K Michael Hays | Harvard University (original) (raw)

Papers by K Michael Hays

Materia Arquitectura/Materia arquitectura, Oct 1, 2017

These notes are offered as a sketch of interpretive method. I suggest that the writing of archite... more These notes are offered as a sketch of interpretive method. I suggest that the writing of architectural history is, or should be, a deeply theoretical sort of symptomatology – an account of how the very forms and experiences of architecture both construct and repress the absent thing we call the social, and are its most material symbolizations. Such an account benefits from an idea and a practice of narrative. Narrative is an ideological production that avoids any copy theories of representation even as it insists on the real, material forms and events that are its subject matter.

A history of modem architecture can follow two distinct paths. First is the path of the object: a... more A history of modem architecture can follow two distinct paths. First is the path of the object: an analysis of the historical origins of the things and events themselves. Second is the path of the subject: an analysis of the more intangible and shifting historicity of the concepts and categories by which we attempt to understand objects and events. This study analyzes the reciprocity of subject/object relations in modern architecture. Subjectivity constitutes the categories of possible experience, objectivity is what is experienced; and architecture resides in the both domains. The particular dialectic of subject and object treated here is that which emerges in the buildings, projects, and writings of Hannes Meyer and Ludwig Hilberseimer, each of whom, in different ways, brings himself face-to-face with the threatening problems posed by modernity to bourgeois humanism and the sovereignty of its modes of artistic production and reception. My thesis is that a perceptual shift, which I...

German Studies Review, 1994

A history of modem architecture can follow two distinct paths. First is the path of the object: a... more A history of modem architecture can follow two distinct paths. First is the path of the object: an analysis of the historical origins of the things and events themselves. Second is the path of the subject: an analysis of the more intangible and shifting historicity of the concepts and categories by which we attempt to understand objects and events. This study analyzes the reciprocity of subject/object relations in modern architecture. Subjectivity constitutes the categories of possible experience, objectivity is what is experienced; and architecture resides in the both domains. The particular dialectic of subject and object treated here is that which emerges in the buildings, projects, and writings of Hannes Meyer and Ludwig Hilberseimer, each of whom, in different ways, brings himself face-to-face with the threatening problems posed by modernity to bourgeois humanism and the sovereignty of its modes of artistic production and reception. My thesis is that a perceptual shift, which I call posthumanism, can be detected within the work of these figures. Posthumanism is the consciousness and conscious response, whether with applause, resignation, or regret. to the threatened norm of psychological autonomomy and individualism. Each of these architects produced a body of work that delineates precise social agendas as well as aesthetic preferences and offers architectures that would be adequate to the posthumanist social orders envisioned. The study draws on established and emergent analyses in critical theory, in particular those of the Frankfurt School and of certain poststructuralist thinkers. It attempts to demonstrate that many of the experiments by these architects previously relegated by the critical-historical establishment to reductive versions of functionalism or Sachlichkeit can be more fruitfully explained within a framework of positions indicative of the changed status of the subject and the ways the subject is variously constituted by the different architectures.

Wissenschaftliches Kolloquium vom 14. bis 16. Oktober 1999 in Weimar an der Bauhaus-Universität z... more Wissenschaftliches Kolloquium vom 14. bis 16. Oktober 1999 in Weimar an der Bauhaus-Universität zum Thema: 'global village - Perspektiven der Architektur'

New Yorkxv, 701 p.; bibl., illus.; 25 cm

Wissenschaftliches Kolloquium vom 19. bis 22. April 2007 in Weimar an der Bauhaus-Universität zum... more Wissenschaftliches Kolloquium vom 19. bis 22. April 2007 in Weimar an der Bauhaus-Universität zum Thema: 'Die Realität des Imaginären. Architektur und das digitale Bild'

Oxford Bibliographies Online Datasets

The concept of postmodernism finds its definitive articulation in architecture, even though postm... more The concept of postmodernism finds its definitive articulation in architecture, even though postmodern thought far exceeds the use of the term postmodern in architectural discourse. Modern architecture—with its utopian aspirations, functional rationality, technological determinism, and aesthetic purism—is understood by postmodern thought as a primary expression of the general search for a metaphysics of certainty and universality, which rejects traditional spatial hierarchies and seeks to establish a new homogeneous and continuous space. In practice, the creation of this new space entails the erasure and replacement of old buildings and city fabric as well as old subjectivities and sensibilities. Against the principles of erasure and replacement, a post-modern ethos in architecture emerged in the years just after World War II with a pars destruens, which criticizes the modern movement’s objective and subjective ambitions, and a pars construens which calls for an embrace of heterogen...

