Theory and Design in the Last Machine Age

In the decades following World War Two, London emerged as a fountainhead of radical architectural innovation. From the New Brutalism of Alison and Peter Smithson to the Clip-on approach of the Archigram group and Cedric Price to later High Tech works by Norman Foster, Richard Rogers, and others, English architects from the 1950s to the 1980s evolved diverse new interpretations of the Modern idiom. Throughout his prolific career, the historian Reyner Banham (1922-88) vigorously promoting these young architects as he cajoled them toward more daring experimentation.;At the core of Banham's investigations was his idea of une architecture autre. The coherence and efficacy of this 'Other' architecture obtained from an unwavering commitment to formal clarity, honest expression, and the responsible servicing of human environments. Banham devoted considerable attention to the possibility of une architecture autre, finding promising signals first in the New Brutalism and later in various Clip-on approaches. But as these movements failed to foment the disciplinary transformations he sought, the beleaguered critic shifted his efforts. Where his early writings were dedicated to the systematic dismantling of architecture's outmoded compositional and visual conventions, Banham's little-examined later writings on High Tech became increasingly concerned with the dispassionate explication of the very habits his early writings had failed to dislodge.;Tracing Banham's attempts to articulate an 'Other' architecture in published books and articles as well as in lectures, courses, and unpublished materials held in the Reyner Banham Papers at the Getty Research Institute, this study examines the historian's early advocacy of the New Brutalism, his promotion of Archigram and other architects associated with the Clip-on approach, his mid-career interest in "well-tempered environments," and his late-career support of High Tech architecture. In contrast to recent studies of these topics, this dissertation will direct significant attention to themes such as formal organization, construction details, and the role of disciplinary convention to argue that attempts to project architecture beyond building led Banham and architects of the period to re-examine---and ultimately to reinforce---traditional disciplinary values. Tracing a parallel commitment to rational, accommodative construction, I also will demonstrate that a little-studied trajectory of seemingly conventional works came much closer to Banham's call for une architecture autre by suggesting the possibility of a paradoxical mode of building beyond architecture.