Bring it back: Revivalism and Religion

Dr Ayla Lepine, from the Department of Art History in the School of Humanities, will be delivering a lecture in the school of Architecture, all are welcome. Snadwiches and refresments will be provided.

Bring it Back: Revivalism and Religion in American Architecture of the 1920s and 1930s

In the 1920s and 1930s amidst the rise of Modernism and the spreading influence of Bauhaus forms and ideas, another strand of American design transformed built environments of cities, universities, and sacred spaces. This paper explores architectural firms including Cram, Goodhue and Ferguson, Raymond Hood, and Allen and Collens, putting projects including The Cloisters for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Rockefeller Chapel at the University of Chicago, and the monastery for the Society of St John the Evangelist in Boston in dialogue to discern how revivals of the Middle Ages constituted a radical modernity. By interpreting these diverse commercial,cultural and religious sites in close contact, a strand of the sacred comes to the fore as a key factor in the development of ambitious projects that defined a new vision of American education, urbanism, and cultural experience. Questioning the somewhat isolationist position of 'anti-modernism' within these networks of architects and patrons, this paper will open out new theoretical territory regarding these projects by considering them through the lens of Giorgio Agamben's recent claims regarding monasticism as a template for modern life.