Albert Kahn

2022 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Architectural History ◽  
Ford Motor Company ◽  
Modern Architecture ◽  
Assembly Lines ◽  
Considerable Effort ◽  
Steel Company ◽  
Industrial Architecture ◽  
Recent Attention ◽  
Intellectual Climate

Though he has been marginalized in most mainstream accounts of modern architecture, Albert Kahn (b. 1869–d. 1942) is increasingly considered one of the most important and consequential US architects of the 20th century. Kahn is known primarily for the technically innovative and rigorously functional factory buildings that his still-extant firm Albert Kahn Associates, Inc. (founded 1903) designed for automotive manufacturers, including the Ford Motor Company, but his firm was also responsible for hundreds of eclectically styled buildings for other purposes in Detroit, Michigan. Research and writing regarding Albert Kahn often requires considerable effort to disambiguation. Most importantly, Albert Kahn the man is far from a synecdoche for the firm he founded, Albert Kahn Associates, Inc., which employed upward of several hundred people at its height and is still in operation under the simplified Kahn moniker today. Some mid-20th century historians and critics substituted the inaccurate and often derogatory moniker “Albert Kahn Inc.” as name for the firm to suggest its alienated and impersonal nature. Albert Kahn’s siblings are also worthy of attention in their own right. Frequently mentioned in the extant literature are brothers Julius (b. 1874–d. 1942) who was a trained engineer, inventor and co-founder of the highly successful Trussed Concrete Steel Company; Moritz (b. 1880–d. 1939), who was also an executive of the Kahn firm pivotal in its operations in the USSR between 1929 and 1932, and occasionally Louis (b. 1885–d. 1945), who was a manager and executive in the Kahn firm. Views of Albert Kahn have served as a barometer for the intellectual climate in architecture culture since the early 20th century, indexing the relative importance of aesthetics, ethics, and technics. Studies of Kahn and his firm have, until recently, primarily focused on their contributions to industrial architecture and the influence of their early factory buildings on architecture culture at large. These studies often describe the give-and-take between assembly lines and the streamlined, pragmatic design of the buildings that encompassed them. An upsurge of recent attention to Kahn’s work has been oriented away from issues of design toward larger histories. Some scholars have addressed the shift toward large, integrated offices within the profession, for which Albert Kahn Associates was a groundbreaking exemplar. Others have addressed the ways Kahn served the growth of global enterprise, revealing that his marginalization from architectural history has effaced the willful complicity of US architects in compounding capitalist power and solidifying its ideology. These topics remain rich veins for future researchers.

Две в одной

2015 ◽  
pp. 104-132
Author(s):  
Андрей Владимирович Боков
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Current Practice ◽  
Architectural History ◽  
Modern Architecture ◽  
Human Settlements ◽  
History Of

Modern architecture is not something that had been born from nothing at the turn of 20th century as somebody thinks. The roots of this phenomenon derive from the profane paradigm which constantly stays in a dialogue with the Sacred one and goes through all the history of human settlements. The remarkable events of architectural history and the current practice are the consequences of the relations (domination or balance) between the Sacred (high, ideal) and the profane (practical, functional) paradigms.

The Bauhaus Frame Reliability and Loosening

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 107-121
Author(s):  
Kazimierz M. Łyszcz
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Modern Architecture ◽  
Design Activity ◽  
Art World ◽  
Visual Form ◽  
Artistic Activity ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Architecture And Design

The paper presents the problem of the frame, a clearly prevalent pattern in the selected activities of Bauhaus representatives. Despite only a dozen years of its existence, the school of modern architecture and design had a significant impact on the 20th-century world of art, and its social context, aesthetic and functions. In spite of its utilitarianist approach, it has developed a variety of standpoints that resulted in debates over the limits of art and have evolved into a wide range of creative movements that became a permanent feature of the art world. The essence of artistic activity evolved in this formation in two seemingly contradictory directions – towards a radical consolidation of the visual form, which is devoid of any decorations, and its gradual opening to the space surrounding the artistic and design activity. The first direction led to strengthening the integrity of the work and its materiality, while the second led to interference with the environment and the disappearance of the outline of the form. The diverse involvements and relations between these attitudes created different understandings of the frame encompassing the works.

Pyongyang Modern: Architecture of Multiplicity in Postwar North Korea

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-296
Author(s):  
Cheehyung Harrison Kim
Keyword(s):  
North Korea ◽  
Architectural History ◽  
Modern Architecture ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Substantial Part ◽  
Work Culture ◽  
Architectural Form ◽  
Postwar Reconstruction ◽  
History Of ◽  
Architectural Development

Abstract This article explores North Korea’s postwar reconstruction through the variegated features of architectural development in Pyongyang. The rebirth of Pyongyang as the center of both state authority and work culture is distinctly represented by architecture. In this setting, architecture as theory and practice was divided into two contiguous and interconnected types: monumental structures symbolizing the utopian vision of the state and vernacular structures instrumental to the regime of production in which the apartment was an exemplary form. The author makes three claims: first, Pyongyang’s monumental and vernacular architectural forms each embody both utopian and utilitarian features; second, the multiplicity of meaning exhibited in each architectural form is connected to the transnational process of bureaucratic expansion and industrial developmentalism; and third, North Korea’s postwar architectural history is a lens through which state socialism of the twentieth century can be better understood—not as an exceptional moment but as a constituent of globalized modernity, a historical formation dependent on the collusive expansion of state power and industrial capitalism. A substantial part of this article is a discussion of the methods and sources relevant to writing an architectural history of North Korea.

