Dalibor Vesely and the Model of the Late Baroque

Abstract

This article explores the value and lessons of the late baroque for Dalibor Vesely as an example of the role that it played for many architectural educators in the 1970s and 1980s. It shows the specific roots of Vesely’s interpretation of the late baroque in the context of the influence of his mentors, the art historian Vaclav Richter, and the phenomenologist Jan Patočka whose thought positioned the late baroque in relationship to the crisis of modernity. It then shows how Vesely used the late baroque in his studio and seminar teaching in the 1980s at the University of Cambridge school of architecture, not only to develop his students’ historical and theoretical critique of modern architecture, but as a model for contemporary design practice, finding in examples of late baroque churches, such as Johann Michael Fischer’s renovations of the church at Zwiefalten Abbey (1739–65), an architecture of ambiguity, complexity, sensuality, imagination, and holism that could inspire contemporary architecture.