Architecture and Modernity : A Critique

ing educational institutions and the needs of industry. The new school was intended to respond to this need. Its aim was to guar ...

151 was instituted first and foremost in response to the question of the position of the artist in the age of machines. The Bauh ...

International situationism was the last of the avant-garde movements that ex- plicitly strove to overthrow the status quo by dis ...

153 radicalizes and idealizes the transitory aspects of the experience of modernity. It imagines a world in which all that is fl ...

of individuals. The term suggests that one might make a relief map of the city, indi- cating the constant currents, fixed points ...

155 scope. They even accused Constant of functioning as a public-relations officer for capitalism because his project tried to i ...

urbanism. This causes a subversion of its power of persuasion and a diminishing of the resulting conditioning. The appropriate s ...

157 effectively help to prop up the system. The revolutionary artist, who aims to prevent the system from regaining control of p ...

played an important part. The Provos and Kabouters in Amsterdam were also in- spired by the situationists.^25 Many of the notion ...

159 is entirely free of oppression and which they have full control of. By pressing a but- ton they can adjust the temperature, ...

Culture has always been created in the margins of the system, he argues. In previous ages it was not the masses who produced cul ...

161 vre is referring not so much to a definite physical city context, but rather to the pres- ence of an urban atmosphere that h ...

During the first years of New Babylon, Constant made a large number of ma- quettes that come in a variety of forms. The first of ...

163 162 74 Constant, New Babylon, yellow sector, 1958. (Collection Gemeentemuseum, The Hague; photo: Bram Wisman.) 73 Constant, ...

4 Architecture as Critique of Modernity 76 Constant, New Babylon, mobile ladderlabyrinth, 1967. 75 Constant, New Babylon, interi ...

165 In terms of their form, the spatiovores are autonomous elements, something that makes them quite exceptional within the over ...

phasis here is often on constructional aspects and the artist’s aim is apparently to persuade the public of the viability of his ...

167 166 79 Constant, New Babylon, Labyratoire, 1962. (Collection Gemeentemuseum, The Hague.) 78 Constant, New Babylon, drawing, ...

4 Architecture as Critique of Modernity Constant, New Babylon, labyrinth with stairs, drawing, 1960. (Collection Gemeentemuseum, ...

169 The prints and drawings in which Constant gives an impression of the spatial character of New Babylon are also numerous. Fea ...