The Bacterial Clients of Modern Architecture

2020 ◽  
pp. 6-17
Author(s):  
Beatriz Colomina ◽  
Mark Wigley
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Modern Architecture ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Organism ◽  
Contemporary Research

The human is an unstable idea; simultaneously an all-powerful creature – capable of transforming the whole ecology of the planet – yet extremely fragile, a murky ghost. Contemporary research into our microbiome portrays the human itself as a mobile ecology constructed by the endless flux of interactions between thousands of different species of bacteria – some of which are millions of years old and others joined us just a few months ago. This challenges conventional understandings of architecture. What does it mean to house the human when we no longer think that the human organism is securely contained within its skin? What is the role of architecture when the humans occupying it are understood to be suspended in clouds of bacteria shared, generated and mobilized by other macro-organisms (pets, plants, insects…) and the building itself; when the human is not a clearly defined organism or in any sense independent; when the architectural client is a massive set of ever-changing trans-species alliances that make the apparent complexity of even the largest of cities seem quaintly uncomplicated. What kind of care do architects offer if we think of ourselves as alliances between bacteria within the apparent limits of the body and throughout the spaces we occupy? What faces 21st century architects in comparison to 20th century architects?

Methods and materials in an investigation of industrial architecture

1982 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 41-48
Author(s):  
Joan Skinner
Keyword(s):  
Architectural History ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Economic Research ◽  
Design History ◽  
Integrated Methodology ◽  
Industrial Architecture ◽  
History Of ◽  
Archive Project

The architectural history of factories is not yet a popular field of research. Nor, in design history terms, is there investigation into how efficiently their design is related to functions or how it affects the well-being of the occupants. Such investigations must cross the boundaries of, and interrelate the fields of architectural, social, political and economic research. An integrated methodology has yet to be achieved. This article describes how a section of the Dunlop Archive Project is finding its way in this field.

scholarly journals The avant-garde in the architecture and visual arts of Post-Revolutionary Mexico

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fernando N. Winfield
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Architectural Design ◽  
Political Context ◽  
Modern Architecture ◽  
The Political ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Mexican Architecture ◽  
Direct Reflection

Commenting on an exhibition of contemporary Mexican architecture in Rome in 1957, the polemic and highly influential Italian architectural critic and historian, Bruno Zevi, ridiculed Mexican modernism for combining Pre-Columbian motifs with modern architecture. He referred to it as ‘Mexican Grotesque’. Inherent in Zevi’s comments were an attitude towards modern architecture that defined it in primarily material terms; its principle role being one of “spatial and programmatic function”. Despite the weight of this Modernist tendency in the architectural circles of Post-Revolutionary Mexico, we suggest in this paper that Mexican modernism cannot be reduced to such “material” definitions. In the highly charged political context of Mexico in the first half of the 20th Century, modern architecture was perhaps above all else, a tool for propaganda. In this political atmosphere it was undesirable, indeed it was seen as impossible, to separate art, architecture and politics in a way that would be a direct reflection of Modern architecture’s European manifestations. Form was to follow function, but that function was to be communicative as well as spatial and programmatic. One consequence of this “political communicative function” in Mexico was the combination of the “mural tradition” with contemporary architectural design; what Zevi defined as “Mexican Grotesque”. In this paper, we will examine the political context of Post-Revolutionary Mexico and discuss what may be defined as its most iconic building; the Central Library at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico . In direct counterpoint to Zevi, we will suggest that it was far from grotesque, but rather was one of the most committed political statements made by the Modern Movement throughout the Twentieth Century. It was propaganda, it was political. It was utopian.

scholarly journals “TABULA RASA” PLANNING: CREATIVE DESTRUCTION AND BUILDING A NEW URBAN IDENTITY IN TEHRAN

2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 210-220
Author(s):  
Asma MEHAN
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Structure ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Architectural History ◽  
Dominant Strategy ◽  
Modern Architecture ◽  
Urban Identity ◽  
The Social ◽  
Blank Slate ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The City

The concept of Tabula Rasa, as a desire for sweeping renewal and creating a potential site for the construction of utopian dreams is presupposition of Modern Architecture. Starting from the middle of the 19th century to the first half of the 20th century, Iranian urban and architectural history has been integrated with modernization, and western-influenced modernity. The case of Tehran as the Middle Eastern political capital is the main scene for the manifestation of modernity within it’s urban projects that was associated with several changes to the social, political and spatial structure of the city. In this regard, the strategy of Tabula Rasa as a utopian blank slate upon which a new Iran could be conceived “over again” – was the dominant strategy of modernization during First Pahlavi era (1925–1941). This article explores the very concept of constructing a new image of Tehran through the processes of autocratic modernism and orientalist historicism that also influenced the discourse of national identity during First Pahlavi era.

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