Nelson Goodman and Modern Architecture

Kasper Lægring is a theorist of architecture and the arts, a curator, and currently a New Carlsberg Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Art History at Aarhus University. He is serving as the Second Vice President of the European Architectural History Network for the period 2024–2026 (with Panagiotis Farantatos). With research degrees in architecture (MS, University of Pennsylvania; PhD, The Royal Danish Academy School of Architecture) and art history (Mag.art., University of Copenhagen), he has received recognition such as the Gold Medal of the University of Copenhagen. His studies and research have been supported by numerous prestigious institutions, including the J. William Fulbright Commission, the New Carlsberg Foundation, and the ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius. Some recent notable publications include contributions to A Cultural History of the Avant-Garde in the Nordic Countries (Brill, 2022) and The Contested Territory of Architectural Theory (Routledge, 2022). This book is a revised and expanded version of his PhD dissertation.

Acknowledgements
List of Figures

Chapter 1: Introduction
Reckoning with the critique of modern architecture
A Goodmanian take on modern architecture and its critiques
Defining the object of study
Problems of demarcation
The ideological basis for modern architecture in functionalist theory
Current research into the praxis of modern architecture
Chapter 2: Applying Goodman’s aesthetic theory to architecture
Aesthetics and cognition
Aesthetics and language
Goodman as nominalist
Right or wrong rather than true or false
When does architecture take place? Goodman’s rejection of competing theories



Languages of Art

Symbol systems and symbol schemes
Syntactic and semantic, notation, digital and analog



Imperfect notational systems: Notational schemes

Allographic, autographic and the steps of the design process
Notational approaches: Score and script
Notation and mixed symbol systems in architecture
Denotation



Fictitious denotation

Exemplification



Exemplification in modern architecture

Expression (metaphorical exemplification)



Feelings or moods?

Complex and mediate modes of reference: Allusion, variation, style



Allusion
Variation
Style

Chapter 3: Symbolization in pre-modern architecture
Renaissance architecture
Mannerist architecture
Baroque architecture
Rococo architecture
Neoclassical architecture
Romanticist impulses
Historicist architecture
Chapter 4: Symbolization in the early phases of modern architecture
The Chicago School



Wainwright Building

Art Nouveau, Jugendstil, Wiener Secession, and Catalan Modernisme



Maison Coilliot
Maison Horta
Majolikahaus
Casa Milà
Willow Tearooms

Adolf Loos



Looshaus

Expressionist architecture



Het Schip
Einsteinturm

Glass architecture
Chapter 5: The aesthetic implications of the critique of modern architecture
The International Style exhibition in 1932 as a compass
The aesthetically oriented critique of modern architecture, circa 1970
Chapter 6: Symbolization in modern architecture
The International Style: Mies van der Rohe and the minimalism of glass and steel



Illinois Institute of Technology
General means of aesthetic symbolization in Mies’ formalistic architecture

The International Style: Gropius, Bauhaus, and the factory aesthetic



The Bauhaus building in Dessau
Late works by Gropius
Formalism and classicism in American federal and corporate International Style

The International Style: Le Corbusier and Purism



Les Quartiers Modernes Frugès in Pessac
The white, cubist aesthetic of the villas of Loos and Le Corbusier

Le Corbusier’s late works and the Brutalism of béton brut



Unité d’habitation in Marseille
Notre-Dame-du-Haut at Ronchamp
The imprint of Brutalism on late modernism

Frank Lloyd Wright and organic modernism



Late works by Wright
Fallingwater
From Alvar Aalto to the notion of another modernism

Chapter 7: Conclusion
The hegemony of exemplification in modern architectural praxis
The architecture of formalism: symbolic rather than silent

Bibliography
Index