Joseph Rykwert
Encyclopedia
Joseph Rykwert is Paul Philippe Cret Professor of Architecture Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania
, and is widely regarded as the most important architectural historian and critic of his generation. He has spent most of his working life in the United Kingdom and America. Rykwert is the author of many influential works of architectural criticism and history, which have been published over a sixty-year period. The most important of these are The Idea of a Town (1963), On Adam’s House in Paradise (1972), The Dancing Column (1996) and The Seduction of Place (2000). All his books have been translated into several languages.
The son of Szymon Rykwert and Elizabeth Melup, Rykwert was born in Warsaw in 1926 and moved to England in 1939, on the eve of the second world war. Rykwert was educated at Charterhouse and then at the Bartlett School of Architecture and the Architectural Association in London. His first academic posts were lecturing at Hammersmith School of Arts & Crafts and subsequently at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm from 1958, and then as Librarian and Tutor at the Royal College of Art from 1961 to 1967 where he obtained his PhD. He was appointed Professor of Art at the newly-created University of Essex, a post he held from 1967 until 1980, when he moved to Cambridge first as Slade Professor in the Fine Arts and then as Reader in architecture. Here Rykwert continued his influential master’s programme, taught with the architectural critic Dalibor Vesely
. In 1988 Rykwert was appointed as the Paul Philippe Cret Professor of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, a post he held until 1998 (now Emeritus).
Joseph Rykwert has lectured or taught at most major schools of architecture throughout the world and has held visiting appointments at Princeton, the Cooper Union, New York, Harvard Graduate School of Design, the University of Sydney, of Louvain, the Institut d’Urbanisme, Paris, the Central European University and others: in 1998-99 he was a British Academy visiting professor at the University of Bath. He has held senior fellowships at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts, Washington, and the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities. In 1984 Rykwert was appointed Chevalier dans l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He holds honorary degrees from the University of Edinburgh (1995), the University of Cordoba, Argentina (1998), the University of Bath (2000), of Toronto (2005) Rome (20005) and Trieste (2007), and is a member of the Italian Accademia di San Luca and the Polish Academy. In 2000 he was awarded the Bruno Zevi prize in architectural history by the Biennale of Venice, and in 2009 the Gold Medal Bellas Artes, Madrid. He has been president of the international council of architectural critics (CICA) since 1996.
Joseph Rykwert’s preoccupations are many, but some particular themes stand out. His work is fundamentally concerned with the origin of architectural ideas and, having experienced displacement himself at an early age, with our sense of ‘place’. In The Idea of a Town: The Anthropology of Urban Form in Rome, Italy and the Ancient World (first published in 1963 and in two subsequent editions), rather than accept the archaeologists’ viewpoint of the ancient city as an outcome of practical settlement needs, Rykwert broke new ground in understanding the ancient town as a product of sacred and symbolic rituals. The book served as a timely critique of post-war New Town developments. In On Adam’s House in Paradise: The Idea of the Primitive Hut in Architectural History (1972 and subsequent editions) Rykwert examined the persistent idea that architecture could be returned to a lost state of accord with nature, an accord symbolised by the fabled idea that Adam had built a house in Eden. In The First Moderns: The Architects of the Eighteenth Century (1980), Rykwert traced the origins of many modern ideas that are commonly assumed to be recent inventions (such as optics and perspective). The book is not a conventional history of style, but rather one of ideas and culture. Frances Yates explained this novelty of approach in The Times Literary Supplement: ‘The range of Rykwert's learning is enormous. History of gardens, Chinese influences, festival architecture, all contribute to the overflowing wealth. Great figures in the history of thought and science — Bacon, Newton, Vico — are seen from new angles....This is no superficial history of styles, no conventional history of ideas. It invigorates both through the attempt at a new kind of history of architecture.’ In The Dancing Column: On Order in Architecture (1996) Rykwert turned his attention to the origins of the architectural Orders, and more recently in The Seduction of Place: The History and Future of Cities (2000) to the question of how to make successful urban spaces and forms in cities today.
