Why was iron an important material in 19th century France and England, and what did it come to represent? Where did iron come from and what are its material politics? How could it help to preserve ancient forms of architecture as well as enable new sensations?
How did Walter Benjamin theorize the relationship between the architecture of the 19th century and the architecture of modernism? What role did iron and glass play in this concept? What did Benjamin and Giedion mean by construction being the “subconscious” or “prehistory” of modern architecture?
What were Marey’s Chronophotographs? How do they relate to the idea of machine vision and abstraction, and how else did photography influence architecture at this time?
How would you define architectural abstraction, and how is it related to modern industrial culture (i.e. the way labor is broken down in an assembly line)?
How did projects like Berlage’s Stock Exchange, Behrens’ AEG factory, and Gropius’s Fagus Factory building use iron, glass, and steel in ways that are believed to be distinctly “modern”? By contrast, what aspects of these projects still seem to reflect past values like monumentality or historicism?
How would you define expressionism? How did expressionist work both contrast with and overlap with modern industrial culture? What social and aesthetic effects did Taut/Scheerbart or Mies think glass could bring forth?