A novel reading of the work of one of the most influential designers
of the twentieth century.
In this provocative intellectual biography, architectural historian Mark
Wigley makes the surprising claim that the thinking behind modernist
architect Konrad Wachsmann's legendary projects was dominated by the
idea of television. Investigating the archives of one of the most
influential designers of the twentieth century, Wigley scrutinizes
Wachsmann's design, research, and teaching, closely reading a succession
of unseen drawings, models, photographs, correspondence, publications,
syllabi, reports, and manuscripts to argue that Wachsmann is an
anti-architect--a student of some of the most influential designers of
the 1920s who dedicated thirty-five post-Second World War years to the
disappearance of architecture.
Wachsmann turned architecture against itself. His hypnotic projects for
a new kind of space were organized around the thought that television
enables a different way of living together. While architecture is
typically embarrassed by television, preferring to act as if it never
happened, Wachsmann fully embraced it. He dissolved buildings into
pulsating mirages that influenced the experimental avant-gardes of the
1960s and 1970s; but Wigley demonstrates that this work was even more
extreme than the experiments it inspired. Wigley's forensic analysis of
a career shows that Wachsmann developed one of the most compelling
manifestos of what architecture would need to become in the age of
ubiquitous electronics.
