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Edith doesn’t live here anymore: a story of Farnsworth House

Research output: Contribution in Book/Report/Proceedings - With ISBN/ISSNChapter (peer-reviewed)

Published
Publication date2013
Host publicationThe inhabited ruins of Central Europe: re-imagining space, history and memory
EditorsDariusz Gafijczuk, Derek Sayer
Place of PublicationBasingstoke
PublisherPalgrave Macmillan
ISBN (print)9781137305855
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

This is an experimental piece of writing on architecture as melancholic ruin that charts the construction of the iconic Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois through the relationship between Dr. Edith Farnsworth, and the architect, Mies van der Rohe. The aim is to engage with the Modernist spirit, its spiritual tensions between transcendental philosophy and human emotions, as well as avant-garde and kitsch through enacted and imagined conversations and narratives, pulled together through diary entries, architectural journals, fiction and other texts. What emerges in this performative piece is modernism’s darkness and the layers of history that connects us to the Tugenhadt House in Brno, the Czech Republic, and Fascist architecture.