Historia y estética en arquitectura: el Modernismo o la ausencia de paradigmas

Abstract

“History and Aesthetics in Architecture: Modernism or the Absence of Conceptual Paradigms” attempts to point to the inadequacy of the common mixture of surface description methods with the comparative study of formal elements, which is typical of historians (of art or architecture), and with the direct attribution of the emergence of a work to ideological, social or economic motives, which is what most Postmodernist critics do. This methodological melange, or parts of it according to the specialized bias of architects, critics and teachers, either displaces or replaces in architecture the use of theory and aesthetics proper. Teaching or practicing architects are more comfortable appealing to their knowledge of current or historical works than to theory; and when they incorporate philosophical ideas in their study or work, they tend to use either naive traditional concepts or fashionable ideologies of their time.