ARCH20003 MODERN ARCHITECTURE: MOMO TO POMO SM1 2025

ASSESSMENT TASK 3 ESSAY

Marks: Marked out of 100

Weight: 40% of the total marks for the subject

Due Date: 5pm Friday 30th May

The Objective

The Biennale Architettura 2023: 18th International Architecture Exhibition staged in Venice, Italy two years ago was envisaged as a Laboratory of the Future.  In convening it, Lesley Lokko, the Biennale’s Creative Director (and recent visitor to the Melbourne School of Design) asked the question: “What does it mean to be an agent of change?” and further commented, “architects have a unique opportunity to put forward ambitious and creative ideas that help us imagine a more equitable and optimistic future in common.”[1]

Beyond the Biennale, a review of current policy and advocacy advanced by various professional institutes of architects internationally, including the Australian Institute of Architects, reveals common themes for a more diverse, equitable and optimistic future on issues such as the environment, social justice, community resilience, diversity, equity and housing.  If we zoom out, improving people’s lives has been a longer goal of modern architecture as communities encountered the rapidly changing social, economic, scientific, industrial and technological conditions of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  In other words, the issues of today are variously entwined with the history of modernity and modern architecture.  These issues are also now being used as lenses in recent and current modern architectural historiography.

Assignment Instructions

For this essay, students are asked to adopt one of following themes and select one of the architects listed beneath it.  Use the theme as a lens to discuss the architect’s work and consider how their practice or projects (and with it, architectural history) might contribute to current architectural debate and practice.  The essay should be carefully researched, demonstrating consultation and critical evaluation of relevant primary and secondary source material.   The writing style. should be lucid, aiming at readership of practicing designers and students, in other words, readers with background architectural knowledge.  The essay should be illustrated with exactly six images, carefully chosen and placed in the text to support key themes and arguments.  The goal is a thought-provoking, illustrated essay as might appear in a professional architectural journal.

Topics

Climate Change and Sustainability. With the ongoing use of fossil fuels, it is widely understood that the world is facing the prospect of catastrophic climate change. On one hand, the technologically-oriented modern architecture was predicated upon the consumption of fossil fuels.  The performance of key buildings associated with the movement were and remain energy intensive.  It is part of the problem.  On the other hand, many leading architects of the twentieth century designed buildings incorporating passive responses to different environmental conditions globally. Select one of the following architects/partnerships and discuss the extent to which chosen projects addressed environmental and energy contexts of the time. Note that they practiced before the consolidation of sustainability or climate change agendas. Consider both successes and any shortcomings.  On what terms might the architect’s work be of interest in relation to current-day knowledge and action on climate change and sustainability?

Charles Correa

Lucio Costa

Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew

Richard Rogers

Social Justice. The racially motivated police-killing of George Floyd in the United States (2020) and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement has further ignited debate about historical and contemporary racial, ethnic and social injustice in many places, often connected with the intertwined processes of colonialism and modernity. Increasingly, communities and activists are calling for various forms of restorative justice including in the built environment.  As explained by the American Institute of Architects report Justice in the Built environment, justice can “take the form. of just processes (ones that involve people who have experienced harm) and just outcomes (spaces that are safe, welcoming, and worthy of the beings who inhabit them).”[2]  Select one of the following architects/partnerships and identify contexts and communities that they worked within, as well as processes and projects that can be considered just. This might include acknowledgement of any shortcomings in terms of understandings of social justice today:

ATBAT-Afrique [or Candilis Josic Woods]

Lina Bo Bardi

Hassan Fathy

Alison and Peter Smithson

Charlotte Perriand

Community Resilience. Community Resilience refers to the capacity for communities to “withstand, adapt to and recover from adversity”.  Today, adversity may be experienced, either acutely or incrementally, as a consequence of environmental, political, social or economic change.  The idea of strengthening communities through urban and architectural design is seen in theories and projects associated with the post-WWII forums of CIAM and Team Ten.  Alternately, critiques of modernism in the 1960s, associated with the rise of postmodernism, advocated direct engagement with contexts and communities that had been overlooked in earlier discourses, and the development of contextual, community-oriented design languages.  Select one of the following architects/practices/partnerships and discuss the ways in which their thinking and/or design work has addressed themes of building community resilience.  Reflect on how a discussion of their work might contribute to current-day architectural debate and practice:

Aldo van Eyck

Charles Moore

Aldo Rossi

Alison and Peter Smithson

Denise Scott Brown or Venturi Scott Brown & Associates

Right to Housing. The United Nations identifies access to adequate housing as a human right.  However, this is not the case for more than one billion people living insecurely in the world.  Moreover, in wealthy capitalist economies such as Australia, housing is also treated as a commodity, bought and sold to generate private wealth rather than social good, thereby limiting access and discriminating against many groups and individuals.  Responding to industrialisation and urbanisation, mass housing was central to twentieth century discourses on urban and architectural design and was the subject of many influential design projects (built and unbuilt).  Examine the principles and models of modernist housing by one of the following critics/architects/partnerships.  Consider their theories, successes and any shortcomings.  Identify any relevant ideas or outcomes that might contribute to current-day architectural debate and practice on the right and access to housing:

