Skip to main content

Architecture, Means and Ends

Vittorio Gregotti—the architect of Barcelona’s Olympic Stadium, Milan’s Arcimboldi Opera Theater, and Lisbon’s Centro Cultural de Belém, among many other noted constructions—is not only a designer of international repute but an acclaimed theorist and critic. Architecture, Means and Ends is his practical and imaginative reflection on the role of the technical aspects of architectural design, both as part of the larger process of innovation and in relation to the mythic opposition between vision and construction.

Interweaving the seemingly irreconcilable concerns of aesthetics, meaning, and construction,  Architecture, Means and Ends reflects Gregotti’s overarching claim that buildings always have a symbolic, cultural content. In this book, he argues that by making symbolic expression a primary objective in the design of a project, the designer will produce a practical aesthetic as well as an ethical solution. Architecture, Means and Ends embraces that philosophy and will appeal to those, like Gregotti, working at the intersections of the history of design, art criticism, and architectural theory.


152 pages | 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 | © 2010

Architecture: Architecture--Criticism

Philosophy: Aesthetics

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1          The Designer as Technician

2          The Art of Technology

3          The Art of Cyberculture

4          The Debate about Art in the Age of Mechanization

5          Art and the Industrial Revolution

6          Industrial Product Design

7          Motion, the Movement, and the City

8          The Dwelling and Its Mechanization

9          Toward the Mechanical Weltbild

10        Technology and the History of Architecture

11        The Technics of Art

12        The Role of Technics in the Artistic Practice of Architecture

13        The Question of Intention

14        The Work and the Event

15        Fundamentals and Foundations

16        Use, Consumption, Exchange

17        Technics as an End

18        The Technics of the Project and Its Representation

19        Professionals, Technics, and Materiality

20        Architecture as Labor

21        Assembly as a Unifying Principle

22        Materials and Content

23        The City as Assembly

24        The Twilight of the Machine Age

Bibliography

Index

Be the first to know

Get the latest updates on new releases, special offers, and media highlights when you subscribe to our email lists!

Sign up here for updates about the Press