René Furer’s semantic and syntactic analysis
Venturi and Vignola at ETH Zurich
Additional information
Authors
Grahn F.
Type
Journal Article
Year
2023
Language
English
Abstract
This paper explores the response of the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETH Zurich) to the student unrest of 1968. Specifically, it analyses the teaching of Swiss architect and educator René Furer on architectural theory. One of the key examples is Furer’s lecture on mannerism, in which both sixteenth-century and contemporary projects were used to illustrate “semantic” and “syntactic” dimensions of architecture. The terminology and pluralist content of the lecture show how mannerism was related to the notion of architecture as language and to nascent postmodernism. By highlighting this episode, the paper challenges the prevailing narrative of Swiss architecture as a bastion of modernism, suggesting that teaching at ETH was more in tune with international developments than previously thought.
Keywords
Mannerism, Venturi and Scott Brown, Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola, René Furer, ETH Zurich
Journal
Architectural theory review
Volume
28
Number ( Month )
1
Pages (or article number)
107-124
Diffusion
License
CC BY-NC-ND
Visibility
Public
Status open access
Hybrid