Throughout his career Rykwert has been preoccupied with the work of one Renaissance architect in particular, that is, Leon Battista Alberti. In 1955 Rykwert published an annotated edition of Leoni’s 1756 translation of Alberti’s treatise, entitled The Ten Books of Architecture, by L.B. Alberti, and this was followed in 1989 with a new translation from Latin, entitled On the Art of Building in Ten Books (published with Robert Tavernor and Neil Leach). In 1994 Rykwert co-curated (with Tavernor and Anne Rykwert) an international exhibition on Alberti’s work, held at the Palazzo Te in Mantua. In Alberti’s overlapping interest in architectural theory and practice, and in his conception of the architect as a philosopher and student of many arts, he is identified by Rykwert as representing the model architect for an age where the role of the designer is in danger of being reduced to that of a businessman or technocrat. The conception of architecture as a product of inter-related disciplines and as a sister to other visual arts informs Rykwert’s latest book, The Judicious Eye: Architecture Against the Other Arts, published in 2008.
Joseph Rykwert married his second wife, Anne, during his time in Essex, and she has been a collaborator on notable works including the international Alberti exhibition and a book on the Adam brothers. Rykwert’s teaching has influenced several generations of architects and historians. Sir James Stirling commented on The First Moderns, for example, that it was: ‘An erudite lead into my favourite period (early nineteenth century) with amazing revelations on the architectural heroes of the time.’ Many of Rykwert’s former pupils have gone on to have significant careers in their own right, such as Daniel Libeskind
, Eric Parry, Alberto Pérez-Gómez
, Mohsen Mostafavi
, Robert Tavernor and David Leatherbarrow
. It is not an exaggeration to say that there is hardly a university department of architecture in the United Kingdom or America without a member of staff who has been taught by Rykwert, either directly or indirectly.
Unlike many architectural historians before him, Joseph Rykwert has not been concerned with architectural style or the classical language per se, but rather with the meaning of a particular design that should always find its own appropriate expression. Throughout his work he has been concerned with practice as much as with theory, and with the ways in which buildings are actually designed and made. In this regard Rykwert can be seen to follow in Alberti’s footsteps, in being concerned with the art of building.
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
, and is widely regarded as the most important architectural historian and critic of his generation. He has spent most of his working life in the United Kingdom and America. Rykwert is the author of many influential works of architectural criticism and history, which have been published over a sixty-year period. The most important of these are The Idea of a Town (1963), On Adam’s House in Paradise (1972), The Dancing Column (1996) and The Seduction of Place (2000). All his books have been translated into several languages.
Biography
The son of Szymon Rykwert and Elizabeth Melup, Rykwert was born in Warsaw in 1926 and moved to England in 1939, on the eve of the second world war. Rykwert was educated at Charterhouse and then at the Bartlett School of Architecture and the Architectural Association in London. His first academic posts were lecturing at Hammersmith School of Arts & Crafts and subsequently at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm from 1958, and then as Librarian and Tutor at the Royal College of Art from 1961 to 1967 where he obtained his PhD. He was appointed Professor of Art at the newly-created University of Essex, a post he held from 1967 until 1980, when he moved to Cambridge first as Slade Professor in the Fine Arts and then as Reader in architecture. Here Rykwert continued his influential master’s programme, taught with the architectural critic Dalibor Vesely
Dalibor Vesely
Dalibor Vesely was born in Prague, Czech Republic in 1934. He studied engineering, architecture, art history and philosophy in Prague and in Munich and obtained his PhD from Charles University in Prague. He studied with Hans-Georg Gadamer, with whom he kept a correspondence that would last until...
. In 1988 Rykwert was appointed as the Paul Philippe Cret Professor of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, a post he held until 1998 (now Emeritus).
Joseph Rykwert has lectured or taught at most major schools of architecture throughout the world and has held visiting appointments at Princeton, the Cooper Union, New York, Harvard Graduate School of Design, the University of Sydney, of Louvain, the Institut d’Urbanisme, Paris, the Central European University and others: in 1998-99 he was a British Academy visiting professor at the University of Bath. He has held senior fellowships at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts, Washington, and the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities. In 1984 Rykwert was appointed Chevalier dans l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He holds honorary degrees from the University of Edinburgh (1995), the University of Cordoba, Argentina (1998), the University of Bath (2000), of Toronto (2005) Rome (20005) and Trieste (2007), and is a member of the Italian Accademia di San Luca and the Polish Academy. In 2000 he was awarded the Bruno Zevi prize in architectural history by the Biennale of Venice, and in 2009 the Gold Medal Bellas Artes, Madrid. He has been president of the international council of architectural critics (CICA) since 1996.
