ‘reading’ of type in architecture.11 This characteristic
or history, the case study tends to be a self-con- informs Jing Xie’s recent examination (JoA 18:2
tained exercise of a professional orientation,5 or to 2013), republished here, of the Cang Lang Pavilion
be associated in collective form with establishing a in Suzhou, seen to complement the typology
trajectory of modernism.6 The Journal itself occupies of the ‘hall’ or ‘gallery’ integral to the form of
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Volume 21
Number 5

the prototypical Chinese courtyard house. Applied co-opted the concerns of the 1980s, yet their
philosophical reflections ascribe a ‘literary construc- premise for the ‘critical review’ emphasised the inter-
tion’ to the building where: ‘the legibility of architec- action between different agencies involved in the
ture is largely acquired from reading the life and production of architecture. Conceived as a twilight
meanings inherent in and beyond physical form’. zone, the 1980’s were not yet ‘history’ but appeared
The architecture of the pavilion is viewed as repre- remote in relation the habitual ‘presence of the
sentative of the consistent set of formal types under- past’ engrained in the architectural culture of the
pinning the historical continuum of traditional period. Something of this predicament characterises
Chinese architecture.12 This study was exceptional Maarten Delbeke’s study (JoA 11:3 2006) of
in demonstrating how an apparently limited Robbrecht and Daem’s Concert Hall in Bruges,
subject may unexpectedly register, or stand in for, selected here. Given the contradictions explored
a greatly expanded cultural context. between the city’s historical identity and tourist
The Journal editors’ deliberations mentioned reality, examining the play of myth and counter-
earlier were made with the 1980s in mind, but myth evident in the background to the competition
also addressed the nature of building analysis. for the building, the plausibility of the architect’s
Their call for abstracts sought ‘the perspective or intentions, in ‘formulating an architectural answer
range of angles’ by which a building or project to the dormant ambiguities of the site’, come to
might be examined as a ‘cultural statement’ (not be questioned.
as icons or ‘technological achievements’). This per- The argumentation in Michael Cadwell’s book
spective was set polemically against ‘the market Strange Details (2007)15 presents an idiosyncratic
driven production of images’ and the terms of sus- contrast. Propelled by a poetic literary impulse each
tainability limited to functional ‘problem solving’. chapter or essay (coincident in principle with The
The impact of specialisation was noted in relation Journal’s editorial initiative) revisits canonical build-
to the sophistication of contemporary architectural ings in the tradition of modern architecture.16 Skirt-
production, but also in a tendency towards obscura- ing the received view, and incorporating a matrix of
tion in academic debate. A familiar trope in architec- salient history, biography, ‘on site’ description and
tural discourse, the so-called ‘gap’ between theory detailed constructional (or tectonic) investigation, a
and practice, was to be addressed in the model of discursive narrative evolves in his text (contrary to a
the ‘critical review’. Alan Colquhoun’s view of criti- prescribed logic).17 Pursued in depth, his inquisitive,
cism and by implication his dual status as architect and at points formal, analysis assiduously cultivates
and academic was seen to mediate this schism.13 the attentive reader.18 A prospective slant constructs
The editors’ interest in ‘theoretical practice’— a series of salient insights reminiscent of passages in
focus on ‘context’, identification with operative Evans’ The Projective Cast19 or Kent Kleinman and
process rather than procedural design, concern for Leslie van Duzer’s nuanced study of Mies’ Krefeld
the status of tradition and the European city—14 Villas.20
 682

