In Episode 16 of Season 2 of A is for Architecture, I speak with Gevork Hartoonian, Professor of the History and Theory of Architecture at the University of Canberra, Australia, about his 2012 book, Architecture and Spectacle: A Critique, published by Routledge. The issue of the architectural spectacle has perhaps been the dominant idea in urban and architectural thinking for the last two or three decades, most explicitly seen in Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum at Bilbao, a model of design that has been replicated globally since that building’s opening, but permeating design education and practice almost everywhere, in the near universal pursuit of spectacular solutions to the postmodern urban condition. Gevork’s book discusses this phenomenon, ‘[f]ocusing on six leading contemporary architects: Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, Bernard Tschumi, Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas and Steven Holl’ and putting forward ‘a unique and insightful analysis of "neo-avant-garde" architecture [and] discusses the spectacle and excess which permeates contemporary architecture in reference to the present aesthetic tendency for image making, but [also] by applying the tectonic of theatricality discussed by the 19th-century German architect Gottfried Semper. In doing so, it breaks new ground by opening up a dialogue between the study of the past and the design of the present.’

Gevork’s professional profile is linked above, he’s on LinkedIn here too, and his Instagram can be found here. There’s a great wee critique by Gevork on Zaha Hadid on The Charnel House here. There’s a serious academic piece by Gevork in the Journal of Architecture (v7/ 2 2002), on the merits of Gehry too: Frank Gehry: roofing, wrapping, and wrapping the roof.

Happy listening!

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Music credits: Bruno Gillick

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