The SOM Foundation Traveling Fellowship will serve as a vehicle to explore questions of authenticity, authorship, and personality within a theory of architectural production by analyzing for traces of the author in the work itself. Observation of the political and cultural contexts of specific buildings will suggest ways that the reworking of local artistic and architectural techniques has been a strategy to produce more “personal” architectural directions. This analysis will also enable me to explore the way in which the presence of the "aura of the authentic" has been a way for architectural works to resist appropriation by the “culture industry.” I plan to study buildings that can be classified into two general categories that begin to suggest a theory of the role of the architect as subject.
Architecture that attempts to serve a paradigmatic role by working out a coherent language and thus can be appropriated by the “academy.”
Wagner, Church Am Steinhof, Vienna
Wright, the Cheney House, Oak Park
Asplund, Library, Stockholm
Terragni, Giuliani-Figerio House, Como
Mies, National Gallery, Berlin
Mies, IIT, Chicago
SOM, Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs
Stirling and Gowan, Engineering Building, Leicester
Hertzberger, Music Center, Utrecht
Rossi, Gallaratese, Milan
Jean Nouvel, IMA, Paris
Architecture that develops an aesthetic expression from the difficulties and idiosyncrasies of specific cultural and political contexts as well as personal aesthetic investigations and thus resists codification.
Loos, House on the Michaelplatz, Vienna and Muller House, Prague
Plecnik, Church of the Sacred Heart, Prague and National and University Library, Ljubljana
Asplund, Woodland Cemetery, Stockholm
Lewerentz, Resurrection Chapel, Woodland Cemetery, Stockholm
Wright, Taliesin West, Scottsdale
Aalto, Town Hall, Saynatsalo
Scharoun, Philharmonic, Berlin
BBPR, Torre Velasca, Milan
Scarpa, Banca Populare, Verona
Siza, Antonio Carlos Siza House, Porto and Maria Margarida House, Arcozelo
Gehry, Loyola Law School, Los Angeles