Marianna Charitonidou: Drawing, meaning and modernism.

In the newest episode of the A is for Architecture Podcast, I spoke to the architect, historian and theorist Dr Marianna Charitonidou about her fairly recent book, Architectural Drawings as Investigating Devices: Architecture’s Changing Scope in the 20th Century, which she published with Routledge in 2023. 

In the book, Marianna explores how evolving modes of architectural representation reflect epistemological shifts in architecture and urbanism in the modern period. Treating them as something like texts, Marianna analyses drawings’ (and their architects’) roles in mediating relationships between architects, observers and the inhabitants of built spaces. Touching on the work of all the biggies – from Corb and Mies to Rem and Zaha, Rossi, Tschumi, Eisenman, Hejduk and even (my fave) Ungers, the book argues that these transformations reveal ruptures in architecture's imagination, and its shift from modernist universality to PoMo multiplicity.   

Marianna has her own website, she’s on Instagram and LinkedIn. The book is linked above.

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Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick