Siegfried Giedion

Born in Prague , Swiss by nationality. Education Giedion received in Munich , Zurich and Vienna . Initially, Giedion planned to become an engineer and get a technical education, but later abruptly changed his direction from technical to humanitarian. Gidion was a pupil of Heinrich Wollflin .

Guidion was the most important and in fact the only serious historian of architecture of the XIX and XX centuries.

- Joseph Rickvert

In 1922, Giedion Siegfried in collaboration with Heinrich Wölflin published his first book, Later Baroque and Romantic Classicism. She was a study of architectural style, where the formal approach felt the influence of a mentor. Giedion considered neoclassicism merely a “coloring matter”, a reflection of which can be found in the Baroque and other periods of architecture.

After the First World War, Giedion Siegfried turned his attention to new architectural trends, which in particular sought answers to the demands of a society that was craving for something new. In 1923, Giedion met Walter Gropius at the Bauhaus exhibition, and in 1925 Le Corbusier at the L'Esprit Nouveau exhibition in Paris . After that, the International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM) was born together with Le Corbusier and Helen de Mandro. The first congress took place in 1928. After 26 years, the organization fell apart, but Gidion was faithful to her to the end and throughout the life of the organization remained the first general secretary.

In 1928, Giedion Siegfried publishes a new book, Building in France. Construction with iron. Construction using reinforced concrete ”( German: Bauen in Frankreich, Bauen in Eisen, Bauen in Eisenbeton ), thanks to which he essentially turned history into a weapon for the modernists, creating a foundation for them to search for them. Further in 1930, Gidion actively published in newspapers and a magazine with architectural articles, built houses in the elite district of Zurich, held exhibitions, and also tried to find himself in cinema. Together with architect Werner Max Moser and businessman Rudolf Graber, he founded Wohnbedarf AG, which was engaged in the development of links between industrial and interior design.

In 1941, Guideion publishes, perhaps, the most famous of his books - “Space, time and architecture. The development of a new tradition ”( Space, Time, and Architecture. The Growth of a New Tradition ).

The catastrophic gap between the thought and the feelings of a person occurred at about the same time as the separation of the structure from the facade in the 19th century architecture. The theory of the relationship between space and time, cubism, cinema and other phenomena of the beginning of the 20th century were intermingled with each other and were the cultural innovations that were sought by society. These concurrently developing cultural ideas will ultimately be able to unite the “divided human ego” through their glorification in modern architecture.

- Siegfried Gidion, Space, time and architecture. The development of a new tradition ”(Space, Time, and Architecture. The Growth of a New Tradition).

Reprinted and expanded several times, the main work of Gidion Siegfried became a reference book for many generations of students, which was also called the Gidion Bible. His calls for the restoration of intimate life and the feelings of a human scale today in an era of growing cities and cities, more important than ever.

In 1948, the next work of Gidion “Mechanization takes command” ( Mechanization takes command ), which becomes an anonymous history of the industrialization and mechanization of a society with an apocalyptic title. Here Giedion left the architectural field and turned his attention to how the increasing rationalization of the needs of society changed the consciousness of man, led to the confrontation of man with nature and himself.

• Spätbarocker und romantischer Klassizismus, 1922
• Space, Time and Architecture: 1941. Harvard University Press, 5th edition, 2003, ISBN 0-674-83040-7
• Nine Points on Monumentality, 1943
• The Oxford University Press 1948 Mechanization Takes Command
• Walter Gropius, work and teamwork, Reinhold Pub. Co. 1954
• Architecture, Harvard UP 1958
• The Eternal Present, 1964
• Architecture and the Phenomenona of Transition. The Three Space Conceptions in Architecture, 1971
• Building in France, Building in Ferroconcrete, Getty Research Institute, 1995, Bauen in Frankreich, Bauen in Eisenbeton (Leipzig: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1928)