sienneby Picasso (figure 13),^40 while in the commentary constant reference is made
to the qualities of transparency and simultaneity that are peculiar to both these
works. (In the case of the Bauhaus, what is involved is the creation of a simultaneity
between interior and exterior spaces and the transparency of the walls; with the
painting L’Arlésienneit is a matter of the transparency of overlapping surfaces and
the simultaneous depicting of different facets of the same object.)
The central thesis about the importance of the space-time concept in the new
architecture is developed and tested against the work of five masters of modern ar-
chitecture: Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Alvar Aalto, and Jørn
Utzon.^41 Giedion regards the new concept of space as the most typical feature of the
new architecture. It was the product of a combination of an advance in the use of ma-
terials and construction technologies on the one hand and the artistic discoveries of
cubism, futurism, and similar movements on the other. These artistic developments
led to a new vision of space that was not based on perspective, that emphasized si-
multaneity (the depiction of an object from different viewpoints at the same time),
Picasso, L’Arlésienne,
1911–1912.
(From Sigfried Giedion, Space,
Time and Architecture, fig. 298.)
Walter Gropius, Bauhaus Dessau,
1926.
(From Sigfried Giedion, Space,
Time and Architecture, fig. 299;
photo: Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin, by
Lucia Moholy.)2
Constructing the Modern Movement13 14