Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'History of Art and Architecture'

This dissertation examines the architectural patronage of a small cadre of industrialists, textile millowners, who controlled the city of Ahmedabad, India economically and politically between Indian independence in 1947 and 1968, the year communal riots shattered that city's self-image. It examines the role modern architecture played for these elites in projecting Ahmedabad as a modern, cosmopolitan city, though one steeped in a unique history and culture. On the one hand, modern architecture was used to promote the city as a node in the global network of capital and industry that developed after the Second World War. As such, most of the architects selected by these industrialists came from the ranks and institutions of the global modern movement, mirroring the industrialists' attempt to place the city's industry into global networks of capital and development. On the other hand, the millowners employed modern architecture as a way to naturalize Ahmedabad's sweeping social changes, so that they appeared as an inevitable outgrowth of Ahmedabad's and India's own history. In this, the modern architecture of Ahmedabad was suffused with references both to Ahmedabad's textile industry and India's imagined and historical past.

The first chapter examines projects that represent the industrialists' earliest overtures towards the global network of modern architects and institutions. The goal of the projects, which included an unbuilt store by Frank Lloyd Wright, a store inspired by Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes, and Achyut Kanvinde's Gropius influenced ATIRA headquarters, was to instantiate a capitalist model of modernity in Ahmedabad through the fostering of consumer markets and the rationalization of industry. The second chapter delves further into the millowners' use of modern architecture for the instantiation of capitalist values and self-representation by comparing the city's two most famous modern projects: Louis Kahn's Indian Institute of Management and Le Corbusier's Millowners' Association Building.

The third and fourth chapters turn to the cultural and domestic sphere, exploring projects that negotiated modern, Indian identity in the public and private context. Cultural institutions by architects like Le Corbusier, Charles Correa, and Balkrishna Doshi interrogated the relationship between the elite's new vision for Ahmedabad and the city's history. Meanwhile houses by many of the same architects for industrialists showed a modern domesticity that negotiated between community, the joint family and the individual by fusing modern forms to older domestic spatial organizations.

This dissertation contributes to the growing body of research focused on the role modern architecture played in shaping postcolonial Indian identity and subjectivity. While previous research has often focused on the patronage of the socialist state, the examination of the patronage of an elite group of capitalists shows how modern architecture became the locus for debates about the direction of modern Indian society. Further, the dissertation's focus on capitalist patronage places this dissertation in a larger body of research that traces the connections between capital and modern projects, though such issues have rarely been explored in the Indian context.

The goal of this dissertation is to write the theory of organic architecture which Wright himself did not write. This is done through a comparison with GWF Hegel’s philosophy of art to help position Wright’s theory of organic architecture and clarify his architectural aesthetic. Contemporary theories of organicism do not address the aesthetic basis of organic architecture as theorized and practiced by Wright, and the focus of this dissertation will be to fill part of this gap. Wright’s organic theory was rooted in nineteenth-century Idealist philosophy where the aim of art is not the imitation of nature but the creation of beautiful objects which invite contemplation and express freedom. Wright perceived this quality in Japanese art and wove it into his organic theory.

This project is organized into three main categories from which Wright’s own works and writings of organic architecture are framed, two of which are affinities of his views and one which, by its contrast, provides additional definition. The second chapter, Foundation, lays the philosophical or metaphysical foundation and is a comparison of Hegel’s philosophy of art, including his Romantic stage of architecture, with Wright’s own theory. The third chapter, Formalism, relates the affinity between Japanese art and Wright’s own designs. Three case studies are here included, showing their correlation. The fourth chapter, Filter, contrasts early twentieth-century Modernist architecture with Wright’s own organicism. This provides a greater definition to Wright’s organicism as it takes clues from Wright’s own sense of discrimination between the contemporary modernism he saw and his own architecture. These three chapters lead to the proposal of a model theory of organic architecture in chapter five which is a structured theory of organic architecture with both historical and contemporary merit. This serves to provide a greater understanding of Wright’s form of the organic as an aesthetically based system, both in historic context, and as relevant for contemporary discourse.

This thesis analyzes Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Details of the Alhambra (1836-1842) by British Architect Owen Jones in relation to British conceptions of Spain in the nineteenth century. Although modern scholars often view Jones’s work as an accurate visual account of the Alhambra, I argue that his work is not only interested in accuracy, but it is also a re-presentation of the fourteen-century monument based on Jones’s ideologies and creative faculties. Instead of viewing the Alhambra through a culturally sensitive, historical lens, Jones treated it as an Imaginary Geography, as Edward Said called it, through which he could promote his interests and perspectives.

Although there were many British views of Spain in nineteenth-century, this thesis will focus on two sets of seemingly contradictory conceptions of Spain that were especially important to Jones’s visual and ideological program in Alhambra: Spain’s status as both the Catholic and Islamic Other, and its frequent interpretations through both romantic and reform-oriented lenses. Through a closer look at Arabian Antiquities of Spain by James Cavanah Murphy and the illustrations from The Tourist in Spain: Granada by David Roberts, I show the prevalence of these mindsets in nineteenth-century reconstructions of the Alhambra. Then, I compare portions of these works to plates from Jones’s Alhambra to illustrate Jones’s similar adaptation of these perspectives despite the visual peculiarity of his work as a whole.

Shirai Seiichi’s education in the context of the interwar events influenced his path and molded him into a defender of idealism. Starting from the early evolution of his ideas, Shirai’s significant concepts are outlined to show how they stood apart from and challenged the Japanese modernist debates over the architectural responses to war and industrialization. Examples of Shirai’s early work along with surrounding historical events show how Shirai’s perceptions of the use of space and its manifestation in architecture, based on Kantian ideas of a priori creation, contradicted orthodox modernist architectural theory and practice. Shirai’s evolving theories and their impact on his design are introduced through his early training and related projects. However, it is his unrealized plan for the Genbakud? that is analyzed as primary evidence for the idea that Shirai was the only mid-twentieth century Japanese architect who could effectively express the sad destiny of the nuclear age. Last, specific examples of Shirai’s mid to late career work to demonstrate how his conceptual framework evolved. Interviews, commentary, and theoretical analyses of his works show his unique trajectory and role in contrast to his modernist colleagues, and provide insight into Shirai’s investigation into the universality and potential of the human spirit (fuhen no anima). Finally, recent discussion about constructing the Genbakud? based on Shirai’s blueprints raise the idea that Shirai’s early ideals are now ready to be presented in the post-modernist age.

This thesis explores Gregory Ain's planned housing communities spanning the period 1939-1948, connecting their conception to the theoretical legacy of Modernism that began with the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM) in Europe a decade earlier. Expanding on existing scholarship, this thesis attempts to contextualize Ain's One Family Defense House Project (1939), Park Planned Homes (1945-47), and Mar Vista Tract (1946-48) within the social, political, and economic context of the interwar and postwar period. Although the latter two projects are more well-known, I attempt to expand the understanding of their design through new and lesser-known examples by Ain in the area of tract housing and contemporaneous housing examples. These include his manifesto for a project entitled Preliminary Proposal 'A' for a low-cost community housing development in Southgate, California and the U.S. government's Basic Minimum House (1936). The three projects discussed in this thesis expand the context within which one views the typical tract house, but also the avant-garde approach to Modernism during this era and the years that followed.