Anonymous architecture as counter- image: Sibyl Moholy-Nagy's perspective on American vernacular

摘要

When Sibyl Moholy-Nagy (1903-1971) set out, in 1952, to write a book on anonymous architecture in America, it was a clever move. She had only recently become a teacher of architectural history at the Pratt Institute, and was in fact still transforming herself into an architectural historian. Her life up until then, as the wife and widow of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, had been intellectually stimulating and challenging, but she lacked the formal university education that would have given her a stable footing in academic research. Her father, Martin Pietzsch, however, was a German architect and important Werkbund member in Dresden, and it was this family background that gave her the confidence to start, after her husband's death, a teaching career focusing on architecture. As Moholy's wife and close collaborator, she had moreover been acquainted with many of the protagonists of the Modern Movement in Europe and America, such as Walter Gropius and Sigfried Giedion. She made good use of this double closeness by deciding upon architectural history as her field, but still she could boast neither a thorough academic knowledge nor a serious methodological training.