Harvard Design Magazine Architecture Landscape Architecture Urban Design and Planning, 2012

Assemblage, 1989

... Critique of Capitalism or ... is he who has assumed the condition of the modern (call him a d... more ... Critique of Capitalism or ... is he who has assumed the condition of the modern (call him a displaced person, a dissident, a traveller, an exile, a for ... formalism can be found in his discussion of drawings 13 and 14, now linked to a discussion of "cleanliness or purity in industrial ...

Assemblage, 1986

... K. Michael Hays teaches history and theory of architecture at Princeton University and is edi... more ... K. Michael Hays teaches history and theory of architecture at Princeton University and is editor of Assemblage. K. Michael Hays Theory-Constitutive ... 120 Page 6. Hays 1. Upper fresco of the Tomb of Antonio dei Fissiraga, Lodi, San Francesco, discussed by I. Ragusa. ...

Journal of Architectural Education, 2011

What is anything when threatened with its own dissolution? Is it more itself, or is it something ... more What is anything when threatened with its own dissolution? Is it more itself, or is it something else? These are questions asked by K. Michael Hays in Architecture's Desire, a Lacanian review of the most recent history of experimental architecture—the kind of architecture ...

Journal of Architectural Education (1984-), 1997

... For now, let it be said only that, first, the difference seems not to be simply a question of... more ... For now, let it be said only that, first, the difference seems not to be simply a question of degree of heterotopia or of dis-tance from normative conditions, but of something more fundamental having to do with the difference of architecture from other kinds of artistic practices; and ...

Materia Arquitectura/Materia arquitectura, Oct 1, 2017

These notes are offered as a sketch of interpretive method. I suggest that the writing of archite... more These notes are offered as a sketch of interpretive method. I suggest that the writing of architectural history is, or should be, a deeply theoretical sort of symptomatology – an account of how the very forms and experiences of architecture both construct and repress the absent thing we call the social, and are its most material symbolizations. Such an account benefits from an idea and a practice of narrative. Narrative is an ideological production that avoids any copy theories of representation even as it insists on the real, material forms and events that are its subject matter.

A history of modem architecture can follow two distinct paths. First is the path of the object: a... more A history of modem architecture can follow two distinct paths. First is the path of the object: an analysis of the historical origins of the things and events themselves. Second is the path of the subject: an analysis of the more intangible and shifting historicity of the concepts and categories by which we attempt to understand objects and events. This study analyzes the reciprocity of subject/object relations in modern architecture. Subjectivity constitutes the categories of possible experience, objectivity is what is experienced; and architecture resides in the both domains. The particular dialectic of subject and object treated here is that which emerges in the buildings, projects, and writings of Hannes Meyer and Ludwig Hilberseimer, each of whom, in different ways, brings himself face-to-face with the threatening problems posed by modernity to bourgeois humanism and the sovereignty of its modes of artistic production and reception. My thesis is that a perceptual shift, which I...

