Thomas A. Dutton and Lian Hurst Mann article analysis
The reading is the introduction of the book which dwells upon the changes in the architecture due to changes in the political, social, and innovative spheres. The main idea of this introduction is to provide the reader with background information about the situation which has happened with architecture in the modern world and to inform the reader about the peculiarities and the structure of the book. the parts of the introduction are as follows, “Modernism, postmodernism, and architecture’s social project”, “The late-capitalist condition”, “The after-modernism disclosure: postmodernism theory”, “Architecture’s response”, “Retreat into tradition”, “Retreat to a strategy of negation”, “Retreat to criticism as closure”, “Retreat into the socially responsible process”, and “Critical constructive practice: reorientation”.
These chapters provide a detailed and step-by-step discussion of the changes in the vision of the architecture from the historical perspective. Dwelling upon the book structure, the authors state that the chapters in the book are independent and provided by different authors even though they are related to the same problem. The authors tried to provide a summary of each of the chapters stating the title and the author of each article stressing the main consideration of each article.
The authors of the book state the main objectives of the articles they managed to collect, thus, the book pursues the following purposes, “to reformulate the role of architecture in society as well as the specific understanding of architecture’s capacity to further a progressive social transformation and to advance strategies for practice based on that reformulation” as it is stated in the introduction. Being devoted to architecture, the authors pay much attention to the political and social tendencies in society and their impact on architectural tendencies. Much depends on the moods in the society as in most cases the national and international politics is the basis for all the processes in the society.
Dwelling upon the personal relation to the information in the book, I would like to state that great research has been conducted both by the authors of the book and by the authors of the article. I agree with the authors that the architects try to follow the transformations in society and the whole world. However, I do not agree with the statement that the architects fully reflect the moods in the society, the political and economical demands. Of course, these factors impact the choice of the architect and the trends in architecture in general, however, they may not be considered as the primary factors for choosing the tendencies for creation.
Considering the social project as the main point for discussion in the book, I agree with the authors that the architects as well as their masterpieces impact the vision of the society. Therefore, these are the architects and their creations that make up the environment and as a result form the vision of the society. The architects are those people who help us perceive the world in the way we see it. This is exactly what the architecture makes and the changes in the social vision of the world are based on the historical and political changes through the prism of the architectural vision of those changes.
References
Dutton, T. A., & Mann, L. H. (1996). Reconstructing architecture: Critical discourses and social practices. University of Minnesota Press.