Modernism and the Archaic City:
The Pre-Industrial Past in the Imagination of 20th
Century Urban Design
Anthony Raynsford – [ dissertation topic ]
Histories
of urban design have generally emphasized modernism’s rejection of the
historical past, and consequently
its opposition both to 19th century
historicism and to so-called postmodern urbanism. This characterization, in
fact, follows
modernism’s own founding myths and often repeated slogans, in
particular its claims to have effected a symbolic and
aesthetic break with all earlier urban forms. However, such histories tend to
ignore or downplay the equally powerful ways
in which modernist urban design
built upon metaphors and images of the archaic, not as a means of declaring a
break with
the past but as a means of criticizing the present. To examine this
countervailing theme of modernism is perhaps to
generate a more complex and
ironic portrait of modernist urban design than has hitherto been produced.
Preindustrial
urban models have never been static objects of reference; rather they both
mediate and become
mediated by the theories and practices of urban design
through which they circulate. Modernism
and the Archaic City,
therefore, is not a project merely of highlighting
the romanticism, primitivism and nostalgia that have repeatedly erupted
within
modernist practices. Rather, it is also a project that explores the agency of
preindustrial urban forms within a series
of ‘feedback loops’ between twentieth
century observers and preindustrial forms, as these observers lived through the
profound social, aesthetic and technological shifts that continued to alter
urban spaces and spatial frames of reference.
This
project examines three overlapping periods: 1909-1967; 1944-1979; and
1966-1985. The aim is to reinterpret
these periods or stages of modernism
through the lens of preindustrial cities, thereby supplementing, but also
critiquing,
dominant historical accounts of modernism in architecture and urban
design. In particular, this revised account places into
question the idea
that some kind of ‘post-modern urbanism,’ characterized by a new use of
pre-industrial forms suddenly
appeared around 1960. The three periods,
therefore, consist in stages within modernism itself, revealing a dialectic
between modernism and modernity, as well as
between modernism and the archaic.
Anthony Raynsford
E-mail: email: arayn@sas.upenn.edu
Last Modified: 2/06/08