German Studies Review, 1994

A history of modem architecture can follow two distinct paths. First is the path of the object: a... more A history of modem architecture can follow two distinct paths. First is the path of the object: an analysis of the historical origins of the things and events themselves. Second is the path of the subject: an analysis of the more intangible and shifting historicity of the concepts and categories by which we attempt to understand objects and events. This study analyzes the reciprocity of subject/object relations in modern architecture. Subjectivity constitutes the categories of possible experience, objectivity is what is experienced; and architecture resides in the both domains. The particular dialectic of subject and object treated here is that which emerges in the buildings, projects, and writings of Hannes Meyer and Ludwig Hilberseimer, each of whom, in different ways, brings himself face-to-face with the threatening problems posed by modernity to bourgeois humanism and the sovereignty of its modes of artistic production and reception. My thesis is that a perceptual shift, which I call posthumanism, can be detected within the work of these figures. Posthumanism is the consciousness and conscious response, whether with applause, resignation, or regret. to the threatened norm of psychological autonomomy and individualism. Each of these architects produced a body of work that delineates precise social agendas as well as aesthetic preferences and offers architectures that would be adequate to the posthumanist social orders envisioned. The study draws on established and emergent analyses in critical theory, in particular those of the Frankfurt School and of certain poststructuralist thinkers. It attempts to demonstrate that many of the experiments by these architects previously relegated by the critical-historical establishment to reductive versions of functionalism or Sachlichkeit can be more fruitfully explained within a framework of positions indicative of the changed status of the subject and the ways the subject is variously constituted by the different architectures.

Wissenschaftliches Kolloquium vom 14. bis 16. Oktober 1999 in Weimar an der Bauhaus-Universität z... more Wissenschaftliches Kolloquium vom 14. bis 16. Oktober 1999 in Weimar an der Bauhaus-Universität zum Thema: 'global village - Perspektiven der Architektur'

New Yorkxv, 701 p.; bibl., illus.; 25 cm

Wissenschaftliches Kolloquium vom 19. bis 22. April 2007 in Weimar an der Bauhaus-Universität zum... more Wissenschaftliches Kolloquium vom 19. bis 22. April 2007 in Weimar an der Bauhaus-Universität zum Thema: 'Die Realität des Imaginären. Architektur und das digitale Bild'

Oxford Bibliographies Online Datasets

The concept of postmodernism finds its definitive articulation in architecture, even though postm... more The concept of postmodernism finds its definitive articulation in architecture, even though postmodern thought far exceeds the use of the term postmodern in architectural discourse. Modern architecture—with its utopian aspirations, functional rationality, technological determinism, and aesthetic purism—is understood by postmodern thought as a primary expression of the general search for a metaphysics of certainty and universality, which rejects traditional spatial hierarchies and seeks to establish a new homogeneous and continuous space. In practice, the creation of this new space entails the erasure and replacement of old buildings and city fabric as well as old subjectivities and sensibilities. Against the principles of erasure and replacement, a post-modern ethos in architecture emerged in the years just after World War II with a pars destruens, which criticizes the modern movement’s objective and subjective ambitions, and a pars construens which calls for an embrace of heterogen...

Harvard Design Magazine Architecture Landscape Architecture Urban Design and Planning, 2012

Assemblage, 1989

... Critique of Capitalism or ... is he who has assumed the condition of the modern (call him a d... more ... Critique of Capitalism or ... is he who has assumed the condition of the modern (call him a displaced person, a dissident, a traveller, an exile, a for ... formalism can be found in his discussion of drawings 13 and 14, now linked to a discussion of "cleanliness or purity in industrial ...

Assemblage, 1986

... K. Michael Hays teaches history and theory of architecture at Princeton University and is edi... more ... K. Michael Hays teaches history and theory of architecture at Princeton University and is editor of Assemblage. K. Michael Hays Theory-Constitutive ... 120 Page 6. Hays 1. Upper fresco of the Tomb of Antonio dei Fissiraga, Lodi, San Francesco, discussed by I. Ragusa. ...

Journal of Architectural Education, 2011

What is anything when threatened with its own dissolution? Is it more itself, or is it something ... more What is anything when threatened with its own dissolution? Is it more itself, or is it something else? These are questions asked by K. Michael Hays in Architecture's Desire, a Lacanian review of the most recent history of experimental architecture—the kind of architecture ...

Journal of Architectural Education (1984-), 1997

... For now, let it be said only that, first, the difference seems not to be simply a question of... more ... For now, let it be said only that, first, the difference seems not to be simply a question of degree of heterotopia or of dis-tance from normative conditions, but of something more fundamental having to do with the difference of architecture from other kinds of artistic practices; and ...