Architecture and Modernity : A Critique

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Constructing the Modern Movement

Pont Transbordeur (1905) and

harbor of Marseilles.

(From Sigfried Giedion,

Bauen in Frankreich, fig. 1.)

Giedion comments:

“A mobile ferry suspended by

cables from the footbridge high

above the water connects traffic

on the two sides of the harbor.

This structure is not to be taken

as a ‘machine.’ It cannot be

excluded from the urban image,

whose fantastic crowning it

denotes. But its interplay with

the city is neither ‘spatial’ nor

‘plastic.’ It engenders floating

relations and interpenetrations.

The boundaries of architecture

are blurred.”

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