From the portfolio to the diagram : architectural discourse and the transformation of the discipline of architecture in America, 1918-1943

Abstract

This dissertation is an historical inquiry into the concomitant transformations of architectural discourse and the discipline of architecture in America. It proceeds on the theoretical assumption that the documents produced and used in architecture not only reflect but constitute architecture as an institutional practice. The study begins with an outline of the academic discipline established, during the late nineteenth century, along the ideals of artistic autonomy and methods of the Ecole des Beaux Arts. It was an internalized discipline, centered on the self-referential discursive practice of the portfolio, and the integrated conceptual framework of composition, planning and the parti. During the latter half of the 1910s, with the changing conditions of architectural production, the traditional status of architecture began to be cast into doubt. In the aftermath of this crisis, what had once been an efficacious disciplinary formation was fragmented into the formal concerns of composition and the concept of functional planning as a rational intervention into social institutions. By the late twenties, ideological formations that made a fundamental break with the traditional claim to autonomy had emerged. The study examines two divergent strains of rationalist ideology: first, the new editorial policies of the architectural journals which projected in different ways, a rational discipline that would be integrated with the demands of mass production and consumer society; secondly, the Veblenian strategy of Frederick Ackerman, who attempted to isolate a domain of architectural discourse uncontaminated by the exigencies of capitalism. Two important transformations of architectural discourse that ensued during the thirties will be examined: the first was the shift in the status of the discourse of reference, constituted by the emergence of new types of reference manuals; secondly, the transformation of the architectural journal which saw the demise of the traditional status of the portfolio and its reorganization along studies of planning. At the center of these transformations was what I have called the discourse of the diagram. Through this new discursive formation, planning emerged as an integral discipline of architecture; it allowed the architect to intervene into the institutional program, while maintaining an independent method that was rational, free of formal preconceptions, and yet would produce singular results for each project. What had been a closed and tightly organized discipline was now opened and dispersed. Along with its promise of social amelioration, it carried the constant burden of formal invention.