Works
Joseph Rykwert’s preoccupations are many, but some particular themes stand out. His work is fundamentally concerned with the origin of architectural ideas and, having experienced displacement himself at an early age, with our sense of ‘place’. In The Idea of a Town: The Anthropology of Urban Form in Rome, Italy and the Ancient World (first published in 1963 and in two subsequent editions), rather than accept the archaeologists’ viewpoint of the ancient city as an outcome of practical settlement needs, Rykwert broke new ground in understanding the ancient town as a product of sacred and symbolic rituals. The book served as a timely critique of post-war New Town developments. In On Adam’s House in Paradise: The Idea of the Primitive Hut in Architectural History (1972 and subsequent editions) Rykwert examined the persistent idea that architecture could be returned to a lost state of accord with nature, an accord symbolised by the fabled idea that Adam had built a house in Eden. In The First Moderns: The Architects of the Eighteenth Century (1980), Rykwert traced the origins of many modern ideas that are commonly assumed to be recent inventions (such as optics and perspective). The book is not a conventional history of style, but rather one of ideas and culture. Frances Yates explained this novelty of approach in The Times Literary Supplement: ‘The range of Rykwert's learning is enormous. History of gardens, Chinese influences, festival architecture, all contribute to the overflowing wealth. Great figures in the history of thought and science — Bacon, Newton, Vico — are seen from new angles....This is no superficial history of styles, no conventional history of ideas. It invigorates both through the attempt at a new kind of history of architecture.’ In The Dancing Column: On Order in Architecture (1996) Rykwert turned his attention to the origins of the architectural Orders, and more recently in The Seduction of Place: The History and Future of Cities (2000) to the question of how to make successful urban spaces and forms in cities today.
Throughout his career Rykwert has been preoccupied with the work of one Renaissance architect in particular, that is, Leon Battista Alberti. In 1955 Rykwert published an annotated edition of Leoni’s 1756 translation of Alberti’s treatise, entitled The Ten Books of Architecture, by L.B. Alberti, and this was followed in 1989 with a new translation from Latin, entitled On the Art of Building in Ten Books (published with Robert Tavernor and Neil Leach). In 1994 Rykwert co-curated (with Tavernor and Anne Rykwert) an international exhibition on Alberti’s work, held at the Palazzo Te in Mantua. In Alberti’s overlapping interest in architectural theory and practice, and in his conception of the architect as a philosopher and student of many arts, he is identified by Rykwert as representing the model architect for an age where the role of the designer is in danger of being reduced to that of a businessman or technocrat. The conception of architecture as a product of inter-related disciplines and as a sister to other visual arts informs Rykwert’s latest book, The Judicious Eye: Architecture Against the Other Arts, published in 2008.
Joseph Rykwert married his second wife, Anne, during his time in Essex, and she has been a collaborator on notable works including the international Alberti exhibition and a book on the Adam brothers. Rykwert’s teaching has influenced several generations of architects and historians. Sir James Stirling commented on The First Moderns, for example, that it was: ‘An erudite lead into my favourite period (early nineteenth century) with amazing revelations on the architectural heroes of the time.’ Many of Rykwert’s former pupils have gone on to have significant careers in their own right, such as Daniel Libeskind
Daniel Libeskind
Daniel Libeskind, is an American architect, artist, and set designer of Polish-Jewish descent. Libeskind founded Studio Daniel Libeskind in 1989 with his wife, Nina, and is its principal design architect...
, Eric Parry, Alberto Pérez-Gómez
Alberto Pérez-Gómez
Alberto Pérez-Gómez is an architectural historian and is also known as a theorist and a promoter of phenomenology. Born December 24, 1949 in Mexico City, Mexico, he graduated as an engineer and architect from the National Polytechnic Institute of Mexico and pursued graduate studies in the history...
, Mohsen Mostafavi
Mohsen Mostafavi
Mohsen Mostafavi is an Iranian-American architect and educator. He currently the Dean and Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He was formerly the Gale and Ira Drukier Dean of the College of Architecture, Art and Planning at Cornell University...