Beyond formalism: the

quiescent art of formal
analysis in architecture
Andrew Peckham

Building, ideology and critique concern different building complexes: the 1960s
Alan Colquhoun’s timely advice, in 1978, ‘to get air-rights scheme of Washington Bridge Apartments
behind the work’s apparent originality and expose in New York, chronicled by David Gissen (JoA 12:4
its ideological framework without turning it into a 2007),25 and Douglas Spencer’s contrasting polem-
mere tautology’, joined his observation that criticism ical examination of Zaha Hadid’s Central Building
‘can never grasp the essence of the work it dis- within BMW’s Leipzig production complex, com-
cusses’.21 Together they might be taken to refute pleted in 2005 (JoA 15:2 2010).26 Gissen outlines,
phenomenological tendencies and mark his ability, in very thorough social, political, economic and regu-
then, to register the changing face of theory in the latory terms, the development and aftermath of
contemporary practice of post-structuralism. Cer- what turns out to be a highly problematic housing
tainly they question the chimera of a definitive complex. Spencer’s approach, in contrast, is more
understanding of any building, close though Eisen- critically discursive, referring to the film Blade
man came to that in his self-referential (but ulti- Runner, the persistence of Fordism and the signifi-
mately inconclusive) analytical abstraction of cance of Marx’s ‘Fragment on Machines’. Post-
Giuseppe Terragni’s Casa del Fascio.22 Founded on Marxist explanations of the ongoing ideological
an arguably problematic linguistic analogy, his and economic transformations of neo-liberalism,
singular identification with both persona and build- unpick the social and economic consequences for
ing lacked a requisite objectivity. Colquhoun’s key the labour force of Hadid’s spatial fluidity and
critique of the Centre Pompidou (1977),23 on the proto-urban production line interiors.27
other hand, represented his own contentions unu- Gissen unpacks the illogicality of urban infrastruc-
sually directly, and may be contrasted with the tural transformation in the New York of the1960s—
more overtly political approaches adopted by its displacement, regulation, redevelopment and
others at the time.24 Traces of a prescriptive formal- attempted remediation—which is reminiscent in its
ist criticism associated with the concepts deployed in compelling range of insights to those marshalled in
his earlier writing, and later identified with the Neo- the wider context of T. J. Clark’s general account
rationalist conception of architecture as a ‘disci- of the Haussmannisation of central Paris a century
pline’, had faded by the onset of the 1990s. The earlier.28 The evacuation of Parisian quartiers
post-modernism and deconstruction of the previous enabled their dissection by a matrix of boulevards,
decade, with the notable exception of Michael Ben- which for Clark contextualises his study of Impressio-
edikt’s Deconstructing the Kimbell, tended to avoid nist painting. In expanding the territory of the indi-
the literal and instead to assert the metaphorical par- vidual building Gissen identifies the complex socio-
ameters of architectural form (and with it the imbri- economic and political consequences of a later
cations of meaning). phase of capitalist development.
In the present context, two perceptive papers, Spencer’s analysis follows in the footsteps of
well-grounded in terms of ideological import, Kenneth Frampton’s essay ‘The Volvo Case’
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The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 21
Number 5

(1976)29 where Jurgen Habermas’ political critique and religious belief, the limitations of the architects’
of rationalisation, expressed in his ‘Science and justifications, the misleading tourist narrative, and
Technology as Ideology’, was employed to concep- the polarised political and architectural debate, are
tualise the limits of organised labour’s attempt, in all seen to have enveloped the building. This conten-
the context of Swedish social democracy, to amelio- tious subject area, explored in Lawrence Vale’s wide
rate the logic of cybernetic production. This was ranging Architecture, Power and National Identity,32
established in the practice of teamwork and the is one where a preconceived argument tends to be
form of break-out spaces.30 Spencer, four decades deployed to castigate architects’ expediency. The
later, confronts the flexible contracting and spatial architects of the Court building were given to gratu-
fluidity that transposes, he argues, the no-longer itous declamations about the symbolism of architec-
futuristic urban realm of the twenty-first century tural form, dismantled in Jacobi’s well-informed
into the space of production at BMW. Spatial com- ‘critical discourse analysis’. This tends to act,
plexity morphs the angular geometry of the Volvo however, as something of a blunt instrument with
building into Hadid’s hyper-static vectors. The which to club the architecture into submission. The
abstract linkages, ‘masked by the opportunism of accumulative critique flags in relation to a partial
their dislocation’, that Frampton viewed as exploita- visual documentation of the building, which gives
tive, have in Leipzig mutated into a frenetic and only a limited sense of the formal and spatial narra-
simulated urbanity that Spencer critiques. Lefebvre’s tive around which the argument for, and against,
bureaucratic society of controlled consumption has revolves. An ‘ideological platform’ tautologically
transformed into the flexible accumulation of neo- constructed by the architects and their building, is
liberalism. If the Volvo venture proposed an ideal held responsible for the ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’ ambi-
social model (and factory typology), castigated by guities inherent in its constitution. In conclusion, a
Frampton with reference to Fourier, Spencer subdued denouement concerning the previous
argues latterly that the ‘replicants’ of Blade Runner history of the Palestinian village on the site provides
provide the model for the paradigm shift of a more effective closure than the extended summary
‘second-order’ aesthetic form, endemic to the that follows.
publicity provided by, and the flexible contracting Jonathan Massey’s examination of Buckminster
organised in, Hadid’s Central Building. Fuller’s Pavilion at Expo 67 (JoA 11:4 2006) con-
There is, then, a building understood as a manifes- fronts an architecture also freighted with ideology.
tation of ideologies, and there is ideological criticism. His analysis addresses the promise of an American
The distinction between the two is necessarily Eden set in the adversarial culture of the Cold War,
blurred, as in Haim Jacobi’s caustic study of the where Fuller’s ambivalent conflation of technocracy
Israeli Supreme Court building in Jerusalem (JoA and utopian idealism conceptualised an environ-
9:2 2004).31 Politically and sociologically acute in mental homeostasis. A timely moment now, fifty
unpicking the conflation of the national politics years on, to consider the environmental failings
 684

