Modern architecture has been criticized for emphasizing practical and technical issues at the expense of aesthetic concerns. The high-rise buildings constructed throughout the industrialized world in the 1960s and 1970s provide ample evidence that cost-efficiency and utility have become the overriding concerns of the modern architect. However, Otto Wagner’s seminal text on of modern architecture cannot be blamed on the ideals of its founders.
Wagner’s Modern Architecture called for a new style based on modern technologies and modes of construction. He insisted that there could be no return to traditional, preindustrial models; only by accepting wholeheartedly the political and technological revolutions of the nineteenth century could the architect establish the forms appropriate to a modern, urban for the simplistic form-follows-function dogma that opponents have identified as the intellectual basis of modern architecture.
But the picture was more complex, for Wagner was always careful to distinguish between art and engineering. Ultimately, he envisaged the architect developing the skills of the engineer without losing the powers of aesthetic judgment that Wagner felt were unique to the artist. “Since the engineer is seldom a born artist and satisfactory way.” In this symbiotic relationship essential to Modernism, art was to exercise the controlling influence.
No other prospect was imaginable for Wagner, who was firmly rooted as a designer and, indeed, as a teacher in the Classical tradition. The apparent inconsistency of a confessed Classicist advising against the mechanical imitation of historical models and arguing for new forms appropriate to the modern age created exactly the tension he recognized his emotional attachment to the great works of the Italian Renaissance and Austrian Baroque.
What this question is testing
Topic
The author is pushing back on the standard knock against modern architecture (that it's ugly and only cares about function) by walking back to the field's founding text — Otto Wagner's 1896 book — and showing it's more complicated than critics admit.
Framework
Highlight Noteworthy. The author isn't neutral here; they're defending Wagner's ideals against a common criticism.
Main Point
Here's the simpler version: people complain that modern buildings are utilitarian and soulless, and blame the founders of modern architecture for it. The author says wait — go back and read Otto Wagner. Yes, Wagner argued that buildings should embrace modern technology. But he also said that art, not engineering, should be in charge, and his own work shows it: even when he justified a building shape on technical grounds, his real inspiration came from the Classical tradition. So the failures of modern architecture aren't Wagner's fault.
P1: The complaint and the counter
Modern buildings get criticized for ignoring beauty for the sake of cost and utility. The high-rises of the 1960s and 70s are the usual examples. But Wagner's 1896 book shows that the founders' ideals weren't actually to blame.
P2: Wagner's push for modern forms
Wagner said: build with modern technology, embrace the political and technological revolutions, no going back to old styles. Modern creations should reflect our democratic, self-confident age and use new materials. On its face that sounds like the bare "form follows function" dogma critics complain about.
P3: But art was supposed to be in charge
Wagner separated art from engineering and said the architect should learn engineering without losing the artist's judgment. Architects would extend their reach into engineering territory so that aesthetic demands could still be met. In this combination, art was the senior partner.
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