technologies on the one hand with architectural design on the other (Le Corbusier);
the fact that architecture and city planning influence each other and are mutually de-
pendent (CIAM texts); the concern with the organic and the functional (Moholy-Nagy,
the Bauhaus). It was Giedion, however, who forged these various elements of the
modern movement into a closely-knit whole and who gave it a historical legitimiza-
tion, tracing its roots back to the tradition of baroque architecture and to nineteenth-
century technological developments.
But it is not only on this intrinsic level that Space, Time and Architectureshows
all the signs of a canonization; extrinsically too, it undertook a similar role in stimu-
lating the process of the social acceptance of modern architecture. Written in Amer-
ica between 1938 and 1940, it has undergone countless reprints and revised editions
and has functioned as obligatory reading for generations of students in architecture.
It thus marked the end of a period of searching and questioning, a period of heated
debates and experiments often in conflicting directions, and the beginning of a new
period in which the direction to take was supposed to be clearly mapped out.
From Avant-Garde to Canonization
This development from avant-garde to established order can also be detected in the
internal evolution of Giedion’s writings. At first sight there would appear to be little
more than a shift in terminology (space-time instead of Durchdringung). Closer
analysis, however, shows that there is more at stake here. The development takes
place on two levels. First, there is a shift in Giedion’s notions about the social role of
architecture. Secondly, a difference in tone can be discerned between Bauen in
Frankreich on the one hand and Space, Time and Architectureon the other. These
texts belong to different genres.
The first difference concerns the way that the relation between architecture
and society is understood. Before 1930 the new architecture was deliberately pre-
sented as being closely bound up with social developments or even as anticipating
them. This is implied among other things in the metaphorical use of the term Durch-
dringung, with its connotations such as social mobility, emancipation, and liberation.
In Bauen in Frankreich Giedion states explicitly that it is no longer the upper classes
that advocate and make possible the building of progressive architecture but other,
less privileged layers of the population.^44 Befreites Wohnencontains a detailed plea
for the Existenzminimum, calling it the most important task for the New Building; it
treats it as the point of departure for the development of a new culture of everyday
life. In both publications, therefore, the new architecture is bound up with processes
of social emancipation. In Space, Time and Architecture,on the other hand, this con-
notation is no longer crucial: the social implications that are inherent in Durch-
dringungare not transferred to the concept of space-time. Social and political
connotations have been purged along with all references to social experiments and
to the revolutionizing aims of the new architecture. The question “whether ‘archi-
2
Constructing the Modern Movement