Beyond formalism: the

quiescent art of formal
analysis in architecture
Andrew Peckham

addressed in Massey’s detailed account of the build- historical perspective, grounded in a divided Berlin
ing’s construction—a structure seeking the vali- where the material embodiment of historical
dation of a global manifesto yet undercut by the memory was held to be manifest in the detailed
propaganda attached to its non-conforming interior nature of the building’s construction. This narrative
fit-out. It is disturbing to reflect now on the currency dimension successfully negotiated a tightrope
of Fuller’s thinking: the anthropomorphism claimed between identification and conditionality.
for the pavilion’s ‘skin’ as epidermis; the organic A lesser-known history is brought to light in the
materialism associated with its structure; the popu- final ‘building study’ selected for this supplement,
list figure of ‘spaceship earth’; the ambivalence focussed on the transformation of a ‘building type’
towards the military industrial complex (‘killingry’ (as an institution). Amy Thomas’ chronological
mutated into ‘livingry’)—each spiced with the con- history of the London Stock Exchange (JoA 17:6
frontational politics of the Cold War. The pseudo- 2012) stands out in the scrutiny given to the chan-
democracy and responsive environment promised ging configuration of the Exchange’s accommo-
by cybernetic systems then, is now, fifty years later, dation which was subject, at times more or less
paralleled in the digital systems controlling financial directly, to the prevailing logic of the contemporary
and data flows, and the distributive flux of the neo- financial economy. Her research reminds us of the
liberal global economy. dual role of the ‘building study’: to re-examine the
building lost to view, overlooked, written out of
Building narratives the historical record; and conversely, the ‘iconic’
Within the timeframe of 2004–2013 and following building which has become too familiar. An exemp-
the editorial initiative of 2011, only Florian Urban’s lary example, albeit in another context altogether, is
subsequent paper (2013),33 examining the extended Alice Friedman’s Women and the Making of the
genesis of Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall,34 was Modern House (1998),36 which brought to the
directly identified, in its conclusion, with the surface a latent but largely unaddressed issue in revi-
1980s. In retrospect, however, a key issue of The siting selected modernist houses. Research encapsu-
Journal in 2010 had published complementary build- lated in series of individual studies opened up a
ing studies of Hagia Sofia, Istanbul and the Chapel (then) timely debate about the gendered relation-
of Reconciliation in Berlin,35 which were contrasted ship between prototypical modern architect and
in the same issue with a study of the development female client, relocating the proprieties of modern
of China’s Grand National Theatre in Beijing. The architecture.
last was traced through five decades of a rapidly
changing political landscape, one more highly Description and prescription
charged than in the Glasgow experience. Adam The overall range and varied approach of building
Sharr’s broadly phenomenological study of the studies published in The Journal attest to a diversity
Berlin chapel engaged a very different political and of interpretation, but words are one thing and
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The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 21
Number 5

