The Berlage

Claims about the architect as generalist—the architects capacity to be active in a multitude of domains—have been bound up historically with the notion of architecture’s universalism: the idea that architecture touches upon all aspects of reality, each of which the architect is knowledgeable about. This lecture will explore universalism by looking at the work and reception of the sculptor, painter, and architect Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598–1680), an artist who was actively promoted to embody this ideal. Unpacking the claims that are historically attached to universalism should allow to shed a critical light on the question of “generalism.” Is it a matter of authority, of a capacity to act, or indeed of an original form of interdisciplinarity? This is the first in a seven-part lecture thematic series entitled “The Architect as Generalist.” Scholars and practitioners will explore how architecture practice is inherently expansive and cross-disciplinary, from the Renaissance to the present. Lectures in the series will examine how architects are not only comfortable designing buildings and cities but also furniture, exhibitions, books, films, fashion, amongst other things. The series will start with an examination of the architect as the Renaissance Man through the lens of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, followed by lectures by Carlo Mollino’s conceptual Mannerism, the intersections between architecture and fashion in the work of Prada +OMA/AMO, the designs of Luigi Caccia Dominioni’s from the spoon to the city, the architecture of book design, architectural practive as a field of research, and new forms of professional practice.

Maarten Delbeke holds the Chair of the History and Theory of Architecture at the Department of Architecture at ETH Zurich. He studied architecture at the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture at Ghent University, where he obtained his PhD in 2001. After having been awarded the Scott Opler Fellowship in Architectural History(Worcester College, Oxford), he became a post-doctoral fellow with the Flemish Fund for Scientific Research (F.W.O.). In 2005 he started teaching at the Universities of Ghent and Leiden. At Leiden he led the research project “The Quest for the Legitimacy of Architecture 1750–1850“, funded by a VIDI-grant from the Dutch Science Foundation (N.W.O.). In 2014 he became full professor in the field of architectural history and theory at Ghent University. He joined ETH Zurich in 2016. Delbeke has published widely on the history and theory of baroque architecture and art in Rome, France, and the Southern Netherlands; theoretical questions in eighteenth-and nineteenth-century European architecture; and the reception of early modern architecture in the twentieth-century. He is also active as an architecture critic. As the founding editor-in-chief of “Architectural Histories,” the online open-access journal of the European Architectural History Network (EAHN), he seeks to explore digital methods in the research and dissemination of architectural history.