Structure Telling. How Architectural Criticism tells the Relationship between Formal Structure and Resistant Structue

Abstract

It is necessary to situate the gaze in the criticism of architecture to throw a certain light on the issues that this discipline deals with. The story, the logos, fulfills a double function both descriptive and constitutive of the reality.

    The historiography of modern architecture played an active role in conformation of styles, focusing its targets. Some of the main architectural tendences of the twentieth century were consolidated through publications and exhibitions. To show this, it is enough to remark the importance of Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson in the developement of the International Style, and the role of latter in the Deconstructivism.

Following this argumental line, the following article tries to highlight how critics of modern architecture have understood the resistant structure in their respective works. Martin Heidegger proposed the tekné as a process to ‘bringing-forth’ the abstraction. Thus, the technique ceases to have the sense of ‘means’. That is, it stands as something necessary to realize an idea. Thus, the study of technology and, therefore, of science turns to be fundamental to understand how architectural projects have been conceived.