Le Corbusier

Catherine Bauer

Kisho Kurokawa

Moshe Safdie

Ernst May and/or Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky

Jorn Utzon

Gender, Equity and Diversity in the Architectural Profession. Historically, the architectural profession – like other professional fields – has been dominated by men and this imbalance is reflected in architectural histories which typically feature few women architects.  However, more recent research is challenging these biased narratives, revealing the increasing presence of women in the profession from the late nineteenth century and especially from the 1920s onwards.  Their work encompasses a variety of scales, from modernist urban design projects, across a full range of building typologies, and through to interiors and objects.  Select one of the following architects/practices and discuss the ways in which their careers and projects have challenged normative modes of modernist architectural practice and/or modes of authorship at the time:

Lina Bo Bardi

Denise Scott Brown

Marion Mahony Griffin

Charlotte Perriand

Lilly Reich

Minnette de Silva

Conservation approaches for modernist buildings. Modern architecture in the early to mid-twentieth century strove to be new; employing new technologies, materials and aesthetics.  Many of those buildings are now at, or approaching one hundred years old (i.e. they’re antiques!).  In many instances, their functions are obsolete, and their performance and materials are failing.  Key tenets of western conservation practice include the preservation of authentic (i.e. original) functions, materials and elements but, as queried by David Fixler, is this the right approach for buildings that were innovative and striving for newness? Critically evaluate the conservation work of one of the following projects.  Why is it important? How has it been conserved? To what extent are new elements and materials introduced?  Is the building still "modern architecture" as its original design and construction intended?

Mies van der Rohe, Barcelona Pavilion

Walter Gropius, Fagus Factory

Wells Coates, Isokon

Le Corbusier, Villa Savoye

Eileen Gray, E-1027

Approaching the Essay

Consider the following requirements and recommendations in developing your essay:

A good place to start is to read about your architect and their work in the general survey texts recommended for MoMo to PoMo (refer lecture 1). This should give you a sense of the nature of their career and how they might fit with the given theme. It will help you to test if the theme and architect is right for you.

How is the connection to the theme evidence in that architect’s practice and/or projects? Unless otherwise specified, analyse at least three projects, discussing drawing and images.  Support your discussion with brief reference to other projects by the architect or their contemporaries, where possible.

Please use a minimum of 6 scholarly sources, including credible online and printed books, book chapters and journal articles and excluding unverified online sources such as blogs. If you are unsure, please visit the ABP Study and Research Guide: https://unimelb.libguides.com/abp/evaluating

To what extent is the connection between theme and architect (for or against) already identified and discussed in written histories? Is any connection consistent in appraisals of their work?  It is recommended that you present at least three different perspectives on the architect.  In other words try to finding writing on the architect by at least three different authors.

Be sure to plan and structure your essay to maximise the available word count. As a general rule, every essay should have an introduction, body, and conclusion.

The essay introduction should briefly introduce the theme and architect and state an argument about how the architect’s work speaks to the chosen theme and why that connection is of interest to current-day architects.

Think carefully about the selection and placement of images so that they can contribute to your written argument.

In concluding the essay, reflect on the role of architectural history and the architect’s practice and projects in relation to current architectural debate and practice.

Make sure that you attend the week 8 tutorial as we will discuss techniques for approaching the essay!

Submission Style

The goal is a short, thought-provoking illustrated essay as might appear in a professional architectural journal which design students and practitioners often consult, for examples, Architectural Review or Architecture Australia.  As such, you are asked to adhere to strict parameters just as journal editors impose upon their contributors:

Word length: 1800 words (+/-10%,), excluding image captions, footnotes and bibliography.

Images: 6 images (exactly 6, no more and no less), strategically located in the text. All images must include a short caption (10 words max. + source).

Citation Style. Chicago 16A/17A Style, footnotes and bibliography.

Assessment Criteria

Extent to which the essay demonstrates consideration of the topic including effective argumentation within specified word count. (Linked to Subject Intended Learning Outcome, [SILO] 1, 5)

The essay will be worth 40% of the overall result for the subject and it will be assessed against the following evenly weighted criteria:

Extent to which the essay addresses the topic via effective argumentation within specified word count (linked to SILO1, 5)

Extent to which the essay demonstrates thorough research via the identification and critical evaluation of relevant secondary research materials appropriate for a scholarly essay (i.e. book and journal articles) (linked to SILO3, 5)

Extent to which the essay employs primary evidence such as the analysis of buildings, images and/or original texts to support discussion and argumentation (linked to SILO1, 3, 5)

Clarity of expression, spelling and grammar, and visual presentation of the essay appropriate to a professional audience (linked to SILO 4, 5)

Click here to download the assessment rubric.

[1] Lesley Lokko quoted in “Biennale Architettura 2023: 18th International Architecture Exhibition,” https://www.labiennale.org/en/architecture/2023 & https://www.labiennale.org/en/architecture/2023/18th-exhibition

[2] American Institute of Architects, Justice in the Built Environment – Executive Summary, https://content.aia.org/sites/default/files/2022-03/Justice_Exec_Summary_Final.pdf