Quotations for Archival survey methodologies

Quotations for archival survey methodologies

Ugo Carughi (ICOMOS Italia)

All research presupposes the preliminary definition of specific objectives. Before discussing the relationship between archives and modern architecture - of which reinforced concrete works constitute the main element - it is important to mention the relationship between historiography and the protection of 20th century architectural heritage. Let's imagine consulting, in an ideal round table, some of the major historians of the sector. Some key themes emerge:

The term 'modern'

Modern architecture ... has revealed some of the fundamental truths of the human condition ... it has told us what we are and what we want to be ... This plural -'we are', 'we want' - though methodologically risky for the historian, is necessary when talking about modern architecture; ... because it is such an meaningful image, that we have to recognize it as ours.¹

Modus + Hodiernus: contemporary way of acting and thinking ... the “modern” will express itself each time as the consciousness of an epoch, which stands in relation to the past of the ancients, configuring itself ... as a result from the old to the new.²

Even if the adjective "modern" is understood only as a chronological phenomenon, ... it is not enough to indicate the architecture of the twentieth century if it is not associated with the noun "movement". In fact, that adjective has a much older use: the architectural events of all times were modern compared to their past, yet this was not enough to define them as such, hence the need to call our ‘Modern Movement’ ... inclusive of all those connotations that modernity has come to assume.³

A fact is modern insofar as it is recognizable as different from what has historically preceded it. Thus, for example, Renaissance artists spoke of a 'modern manner' as opposed to a Gothic one. In this sense, functionalist architects called themselves modern rather than contemporary to emphasise the radical diversity of their architectural making from... the past which they still acknowledged to be present ...in the form of the late eclecticism, with its arches and columns.⁴

The complexity of the debate on the topic cannot be exhausted in these few quotes. However, it can be noted that the concepts of "identity" and "complexity" emerge. We can, therefore, assert that modern architecture, as a form of cultural expression, is closely connected with our way of being and, therefore, with our identity. That it should be referred to an existential attitude rather than predefined temporal segments.
The term 'movement' introduces the thematic complexity of recent architecture as opposed to that of previous centuries, in which the adjective 'modern' was referred to as opposed to the more immediate past.

Historiography of modern architecture

The relations between architecture and historiography form an incessant dialogue, a collaboration so systematic that it becomes impossible to follow the centuries-long development of ‘modern movement’ without considering the presences and pressures of historiography.⁵

The criticism of modern architecture has been obliged to proceed ... on tracks laid on an unscrupulous empiricism ... So much so that an authentic criticism of modern art has been exerted... only by those who have had the courage not to deduce their methods of analysis from pre-constituted systems ... but from direct and empirical contact with the completely new problems set by the avant-garde.⁶

A large part of the task is to make the appropriate choices and "reductions", to identify a limited number of invariants, to hypothesize the classification, to experiment with the combination.⁷

In conclusion, there is no doubt that the link between historiography and architecture of the 20th century, which radiates into the fields of protection and design, is becoming more complex due to the availability of documents belonging to multiple disciplinary fields. And that this circumstance entails new codes of analysis and selection of data.

The Archives of the Modern

In our limitlessly bureaucratized, documented, and limitlessly inquisitive times, the fundamental problem is that of an ungovernable quantity of primary sources, not their scarcity.⁸

To what facts should the search be extended? ... The field from which the modern movement emerges ... is very wide ... and includes various lines of research maturing in different fields of industrial civilization ... We will therefore attribute ... to the word "architecture" the broadest possible meaning.⁹

One cannot fail to recognize that both architecture and the other "visual" arts have taken second place to urban planning and design on a territorial scale. ... an ever-greater weight has been assumed by the sociological, anthropological and ecological aspect ... today it is no longer reasonable to discuss architecture only from a historical and stylistic point of view, but ... it is necessary to do so, already having in mind the importance of the continuous interferences between this discipline and the other "human sciences".¹⁰

It is, therefore, recognized the complexity of modern architecture, compared to the codes of study and analysis concerning the previous centuries, whose artistic production is generally distinct from the social and economic facts. This difference is determined by the great availability of documentation on the production of the twentieth century.