Giedion, Sigfried

Bio Sketch

Sigfried Giedion (1888-1968) was a Swiss architectural historian and critic, secretary of CIAM (Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne). His Space, Time and Architecture (1941) was highly influential in promoting modernism. Giedion emphasized the relationship between architecture and its historical moment.

Key Works

• Space, Time and Architecture (1941)
• Mechanization Takes Command (1948)

Key Concepts

• modernism
• space-time (see space-time-continuum)
• historicism
• mechanization — Mechanization Takes Command (1948): the clock and printing press as industrial society's prototypes; medieval vs. nineteenth-century space and comfort ("Space had become neutral, a backdrop for the smaller designed objects"); mass-replicated symbols' "dematerialization and devaluation."
• dematerialization — the register-evolution diagnosis quoted through Jacobus: the evolution of cultural registers has "confused the human environment" by splitting "our modes of thinking from our modes of feeling."

Relevance to Geoffrey's Research

Giedion represents the mainstream historiography of modernism that Benjamin and others critiqued. His work connects to themes of dwelling, modernity, and the writing of architectural history.

Source Support

• source-notes/elliott-benjamin-for-architects
• source-notes/abell-freud-for-architects
• Toward the immaterial interior (Jacobus 2018) — Giedion quoted and relied on throughout Jacobus's chapter: Mechanization Takes Command on the register evolution ("confused the human environment" by splitting "our modes of thinking from our modes of feeling," p. v), on Egyptian New Kingdom temples' plan as materialized belief (no "standstill in life or death"; the dark cella where "the image of god was preserved"), on medieval vs. nineteenth-century conceptions of space and spatial comfort ("Habitation areas no longer needed to be strongly defined spatial realms in order to elicit comfort. Space had become neutral"), and on mass-replicated symbols ("the original symbolic meaning was lost in the panoply, a dematerialization and devaluation of the symbols themselves"; material "torn out of the frame within which it once had meaning"); The Eternal Present (1964) on Egyptian belief allowing no "standstill in life or death." Jacobus's three-register and dematerialization theses are built on Giedion's twin books.
• Topology and interiority: Folding space inside (Voordouw 2018) — The Eternal Present (1964, p. 521) as the historiographic foil: Giedion's "first space conception" as volumes in space, "outside looking at the object," with ancient architecture's lack of interior explained by enclosure without connection ("the space contained no windows to connect to the outside") — a conception Voordouw sets against Deleuze's monad ("space but no architecture") and the topological facade ("surface but no space"): "Giedion's first conception has no space… In both conditions, architecture struggles to materialize." Giedion's "mask" also supplies the facade analysis: the classical facade as "the visible expression of classical composition while the architectural 'truth' lay hidden in the steel structure behind the stone." See topological-interiority, topology.