Plakat EAM 8

© EAM

conference panel

eam 8: globalising the avant-garde

klaus tragbar und lydia constanze krenz

lissabon, nova fcsh, 1–3 september 2022

 

 

The Avant-Garde and the Vernacular. Interrelations in Architecture

Avant-Garde architecture is commonly understood as the search for a new architectural language that meets the needs of modern mass society as well as the possibilities of the new building materials concrete, steel and glass and the construction methods developed from them. The rejection of historicism as well as of any other historically bound architecture, formulated in numerous variants, is part of the unconditional self-image of the Avant-Garde.

In recent years, research on Avant-Garde architecture has started to focus on its relationship to vernacular architecture, which played an important and hitherto underestimated role as a non-historical reference point in the development of the architectural Avant-Garde. Nevertheless, the prevailing image of modernity is still untouched and dominated by an uncritical perception of the Bauhaus and the International Style.

In this panel, we would like to examine the relationship between the Avant-Garde and vernacular architecture in more detail. What role do travel, and networks play? What narratives are used to integrate vernacular, ›primitive‹ architecture into the self-image of the Avant-Garde? How are its motifs and materials transposed? The Avant-Garde has always presented itself as transgressive, but does it live up to this claim? What roles do national narratives play against the backdrop of vernacular architecture? What part does the region and the respective culture play and is there something like a regional Avant-Garde?

By exploring internationally unnoticed modern developments in different places, we aim to gain a broad insight into the mutual relations between the Avant-Garde and the vernacular and their respective shape. With the results, we want to contribute to a wider and more diverse understanding of modernity.

 

Program

Lydia Constanze Krenz: Lois Welzenbacher and the Modernisation of the Vernacular

María Sebastián Sebastián: The Presence of the Vernacular Mediterranean in Architectural Journals. Tradition and Avant-Garde in A.C., Arquitectura and Cortijos y rascacielos

Klaus Tragbar: Bringing (not only) Italy to Hungary. Virgil Borbiró-Bierbauer and his magazine Tér és Forma

Regina Stephan: Joseph Maria Olbrich and Erich Mendelsohn. Two European Architects and Vernacular Architecture from the Other Side of the Mediterranean

Ernesto Vendries Bray: Leopold Rother. Avant-Garde and Vernacular in the Tropics

Ulrich Knufinke: Zdenko von Strizic, Modernism and the Vernacular. Architect and Teacher of Avant-Garde Architecture on Three Continents