Gary Huafan He – författare

This project is born out of similar questions and discussions on the topic of organicism emergent from two critical strands regarding the discourse of organic self-generation: one dealing with the problem of stopping in the design processes in history, and the other with the organic legacy of style in the nineteenth century as a preeminent form of aesthetic ideology.

The epistemologies of self-generation outlined by enlightenment and critical philosophy provided the model for the discursive formations of modern urban planning and architecture. The form of the organism was thought to calibrate modernism’s infinite extension. The architectural organicism of today does not take on the language of the biological sciences, as they did in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but rather the image of complex systems, be they computational/informational, geo/ecological, or even ontological/aesthetic ‘networks’. What is retained from the modernity of yesterday is the ideology of endless self-generation. Revisiting such a topic feels relevant now, in a time when the idea of endless generation is rendered more suspect than ever, amid an ever increasing speed and complexity of artificial intelligence (AI) networks.

The essays collected in this book offer a variety of critiques of the modernist idea of endless growth in the fields of architecture, literature, philosophy, and the history of science. They range in scope from theoretical and speculative to analytic and critical and from studies of the history of modernity to reflections of our contemporary world. Far from advocating a return to the romantic forms of nineteenth-century naturphilosophie, this project focuses on probing organicism for new forms of critique and emergent subjectivities in a contemporary, ''post''-pandemic constellation of neo-naturalism in design, climate change, complex systems, and information networks.

This book will be of interest to a broad range of researchers and professionals in architecture and art history, historians of science, visual artists, and scholars in the humanities more generally.

This project is born out of similar questions and discussions on the topic of organicism emergent from two critical strands regarding the discourse of organic self-generation: one dealing with the problem of stopping in the design processes in history, and the other with the organic legacy of style in the nineteenth century as a preeminent form of aesthetic ideology.

The epistemologies of self-generation outlined by enlightenment and critical philosophy provided the model for the discursive formations of modern urban planning and architecture. The form of the organism was thought to calibrate modernism’s infinite extension. The architectural organicism of today does not take on the language of the biological sciences, as they did in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but rather the image of complex systems, be they computational/informational, geo/ecological, or even ontological/aesthetic ‘networks’. What is retained from the modernity of yesterday is the ideology of endless self-generation. Revisiting such a topic feels relevant now, in a time when the idea of endless generation is rendered more suspect than ever, amid an ever increasing speed and complexity of artificial intelligence (AI) networks.

The essays collected in this book offer a variety of critiques of the modernist idea of endless growth in the fields of architecture, literature, philosophy, and the history of science. They range in scope from theoretical and speculative to analytic and critical and from studies of the history of modernity to reflections of our contemporary world. Far from advocating a return to the romantic forms of nineteenth-century naturphilosophie, this project focuses on probing organicism for new forms of critique and emergent subjectivities in a contemporary, ''post''-pandemic constellation of neo-naturalism in design, climate change, complex systems, and information networks.

This book will be of interest to a broad range of researchers and professionals in architecture and art history, historians of science, visual artists, and scholars in the humanities more generally.

This groundbreaking study examines the intricate relationship between the rise of the nineteenth-century bourgeoisie and the emergence of modern architecture, exploring this connection through major intellectual and theoretical works while also analyzing their tangible manifestations in buildings and architectural projects.

Contrary to received narratives that describe the birth of modern architecture as primarily an aesthetic movement, Ornament and Class argues that the social and political maturation of the European bourgeoisie as a distinct-yet-heterogeneous group influenced modern attitudes toward architecture at every level. Bringing architecture into conversation with recent histories of the bourgeoisie in the social sciences, the book considers how architecture was used as a tool to separate the modern bourgeoisie from the aristocratic and clerical forces above and the working classes below. It explores how architects, clients, planners, and administrators grappled with and dealt with ornament, architecture, and modernity from within the new realities of urban and global capitalism, and shows how these realities serve as pedagogical touchstones that remain with us today.

Historians, architecture scholars, and students interested in modern architecture, aesthetics, and European history, especially those focusing on the interplay between modern architecture and social development, will find this book an invaluable resource.

Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

This groundbreaking study examines the intricate relationship between the rise of the nineteenth-century bourgeoisie and the emergence of modern architecture, exploring this connection through major intellectual and theoretical works while also analyzing their tangible manifestations in buildings and architectural projects.

Contrary to received narratives that describe the birth of modern architecture as primarily an aesthetic movement, Ornament and Class argues that the social and political maturation of the European bourgeoisie as a distinct-yet-heterogeneous group influenced modern attitudes toward architecture at every level. Bringing architecture into conversation with recent histories of the bourgeoisie in the social sciences, the book considers how architecture was used as a tool to separate the modern bourgeoisie from the aristocratic and clerical forces above and the working classes below. It explores how architects, clients, planners, and administrators grappled with and dealt with ornament, architecture, and modernity from within the new realities of urban and global capitalism, and shows how these realities serve as pedagogical touchstones that remain with us today.

Historians, architecture scholars, and students interested in modern architecture, aesthetics, and European history, especially those focusing on the interplay between modern architecture and social development, will find this book an invaluable resource.

Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.