Vernacular Modernism challenges the common perception of modern architecture as the example of an internationalism which eradicates local traditions and transforms the globe into a faceless urban sprawl. The essays trace the vernacular in some of modernity's most paradigmatic sites—both real and imagined. They engage in a search for an idiom that mediates between place and space, the vernacular and the abstract in architecture, from its early phase and Hermann Muthesius via LeCorbusier's high modernism, to the contemporary movement of a "critical regionalism." "The volume's broad geographic scope and inventive exploration of diverse vernacular expressions will convince readers that modernization and modernism were far more open-ended and heterogeneous than previously acknowledged."― H-Net Reviews Vernacular Modernism challenges the common perception of modern architecture as the example of an internationalism which eradicates local traditions and transforms the globe into a faceless urban sprawl. The essays trace the vernacular in some of modernity’s most paradigmatic sites—both real and imagined. They engage in a search for an idiom that mediates between place and space, the vernacular and the abstract in architecture, from its early phase and Hermann Muthesius via LeCorbusier’s high modernism, to the contemporary movement of a “critical regionalism.” "The volume's broad geographic scope and inventive exploration of diverse vernacular expressions will convince readers that modernization and modernism were far more open-ended and heterogeneous than previously acknowledged."—H-Net Reviews “This collection of essays imaginatively and with great insight discusses the various vernaculars within modernist architectural practice, thereby altering our understanding of modernism’s relationship to the past, its uses of memory, and its embeddedness in historically and geographically specific contexts.” —Andreas Huyssen, Columbia University Maiken Umbach teaches modern European history at the University of Manchester (UK). She is the author of Federalism and Enlightenment in Germany, 1740-1806 (2000) and German Federalism: Past, Present, Future (2002). Bernd Huppauf is Professor of German at New York University. Among his numerous publications in German and English are Globalization and the Future of German (2004), Skepsis und literarische Einbildungskraft (2003), War, Violence, and the Modern Condition (1997). Vernacular Modernism Heimat, Globalization, and the Built Environment STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Copyright © 2005 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University All right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-8047-5343-2 Contents Contributors.........................................................................................................................viiIntroduction: Vernacular Modernism BERND HPPAUF AND MAIKEN UMBACH..................................................................11. Modernism and the Vernacular at the Museum of Modern Art, New York MARDGES BACON.................................................252. At Home in the Ironic Imagination: The Rational Vernacular and Spectacular Texts MICHAEL SALER...................................533. Spaces of the Vernacular: Ernst Bloch's Philosophy of Hope and the German Hometown BERND HPPAUF.................................844. The Deutscher Werkbund, Globalization, and the Invention of Modern Vernaculars MAIKEN UMBACH.....................................1145. The Vernacular, Modernism, and Le Corbusier FRANCESCO PASSANTI...................................................................1416. The Vernacular, Memory and Architecture STANFORD ANDERSON........................................................................1577. The Vernacular in Place and Time: Relocating History in Post-Soviet Cities JOHN CZAPLICKA........................................172Epilogue: Critical Regionalism Revisited: Reflections on the Mediatory Potential of Built Form KENNETH FRAMPTON.....................193Notes................................................................................................................................199Subject Index........................................................................................................................253Index of Names.......................................................................................................................261 Chapter One Modernism and the Vernacular at the Museum of Modern Art, New York MARDGES BACON With its founding in 1929, the Museum of Modern Art in New York provided a principal site of modern visual culture in the United States. To the leadership of the Modern, and especially its first director, Alfred H. Barr Jr., modernism was inextricably associated with the European avant-garde but held a global destiny. By establishing the museum as a locus of modernism in the New World, Barr and his colleagues confirmed the teleolog