Graphical representation of the child as employed by Alison and Peter Smithson and Aldo van Eyck at the final three CIAM congresses: Explorations in shifting postwar architectural discourse.

Rosemary Marshall
Trinity College Dublin
Department of History of Art and Architecture
2007
BA

Subject: Architecture
Country: France
Period: 20th Century

10,000 words

This dissertation examines the representation of the child as presented at the final three Congres Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne congresses of 1953 - 1959. In particular, the author focuses on the meaning and the image of the child at play, and the extent to which it is embodied in postwar reconstruction practice. The author argues that the images of the child at play, as used by Alison and Peter Smithson and Aldo van Eyck, were used as a vehicle for the transformation of CIAM’s functionalist design principles into something more humanist and pragmatic. This dissertation aims to draw links between the architectural discourse, and pedagogical discourses, in an attempt to illuminate the relationship between the two, facilitating the examination of the way in which pedagogy informed a revision of architecture’s conception of space and society.

Irish Georgian Society

Education Theses Register

Graphical representation of the child as employed by Alison and Peter Smithson and Aldo van Eyck at the final three CIAM congresses: Explorations in shifting postwar architectural discourse.