ABSTRACT

A theoretical history of anthropomorphism and proportion in modern architecture, this volume brings into focus the discourse around proportion with current problems of post-humanism in architecture alongside the new possibilities made available through digital technologies.

The book examines how the body and its ordering has served as a central site of architectural discourse in recent decades, especially in attempts to reformulate architecture’s relationship to humanism, modernism and technology. Challenging some concepts and categories of architectural history and situates current debates within a broader cultural and technological context, Hight makes complex ideas easily accessible.

Extensively illustrated and written without academic jargon for an informed but non-specialized architectural audience, this book elucidates the often obscure debates of avant-garde architectural discourse and design, while demonstrating how these debates have affected everyday places and concepts of architecture. As a result, it will appeal to professional architects, academics and students, combining as it does an insightful introduction to the fundamental issues of architectural history and theory over the past fifty years with entirely new formulations of what that history is and means.

chapter 1|14 pages

INTRODUCTION

chapter 2|18 pages

THE PHENOMENAL ORIGIN OF ARCHITECTURE

chapter 3|22 pages

STRUCTURAL CONTINUITIES OF CLASSICISM

chapter 4|16 pages

MODULOR RESIDUES OF HISTORY

chapter 5|20 pages

A MID-CENTURY RENAISSANCE

chapter 6|20 pages

THE SCHEMA AND THE DIAGRAM

chapter 7|24 pages

THE SYMBOLIC STRIKES BACK

chapter 8|22 pages

MEASURED RESPONSE

chapter 9|26 pages

REFLECTIONS OF THE MODULOR

chapter 10|15 pages

MEASURING VORTICES