Siegfried giedion an intellectual biography

Sigfried Giedion

Swiss architectural historian

Sigfried Giedion (also spelled Siegfried Giedion; 14 April , Prague &#; 10 April , Zürich) was a Bohemian-born Swisshistorian and critic of architecture.

His ideas and books, Space, Time and Architecture, and Mechanization Takes Command, had an vital conceptual influence on the members of the Independent Group at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in the s.[1] Giedion was a pupil of Heinrich Wölfflin.

The architectural and cultural historian Sigfried Giedion was a contemporary of the pioneering generation of modern architects - the generation of Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier. After studying art history with Heinrich Wolfflin, Giedion followed a polemical career that went far beyond the conventional bounds of academia. He defined the historical context and significance of the modern movement, proclaiming its goals and chronicling its progress. His book Space, Time and Architecture has been enormously powerful for successive generations of architects and historians, and this and other writing provide the basis for an intellectual biography of Giedion that is of fundamental importance to the understanding of architectural modernism.

He was the first secretary-general of the Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne, and taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, and the ETH-Zurich.

In Space, Time & Architecture (), Giedion wrote an influential standard history of up-to-date architecture, while Mechanization Takes Command established a new kind of historiography.

Biography

Sigfried Giedion was born in Prague to Swiss-Jewish parents. His father was a textile manufacturer from Zugersee. He graduated from the University of Vienna in with a degree in engineering.

Not wanting to access the family business, he wrote poems and plays, one of which was staged by Max Reinhardt. He then studied art history in Munich with Heinrich Wölfflin, graduating in with a thesis on Romanesque and after time Baroque Classicism.

His ideas and books, Space, Time and Architectureand Mechanization Takes Commandhad an crucial conceptual influence on the members of the Independent Group at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in the s. Sigfried Giedion was born in Prague to Swiss-Jewish parents. His father was a textile manufacturer from Zugersee. He graduated from the University of Vienna in with a degree in engineering.

This function aroused the interest of A.E. Brinckmann, a well-known art historian, who invited him to Cologne, an offer that Giedion refused because he was not interested in an academic career. Instead, in he attended the Bauhaus, where he met Walter Gropius.

From that meeting he got closer and closer to the Bauhaus and its protagonists, becoming himself a precursor of the modern movement.

In , he founded, together with Le Corbusier and Helène de Mandrot, the CIAM, of which he was also general secretary.

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In the same year, he took part in the collective initiative Werkbundsiedlung Neubühl, one of the first residential centers in the style of the modern movement, remaining on the steering committee until He was also the builder of the Doldertalhäuser in Switzerland, which he saw as a manifesto of the modern architectural movement, as well as the founder of Wohnbedarf AG, a construction company close to the modern movement.

Through countless interventions in international trade journals, he expressed his support for Le Corbusier's League of Nations project in Geneva, won in but disqualified because the submission was in the wrong medium.

In –39, he taught at Harvard University at the instigation of Gropius, where he gave the Charles Eliot Norton Memorial Lectures.

These helped form the basis for his work, Space, Time and Architecture, the history of the modern movement published in In he became a professor at the ETH-Zürich (Federal Polytechnic School), a post he held until the s, and which he alternated with another at MIT in the Together States of America.

Sigfried Giedion : An Intellectual Biography - Google Books: Giedion, S. (Sigfried), -- Criticism and interpretation, Architecture, Modern -- 20th century, Modernism (Art) Publisher Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

During this time he wrote busily, both as a CIAM editor and as an independent author, about his study on modernity, most notably Mechanization Takes Command, a critical history of mechanization seen in its historical and sociological aspects.

Personal life and family

In , Giedion married Carola Giedion-Welcker, whom he met while they were both students of Wölfflin in Munich. She created a circle of avant-garde artists in Switzerland, which included Hans Arp and Aldo van Eyck.

Their daughter Verena married the architect Paffard Keatinge-Clay.

In , Giedion suffered a heart attack when walking dwelling from the cinema.[2] He died in Zurich on the 10th of April

Works

  • Spätbarocker und romantischer Klassizismus,
  • Befreites Wohnen, , published in English as Liberated Dwelling, Lars Müller Publishers,
  • Space, Hour and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition, Harvard University Press, 5th edition, , ISBN&#;
  • Nine Points on Monumentality,
  • Mechanization Takes Command: A Contribution to Anonymous History, Oxford University Press
  • Walter Gropius, work and teamwork, Reinhold Pub.

    Co.

  • Architecture, You and Me: The Diary of a Development, Harvard UP
  • The Everlasting Present: The Beginnings of Art and The Beginnings of Architecture, []
  • Architecture and the Phenomenona of Transition. The Three Space Conceptions in Architecture,
  • Building in France, Building in Iron, Building in Ferroconcrete, Getty Research Institute, , originally published in German as Bauen in Frankreich, Bauen in Eisen, Bauen in Eisenbeton (Leipzig: Klinkhardt & Biermann, )

Notes

References

  • Sokratis Georgiadis ().

    Jump to ratings and reviews. Want to read. Purchase on Amazon. Rate this book.

    Sigfried Giedion: An Intellectual Biography, Edinburgh University Press

  • Reto Geiser. Giedion and America. Repositioning the History of Modern Architecture. gta Verlag, Zurich , ISBN&#;
  • Almut Grunewald. The Giedion World: Sigfried Giedion and Carola Giedion-Welcker in Dialogue. Translated by Bronwen Saunders.

    Zurich: Scheidegger & Spiess, ISBN

External links