TOPICS, DOUBLE CODING AND FORM FUNCTIONALITY IN THOMAS ADÈS'S PIANO QUINTET

This article interrogates the formal and expressive roles of the opening horn-call topic in Thomas Adès's Piano Quintet (2001). Although William Caplin describes the relationship of topics to form as ‘rather tenuous’, he notes that some topics have a ‘likely’ formal relation.1 Within this, he includes the rising horn call as an initiating function. Drawing upon Charles Jencks’ influential concept of double coding, which describes a sign's ‘attempt to communicate with both the public and a concerned minority’,2 I show how the Piano Quintet's horn-call opening satisfies, on one level, the familiar (tonal) initiating formal function that Caplin describes but, understood in the context of two significant reversals of the horn call's characteristic rising contour to descending horn fifths (the openings of Beethoven's ‘Les Adieux’ sonata and Ligeti's Horn Trio), Adès's opening can be understood as transgressive. This Janus-faced interpretation of the opening bars engages both positively and critically with these references to the past, a double-coded understanding which points to Adès's continued popularity in both academic and concert spheres.

‘Excavating’ Pruitt-Igoe using space syntax

Pruitt-Igoe, in St Louis, Missouri, United States, was one of the most notorious social housing projects of the twentieth century. Charles Jencks argued opening his book The Language of Post-Modern Architecture, ‘Modern Architecture died in St Louis, Missouri on July 15, 1972 at 3.32 pm (or thereabouts) when the infamous Pruitt-Igoe scheme, or rather several of its slab blocks, were given the final coup de grâce by dynamite.’ However, the magazine Architectural Forum had heralded the project as ‘the best high apartment’ of the year in 1951. Indeed, one of its first residents in 1957 described Pruitt-Igoe as ‘like an oasis in a desert, all of this newness’. But a later resident derided the housing project as ‘Hell on Earth’ in 1967. Only eighteen years after opening, the St Louis Public Housing Authority (PHA) began demolishing Pruitt-Igoe in 1972 [1]. It remains commonly cited for the failures of modernist design and planning.

Vietovaizdžio meninė raiška, forma ir prasmė:

Straipsnyje analizuojama dviejų postmodernizmo epochos kraštovaizdžio architektūros kūrėjų – prancūzų kraštovaizdžio architekto, vieno iš naujos urbanistinės krypties kraštovaizdžio architektūros teoretikų ir praktikų Michel Corajoud (1937–2014) ir amerikiečio ar brito postmodernizmo architektūros mąstytojo, daugelio teorinių veikalų ir kraštovaizdžio formavimo sprendinių autoriaus Charles Jencks (1939–2019) – kūrybos bruožai. Analizuojami postmodernistinio miesto vietovaizdžiai, novatoriška vizija pagrįsti ir įgyvendinti kraštovaizdžio formavimo projektai. Siekiama palyginti dviejų kraštovaizdžio meistrų kūrybines idėjas, susieti jas su dabartinėmis urbanistikos, kraštovaizdžio architektūros mokslo ir praktikos tendencijomis ir teoriniais modeliais.

Six Traditions

In the academic year 2017-2018, an experience was launched in 4 course units: Theory of Architecture I and II, and History of Architecture III and IV. The researched object would be the same, while aiming at its intrinsic variations as a way to unravel common and uncommon grounds between theory and history. Besides my voice in the “role of directed research” and the students’ voice in “the role of play”, I felt the need to introduce a third voice, one that would help to “free up the habitual links between things”, in theory and in history. It was how Charles Jencks was introduced to students. The challenge was to question his mappings of architectural evolution, by scrutinising his “evolutionary trees”. In 1973, Charles Jencks published Modern Movements in Architecture, a book resulting from his doctoral dissertation with Reyner Banham’s guidance. It presented a critical mapping of modern architecture, as a solely movement, through the rereading of moments, objects and actors according to “Six Traditions”: logical, idealist, self-conscious, intuitive, activist, and unself-conscious (80% of environment). The permanently incomplete and questionable “evolutionary tree” – yet always intriguing –, had been updated by Jencks himself: in 2000 (Fig.1), and in 2015 (Fig.2). With the latter, new six traditions replaced the previous ones. The Exhibition “Six Traditions” aimed to reveal these two updates. In History of Architecture III and IV, the works focused on the themes of the twentieth century, while in Theory of Architecture I and II, the focus was on the themes of the last twenty years. In group work, written essays introduced, described and questioned the topics within the maps, and were complemented by posters, which would be the core of the Exhibition “Six Traditions”. The work was displayed at the Department of Architecture of the University of Coimbra between January 15th and February 28th, 2019.

SEMIOTICS ANALYSIS OF BETAWI VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE AT SETU BABAKAN, JAKARTA

<p><strong><em>Abstract</em></strong></p><p><em>In traditional societies, it is not too difficult to integrate the style and symbols of a house because they have a common language of the same yet mutually understandable style. However, this can not be applied nowadays with the development of pluralistic cultures encountered by Betawi people. Semiotic enables community to reflect on various related issues in the form of architecture and spatial arrangement<strong>. </strong>This research was conducted to obtain information that will be used to complement semiotics analytical methods. Field data collection methods are done both visually through recording of buildings and orally through interviewing some of the residents. This research uses semiotics analysis model derived from Ferdinand de Saussure which was adapted by Charles Peirce and used by Charles Jencks. Semiotics discussion on the style of Betawi house at Setu Babakan area consists of four major parts: building orientation, zoning, building typology, and building ornament. The result of this study confirms that there are several changes on the four major parts to support the shift of the village into a cultural village. These changes represent the sign of adaptability of the community to support the preservation and maintenance of Betawi house in this cultural village.</em></p><p><em> </em></p><p><em>Keywords: style and symbol, vernacular architecture, Betawi traditional house</em></p>

Late Modernism

Late Modernism is a critics’ term rather than one that artists used themselves. Introducing it in the late 1970s, architectural critic Charles Jencks was probably the first to use ‘Late Modernism’ systematically. In addition to architectural scholarship, the term can be found in art criticism and musicology, but it is most firmly established in the field of literary studies. Late Modernism, like Modernism, can refer to a literary period, style, or genre and is exceedingly difficult to pinpoint. Accordingly, various literary critics use ‘Late Modernism’ to refer to different time periods or sets of writers from roughly the 1930s up to the present. Invariably, however, Late Modernism describes literature that continues characteristics associated with Modernism beyond the culmination of high Modernism. Hence, Late Modernism exists at a distance to the modernisms of the 1910s and 1920s. It marks a point at which modernist artists become self-consciously modernist, or at which modernist aesthetics become less effective or more difficult to continue.

Listing postmodernism

Like modernism, postmodernism was an international phenomenon with significant regional variants. Britain played an important role in mediating between the very different postmodernisms developing in North America and Continental Europe. It helped that London was at the centre of architectural discourse in the 1970s. The Architectural Association attracted international figures such as Charles Jencks, Léon Krier, and Rem Koolhaas, while publications such as Architectural Design and Andreas Papadakis's Academy Editions imprint combined coverage of new buildings with excursions into theory and history. James Stirling, John Outram, and Edward Jones won important overseas commissions, while the work of Terry Farrell, Jeremy Dixon, and others was exhibited at the seminal 1980 Venice Biennale.