Art History Guest Lecture: Architecture and the “Crisis of Man,” 1950–60 (Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen, Yale)
When and Where
Speakers
Description
Architecture and the “Crisis of Man,” 1950–60
Professor Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen, Yale University
When: Thursday, November 21, 2024
Where: UC 161, University College
Abstract:
The talk investigates the decade following the Second World War, when the brutality of the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons against Japan led to what Albert Camus (1913-1960) in his 1946 lecture at Columbia University dubbed with his characteristic pessimism as “the crisis of man” (la crise de l’homme). The lively conversations surrounding “the crisis of man” that followed had a major impact on how architecture was discussed, taught, designed, built, and experienced after the WWII as, shortly after the war’s end, architects, and planners, as well as historians and critics started to criticize modern architecture and urbanism for failing to foster human wellbeing and to prioritize human relationship to nature in their works and words. I will highlight the role of Nordic Team Ten members in those conversations.