effective visual documentation another. Arguably, circling established ‘textual’ interpretations in order
its restrained visual culture encourages modes of to identify an unrequited line of enquiry, then shift-
formal analysis or conceptualisation best described ing to rigorous ‘visual’ scrutiny of the building, its
in words, over those engaged in a material, tectonic structure, composition or geometry, now subject to
or representational focus explored in association formal speculation—bridges the two cultures.
with visual documentation or explanation. Words If architectural journalism tends, conversely, to
struggle to substitute for visual affect and building reiterate the received view—the more iconic the
‘studies’ with their necessarily selective focus, are building the more predictable the perspective—it
often best read together with a monograph provid- remains one task of the building review to puncture
ing information lacking in a journal paper. This this critical consensus. Why then is it that particular
problem is endemic to academic publications on texts, or moments of formal analysis, are memorable
architecture, where habitually grey low-resolution for their insight, critical sleight of hand or pro-
images all too often compromise the quality of the fessional acumen? All tend to focus, in one way or
text. another, on the individual building as a critical
The conventional approach to a building study ‘subject’; viewed as a formal, social, ideological or
begins with an overall description of the building, theoretical proposition—one that privileges, reflects,
before attempting analysis of the principles or contradicts or confounds the theories or beliefs that
elements of its formal constitution and spatial organ- the author, the critic or the architect bring to the
isation. This tends to attract criticism as an incipient work.
formalism. Conversely a philosophical, theoretical or With the decline of formalism, as we may have
historical approach leads to a focus on partial known it, generic modernist categories—structure;
aspects of a design.37 Avoiding a prescriptive type-form and functionality; the discipline of the
approach, as John Peponis notes in The Journal,38 route; orthogonal grids; dematerialisation; space
is by no means achieved by recourse to ‘description’. and transparency41—have increasingly been dis-
This, he contends, is inherently retrospective and placed. Material tectonics, narrative configuration,
pre-conditioned by the intent latent in any ‘design vectors, void and field, flow and flux, temporality,
formulation’. Questioning the ‘formal structure of the sustainable and the connected, now find
logical form’39 and shifting through philosophical favour. The nomenclature of volumetric layering,
gears, he speculates on why theorists with an spatiality and transparency remains, however,
analytical bent towards diagramming and model- unduly resistant to changes to the practice of
ling40 have not been taken more seriously. Inherent design and building within a digital culture. Mean-
in the vexed question of the relationship between while the contrast between an analytical introversion
language and visuality lies the ambivalent role of and an ulterior motivation brought to the building
the diagram, in a ‘artefactual’ culture of building. presents a premature divide, since both formalism
Evans’ characteristic mode of investigation—initially and an ideological critique involve the application
 686

