Gevork Hartoonian - Walter Benjamin and architecture

Walter Benjamin and Architecture

The essays compiled in this book explore aspects of Walter Benjamins discourse that have contributed to the formation of contemporary architectural theories.

Issues such as technology and history have been considered central to the very modernity of architecture, but Benjamins reflection on these subjects has elevated the discussion to a critical level. The contributors in this book consider his ideas in the context of digitalization of architecture where ones perception of the object is transformed beyond its auratic dimension. They cover the early modernist infatuation with the machine, but also the current use of electronic technologies, which has reached the point where the very technologies themselves determine the processes of design and the final form.

This book proposes that Benjamins anthropological approach to the historicity of architecture should be considered as a major way out of historicism and the inclination to gauge the contemporaneity of architecture in association with technological progress.

This book was published as a special issue of Architectural Theory Review.

Gevork Hartoonian is Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Canberra. He has practised architecture and taught at several universities in America, including Columbia University and the Pratt Institute. He is a member of the editorial group of Architectural Theory Review. His most recently published book is Crisis of the Object (Routledge, 2006). A Korean edition of his Ontology of Construction (Cambridge University Press, 1994) is scheduled for 2010.

Walter Benjamin and Architecture

Edited by Gevork Hartoonian

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2010
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
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This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2009.

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2010 selection and editorial matter, Gevork Hartoonian; individual chapters, the contributors

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Walter Benjamin and architecture / edited by Gevork Hartoonian.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1 Benjamin, Walter, 18921940. 2. Architecture, Modern20th century. I. Benjamin,
Walter, 18921940. II. Hartoonian, Gevork.
B3209.B584W335 2010
720.1dc22

ISBN 0-203-86592-8 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN10: 0-415-48292-5 (hbk)

ISBN10: 0-203-86592-8 (ebk)

ISBN13: 978-0-415-48292-9 (hbk)

ISBN13: 978-0-203-86592-7 (ebk)