Pursuing historical analogies between nineteenth-century theories and
the current practices captivated by digital reproducibility, this book
offers a critical take on architecture's contemporaneity through four
essays: tectonics, materiality, cladding, and labor.
Fundamental to this proposition is the historicity of Gottfried Semper's
theorization of architecture amidst the outpouring of new materials and
construction techniques during the 1850s. Starting with Semper's
differentiation between theatricalization and the tectonic of
theatricality, this book examines thematic essential to architecture's
self-representation. Even though the title of this book recalls the
Semperian Four Elements of Architecture, its argument encapsulates a
unique historico-theoretical project probing the tectonic of
theatricality beyond Semper. The invisible tie between technique and
labor is the cord running through the four subjects covered in this
book. In exploring these subjects from the theoretical standpoint of
Marxian dialectics, this book's contribution is focused on, but not
limited to, the topicality of labor today when its relationship with
capital has been further obscured by the prevailing digitalization of
commodity exchange value, starting roughly in the 1990s. Each essay
examines Semper's theorization of architecture in contradistinction to
the ways in which technology's mediation has dominated architecture's
representation.
Burrowing through the invisible tie between technique and work,
asymptomatic of architecture's predicament in global capitalism,
Towards a Critique of Architecture's Contemporaneity advances the
scope of architectural criticism beyond the exhausted formalism and
architecture's turn to philosophy circa the 1980s and the present
tendencies for presentism. It will therefore be of interest to
researchers and students of architectural history and theory.