, Robert Tavernor and David Leatherbarrow
David Leatherbarrow
David Leatherbarrow is Professor of Architecture and Chair of the Graduate Group in Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design, Philadelphia, where he has taught since 1984. He received his B.Arch. from the University of Kentucky and holds a Ph.D. in Art from the University of...
. It is not an exaggeration to say that there is hardly a university department of architecture in the United Kingdom or America without a member of staff who has been taught by Rykwert, either directly or indirectly.
Unlike many architectural historians before him, Joseph Rykwert has not been concerned with architectural style or the classical language per se, but rather with the meaning of a particular design that should always find its own appropriate expression. Throughout his work he has been concerned with practice as much as with theory, and with the ways in which buildings are actually designed and made. In this regard Rykwert can be seen to follow in Alberti’s footsteps, in being concerned with the art of building.
Publications (selection)
- The Judicious Eye: Architecture Against the Other Arts (2008)
- Structure and Meaning in Human Settlements (Editor, with Tony Atkin, 2005)
- Body and Building: Essays on the Changing Relation of Body and Architecture edited by George Dodds and Robert Tavernor (2002)
- The Seduction of Place: The History and Future of Cities (2000)
- The Dancing Column: On Order in Architecture (1996)
- Leon Battista Alberti's On the Art of Building in Ten Books translated by Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach and Robert Tavernor (1991)
- The Brothers Adam (with Anne Rykwert, 1985)
- The Necessity of Artifice (1982)
- The First Moderns (1980)
- The Idea of a Town: The Anthropology of Urban Form in Rome, Italy, and The Ancient World (first edition, 1963)
- On Adam's House in Paradise: The Idea of the Primitive Hut in Architectural History (Museum of Modern Art, first edition, 1972)
- Church Building (1966)
- The Ten Books of Architecture, by L.B. Alberti (annotated edn of Leoni’s translation of 1756 (1955)
- The Golden House (1947)
See also
- Slade Professor of Fine ArtSlade Professor of Fine ArtThe Slade Professorship of Fine Art is the oldest professorship of art at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford and London.-History:The chairs were founded concurrently in 1869 by a bequest from the art collector and philanthropist Felix Slade, with studentships also created in the University of...
- Alice Davis Hitchcock AwardAlice Davis Hitchcock AwardThe Alice Davis Hitchcock Award, established in 1949, by the Society of Architectural Historians, annually recognizes "the most distinguished work of scholarship in the history of architecture published by a North American scholar." The oldest of the six different publication awards given...
- David ChipperfieldDavid ChipperfieldSir David Alan Chipperfield CBE, RA, RDI, RIBA is a British architect, born in London. He has offices in London, Berlin and Milan, and a representative office in Shanghai...
- Marco FrascariMarco FrascariMarco Frascari is an Italian architect and architectural theorist born under the shadow of the dome of Sant Andrea in Mantova, in 1945. He studied with Carlo Scarpa and Arrigo Rudi at IUAV and received his PhD in Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania...
- Vaughan HartVaughan HartVaughan Hart is a leading architectural historian and Professor of Architecture in the Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering at the University of Bath. Hart studied architecture at Bath and Cambridge Universities...
- Daniel LibeskindDaniel LibeskindDaniel Libeskind, is an American architect, artist, and set designer of Polish-Jewish descent. Libeskind founded Studio Daniel Libeskind in 1989 with his wife, Nina, and is its principal design architect...
- Alberto Pérez-GómezAlberto Pérez-GómezAlberto Pérez-Gómez is an architectural historian and is also known as a theorist and a promoter of phenomenology. Born December 24, 1949 in Mexico City, Mexico, he graduated as an engineer and architect from the National Polytechnic Institute of Mexico and pursued graduate studies in the history...
- Dalibor VeselyDalibor VeselyDalibor Vesely was born in Prague, Czech Republic in 1934. He studied engineering, architecture, art history and philosophy in Prague and in Munich and obtained his PhD from Charles University in Prague. He studied with Hans-Georg Gadamer, with whom he kept a correspondence that would last until...
- Lewis MumfordLewis MumfordLewis Mumford was an American historian, philosopher of technology, and influential literary critic. Particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture, he had a broad career as a writer...