Beyond formalism: the

quiescent art of formal
analysis in architecture
Andrew Peckham

of theory. The phenomenological predisposition to aesthetic, rhetoric and practicality, then between
conflate abstract and concrete, highlights how an the essay and the research paper, and with them
experiential parlance and embodied (personal or col- to the quiescent art of building analysis.45
lective) experience, tends to slip into an ambiguously
‘grounded’ conception of materiality, liminal
thresholds and experience of existential archetypes.
Notes and references
This ambiguity, and its limitations, emphasise the
1. R. Evans, ‘In Front of Lines That Leave Nothing Behind’,
virtue of the turn towards the question of agency,
AA Files, 6 (1984), p. 89.
which in asserting the primacy of a building’s 2. As his metaphor had it.
social constitution and occupation, its use and 3. Formalism came to be associated with the method-
alteration over time, emphasises eventual ruin or ology of comparative criticism, whether in literature,
sudden erasure.42 The conception of the ‘death of the visual arts or architecture, and the art-historical
the building’ dramatises the irrelevance of formalism ‘slide beside slide’ pre-digital mode of visual presen-
and the pristine object conjectured in its ideal state tation. Comparative building studies have recently
as a model. been revived in K. Frampton, A Genealogy of Modern
By the final decade of the twentieth century the Architecture: Comparative Critical Analysis of Built
Form (Zurich, Lars Müller, 2015).
‘academic’ tradition of formal analysis associated
4. ‘Critical reviews: buildings and projects—a new series
with a lapidary ‘mannerist modernism’—initially
of articles’, The JoA, 16, 5 (2011), pp. iii–v.
established by Colin Rowe under Rudolf Wittkower’s
5. The Architects’ Journal differentiated over the years
tutelage and later expanded in the ambit of linguistic between everyday ‘Building Features’; documentary
structuralism and semiotic theory by Eisenman43— ‘Building Studies’, and historical ‘Masters of Building’,
seemed conclusively consigned to history.44 which serve to identify different categories of the
Aspects of this practice, its conceptualisation, com- ‘case study’.
prehension, language and methodology, still lurk, 6. See, P. Blundell Jones, E. Canniffee, Modern Architec-
however, at the margins of subsequent architectural ture Through Case Studies 1945–1990 (Oxford, The
discourse, retaining an absent presence in the Architectural Press, 2007) and D. Dunster, Key Build-
context of The Journal’s revival of the critical building ings of the 20th Century, Vol. I Houses 1900–1944
(London, Butterworths, 1985); Vol. II Houses 1945–
review (2011). For what is a ‘building review’ if not
1989 (London, The Architectural Press, 1990).
an investigation of the artefact itself, and for all
7. Typically in an architectural context that would identify
the habitual critic’s and architect’s self regard, is
a relatively short text focused on the detailed evidence
there not a trace in current preoccupations of the of a building, which is subject to a ‘critical’ analysis
manner in which words return to manipulate the informed by history or theory beyond the ambit of an
object of their concern. And of a sensibility that essentially pragmatic or professional orientation. The
brings us back to essential dualities, if not between Architectural Research Quarterly categorises building
the literary and the visual, the ideological and the studies as ‘criticism’.
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8. Again, the distinction between building study, case 17. In essay mode: without separate introductions, sub-
study and building monograph becomes blurred in headings or conclusions in each case.
the extensive ‘Architecture in Detail’ series launched 18. Or one sympathetic to a literary prerogative.
in 1991 by Phaidon Press or, in a more academic 19. See, in particular: R. Evans, The Projective Cast (Cam-
context, the O’Neil Ford Monographs published bridge, Mass., London, The MIT Press, 2007), pp. 6–
since 2008 by the University of Texas at Austin. A 23, or his essay ‘Mies van der Rohe’s Paradoxical Sym-
particularly elegant example of the individual mono- metries’, AA Files, 19 (1990), pp. 63–64.
graph is by John Pardey, Two Houses in Majorca, Jørn 20. K. Kleinman, L. Van Duzer, Mies van der Rohe: the
Utzon Logbook Vol. III (Hellerup, Edition Bløndal, Krefeld Villas (New York, Princeton Architectural
2004). Press, 2005); following in the footsteps of their
9. J. Madge, A. Peckham, eds, Narrating Architecture: A measured monograph on Adolf Loos’ Villa Muller.
Retrospective Anthology (London/New York, Routle- 21. A. Colquhoun, ‘From Bricolage to Myth, or How to Put
dge, 2006). Humpty-Dumpty Together Again’, Essays in Architec-
10. J. Molema, ‘Berlage’s Beurs–concept and method’, The tural Criticism: Modern Architecture and Historical
JoA, 4, 2 (1999), pp. 199–225 and L. K. Eaton, ‘Frank Change (Cambridge, Mass., London, The MIT Press,
Lloyd Wright and the concrete slab and column’, The 1985), p. 169.
JoA, 3, 4 (1998), pp. 315–346. 22. Stemming from his PhD of 1963 and subsequent texts
11. I. Allen, ‘Creating space out of text: perspectives on published in the early 1970s, eventually consolidated in
domestic Regency architecture or Three essays on the book form forty years later: P. Eisenman, Giuseppe Ter-
picturesque’, The JoA, 2, 1 (1997), pp. 59–82. ragni Transformations Decompositions Critiques
12. Pavilion, hall, studio and belvedere: undone by western (New York, The Monacelli Press, 2003).
influences. 23. Republished as ‘Plateau Beaubourg’ in, A. Colquhoun,
13. As the title of his Collected Essays in Architectural Criti- Alan Colquhoun: Collected Essays in Architectural Criti-
cism suggests, Colquhoun never published a bona fide cism (London, Black Dog Publishing, 2009), pp. 82–89,
research paper. He was always fastidious, however, in but best read in its original context, ‘Critique’, Architec-
outlining his initial intellectual premises, to which he tural Design, 47, 2 (1977), pp. 96–102. Paul Vermeu-
typically returned in a measured conclusion. Critical len’s ‘After the Avant-garde’, OASE, 87 (2012),
discursiveness always remained constrained; unlike pp. 115–119, is an incisive critique of Colquhoun’s
Robin Evans who, while registering his debt to the essay.
existing literature, could approach his subject from 24. Colquhoun’s view of the implications of technological
‘the range of angles’ (experiential and philosophical) form and flexible space as an ideology contrasts with a
sought here by The Journal’s editors. more direct engagement with the political, social and
14. There is also mention of the role of ‘images and fic- economic background to the project by the Parti
tions’. Socialist Unifié (PSU); as also with Baudrillard’s use of
15. M. Cadwell, Strange Details (Cambridge, Mass., the project as a rhetorical springboard for his own the-
London, The MIT Press, 2007). ories. PSU, ‘Beaubourg: The Containing of Culture in
16. By Scarpa, Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe and France’, Studio International, 194, 988 (January,
Kahn. 1978), pp. 27–36, and J. Baudrillard, ‘The Beaubourg
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Beyond formalism: the

