| This dissertation investigates the work of Viennese emigre architect Bernard Rudofsky (1905--1988). Although known almost entirely for his exhibition Architecture without Architects of 1964, Rudofsky's career within architecture spanned from the 1920s through to the end of his life. By examining the many facets of Rudofsky's work---his writings, lectures, designs, photography, and exhibitions---the dissertation complicates the extant reception of his thinking.;Beyond an examination of Rudofsky's work, the dissertation seeks to theorize the nature of his dissident modernist paradigm, for instance, through its resonance with that of Georges Bataille (whose writings Rudofsky read and cited) and, later, Paul Virilio (who recognized Rudofsky's critique of functionalism). In so doing, it traces Rudofsky's intersection with the mainstream currents of architectural modernism and his reaction to, subversion and ultimately reconfiguration of them. It also details his incipient understanding of---and dystopic response to---the historical transformation brought about by the global expansion of capitalism and advances in communication technologies.;For Rudofsky the Museum of Modern Art in New York served as the most influential site of the commodification of modern architecture and design and would be the subtext of much of his work in America. Rudofsky's many interventions into MoMA's presentation of modernism---particularly its codification of the International Style and of Good Design---are traced through exhibitions he curated, designed or participated in there. These include not only Architecture without Architects but Organic Design, Are Clothes Modern?, Brazil Builds, and Textiles USA. Furthermore, to explicate transformations in his installation techniques and use of media, the dissertation addresses his polemical exhibits at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair.;Through the little known work of Rudofsky, the dissertation investigates an alternative, but distinctly modernist trajectory within postwar American architecture. It argues that Rudofsky's endeavors---including his fascination with the "primitive"---were primarily opposed not to modernism or modernist architecture but rather to late capitalist forces of commodification. Railing against exchangeability, functional integration and legibility, Rudofsky sought out heterogeneity, intimacy, nomadism, and "non-communication" in order to demonstrate that architecture might resist assimilation into normative, codified systems, and refuse to signify in the manner of the commodity. |
