An Architectural Avant-Garde?
At one moment at least in recent architectural history an attempt was made to come
up with a consistent but comprehensive response to the challenge of modernity. The
modern movement saw itself embodying a concept of architecture that constituted
a legitimate answer to the experience of modernity and to the problems and possi-
bilities resulting from the process of modernization. In its initial phase it had strong
ties to avant-garde movements such as futurism and constructivism. It shared their
opposition to tradition and to the false claims of nineteenth-century bourgeois cul-
ture. One should wonder, however, how far this alliance goes and whether the basic
conceptions about the new architecture do line up with the position of the avant-
garde in art and literature.
The phenomenon of the artistic avant-garde is historically linked to the rise of
kitsch.^1 Both avant-garde and kitsch can be seen as reactions to the experience ofI have attempted
to establish,
both by argument
and by objective evidence,
that in spite of the
seeming confusion
there is nevertheless
a true, if hidden, unity,
a secret synthesis,
in our present civilization.
Sigfried Giedion, 1941