quiescent art of formal
analysis in architecture
Andrew Peckham

Effect: Implosion and Deterrence’, in his Simulacra and 37. For Michael Benedikt in Deconstructing the Kimbell
Simulation (Michigan, University of Michigan Press, (New York, Lumen, 1991), this involved reasoning
1994), pp. 61–73. with the theoretical discourse of Deconstruction
25. D. Gissen, ‘Exhaust and territorialisation at the before recourse to formal characteristics of Louis
Washington Bridge Apartments, New York city, Kahn’s art museum.
1963–1973’, The JoA, 12, 4 (2007), pp. 449–461. 38. In his introduction to four papers in The Journal on the
26. D. Spencer, ‘Replicant urbanism: the architecture of ‘Spatial construction of meaning’: J. Peponis, ‘Formu-
Hadid’s Central Building at BMW, Leipzig’, The JoA, lation’, The JoA, 10, 2 (2005), pp. 119–133.
15, 2 (2010), pp. 181–207. 39. That shibboleth of rational architecture.
27. Expanded in his forthcoming: D. Spencer, The Archi- 40. Hillier and March in particular.
tecture of Neoliberalism: How Contemporary Architec- 41. Expressed in Colquhoun’s displacement of concepts: of
ture Became an Instrument of Control and Compliance form and function, of volume and surface, and of
(London, Bloomsbury, 2016). typology and design method. And similarly, in Eisen-
28. T. J. Clark, The Painting of Modern Life (London, man’s transformations: of plane (façade) and volume;
Thames and Hudson, 1990), pp. 23–78. of wall and frame; of addition and subtraction; and
29. K. Frampton, ‘The Volvo Case’, Lotus, 12 (1976), between conceptual and perceptual. Benedikt
pp. 16–41. avoided similar dualities since his deconstructionist
30. Reduced to viewing the surrounding ‘non-place urban concern focussed instead on: ‘difference’; hierarchy
realm’. reversal; marginality and centrality; and ‘iterability’
31. H. Jacobi, ‘Form follows metaphors: a critical discourse and meaning. He nonetheless moved conventionally
analysis of the construction of the Israeli Supreme from the plan to the site, to the structure and its
Court building in Jerusalem’, The JoA, 9, 2 (2004), elements, and to threshold conditions.
pp. 219– 239. 42. This is part of a larger subject discussed as ‘Architectural
32. L. Vale, Architecture, Power and National Identity (New Agency’ in, J. Till, Architecture Depends (Cambridge
Haven, London, Yale University Press, 1992). Mass., London, The MIT Press, 2009), pp. 153–170.
33. F. Urban, ‘Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall and the inven- 43. Eisenman’s conception of architecture as text was
tion of the post-modern city’, The JoA, 18, 2 (2013), unhinged by paradoxical aspects of Terragni’s architec-
pp. 254–296. ture, which coincided with the perspective of post-
34. Completed in 1990. structuralism.
35. M. Lozanovska, ‘Hagia Sofia (532–537AD): a study of 44. This break with formalism was well expressed in
centrality, interiority and transcendence in architec- D. Ghirardo, ed., Out of Site: A Social Criticism of
ture’, The JoA, 15, 4 (2010), pp. 425–448, and Architecture (Seattle, Bay Press, 1991). The nuance of
A. Sharr, ‘The sedimentation of memory’, The JoA, Anthony Vidler’s Histories of the Immediate Present:
15, 4 (2010), pp. 499–515. Inventing Architectural Modernism (Cambridge,
36. A. T. Friedman, Women and the Making of the Modern Mass., The MIT Press, 2008) is more subtle. His com-
House: A Social and Architectural History (New York, prehensive Chapter on Rowe, and Eisenman’s ‘Fore-
Harry N. Abrams, 1998). word’, are particularly relevant to the discussion here.
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The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 21
Number 5

45. Vidler’s conclusion to ‘Reckoning with Art History’ … argument that it at once constitutes and is consti-
takes a balanced view of Rowe’s approach to the tuted by … ’; A. Vidler, ‘Reckoning with Art History’,
building as object, emphasising his conviction that ‘ E. Petit, ed., Reckoning with Colin Rowe (NewYork,
… this very status … might be unpacked through London, Routledge, 2015), p. 52.
the detective faculty of vision … to reveal a complex