The Essay as Form

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Published: Aug 10, 2014
DOI: https://doi.org/10.56255/ma.v0i09.180

Keywords:



Architecture
writing
historiography
essay
academicism
Issue
No. 09 (2014): Materia Arquitectura 09 (Agosto/August 2014)
Section
Dossier translations

Main Article Content

Abstract



This essay explores German sociologist Theodor Adorno’s 1958 text “The Essay as Form”, through the writings of a quintet of English
post-war architectural historians: John Summerson, Colin Rowe, Alan Colquhoun, Reyner Banham and Robin Evans. It argues that
each of these historians’ commitment to the essay form has gone largely unnoticed among any kind of appreciation of their work, and more generally that the essay, as a very particular way of communicating learned ideas in a populist way, should be resurrected as an important and accessible model for all academic writing.


 

Article Details



Thomas Weaver
Architectural Association School of Architecture

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Weaver, T. (2014). The Essay as Form. Materia Arquitectura, (09), 86–88. https://doi.org/10.56255/ma.v0i09.180

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References

ADORNO, T. (1984). The Essay as Form (B. Hullot-Kentor y F. Will, Trads.), New German Critique(32), primavera-verano, págs. 151-171 [1a ed. en Adorno, T. (1958). Noten zur Literatur I. Fráncfort del Meno: Suhrkamp].

BANHAM, R. (1960). Theory and Design in the First Machine Age. Londres: Architectural Press.

BANHAM, R. (1996). A Critic Writes. Berkeley: University of California Press.

COLQUHOUN, A. (2011). “Some Thoughts on the ‘Essay‘”. Carta no publicada.

COLQUHOUN, A. (1981). Essays in Architectural Criticism: Modern Architecture and Historical Change. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

EVANS, R. (1997). Translations from Drawing to Building and Other Essays. Londres: Architectural Association.

HUXLEY, A. (1959). Collected Essays. Nueva York: Harper.

ROWE, C. (1996). As I Was Saying: Recollections and Miscellaneous Essays, tres vols. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

SUMMERSON, J. (1963). Heavenly Mansions: And other essays on architecture. Nueva York: W. W. Norton.