Architectural Principles in the Age of Fraud: Why So Many Architects Pretend to Be Philosophers and Don't Care How Buildings Look - Softcover

Branko Mitrović

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1954081456 ISBN 13: 9781954081451

Publisher: ORO Editions, 2022

Synopsis

• This book will have a wide reception among architects, architecture students, and architectural academics who are critical about obfuscatory trends in contemporary architecture; as well as for those who enjoy reading (often funny) analyses of architectural pseudo-intellectualism of prominent figures in the field
• Endorses the criticism of modernist architecture widespread among the general public and non-architects. Many non-architects are very passionate about this and many of these people have web sites and follow public discussions groups
• The book is similar to Sokal’s and Bricmont’s book Fashionable Nonsense that analysed the pseudo-scientific claims of French postmodernists

Philosophy exercises a massive influence on contemporary architectural culture and the understanding of the built environment. Discussions of architects and architectural academics are heavily loaded with theoretical ideas, concepts and views imported from the works of philosophers. At the same time this architectural employment of philosophy rarely goes beyond the tendency to mine philosophical works for ideas, words and phrases and use them, often without much understanding, in order to promote architectural agendas and embellish theoretical claims made by architects and academics.

The book presents the history of this phenomenon for the past 100 years. It describes and analyses numerous, often funny, entertaining as well as embarrassing, examples of false intellectual pretence and pompous but incompetent philosophical posturing by prominent architects and architectural academics of the era and their efforts to bamboozle readers, colleagues and the general public. The book presents a powerful criticism of modernist views on architecture and argues that the rise of obfuscation and philosophical posturing among architects and architectural academics is a defensive strategy intended to draw attention away from the failure of Modernism in architecture.

About this title

About the Author

Branko Mitrović received his PhDs both in Architecture and Philosophy, and he works and publishes in both fields. He is employed as the professor of architectural history and theory at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway. He is the author (or co-author) of eight other books and has been the recipient of the Humboldt Research Award.

Edition details

• Publisher: ORO Editions
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1954081456
• ISBN 13: 9781954081451
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160