Early Medieval Architecture as Bearer of Meaning

by Gunter Bandmann, Kendall Wallis (Translator), Hans Böker (Afterword)

Overview

At last available in English, this classic text was originally published in Germany in 1951 and has been continuously in print since then. Gunter Bandmann analyzes the architecture of societies in western Europe up to the twelfth century that aspired to be the heirs to the Roman Empire. He examines the occurrence and recurrence of basic forms not as stylistic evolutions but as meaningful expressions of meta-material content and develops an architectural iconography of symbolic, historical, and aesthetic elements.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231501729
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	07/06/2005
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
File size:	29 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Gunter Bandmann was an eminent German historian who wrote on architecture and church history. Kendall Wallis is the humanities and social sciences librarian at McGill University. Hans Böker is professor of architectural history at McGill University.

Table of Contents

Bearing Bandmann ís Meaning: A Translatorís Introduction
Form and Type
Reception
Claim
Aufheben
Bauherr
Indicating
Coining
Deputy
Westbau
1. The Problem of Meaning in Architecture
The Essence of Meaning
The Medieval Work of Art
Aesthetic Meaning
The Current State of Research on Symbolic and Historical Meaning in Architecture
Sources and Methods: The Sources
Sources and Methods: The Methods
2. The Symbolic Meaning of Buildings According to Written and Visual Sources
The Written Sources
The Visual Sources
Summary
3. Historical Meaning
Tradition and Habit
Turning Toward Historicity
The Effects of Historical Meaning
4. The Decline of Symbolic and Historical Meaning
Reform and Secularization
The Predominance of Artistic Tendencies
The New Awareness of Space
Summary
Afterword by Hans Josef Bˆker

What People are Saying About This

Stephen Murray

Bandmann's book constitutes one of the great landmarks of historiography in the field of medieval architecture—yet it remains largely unknown to English-speaking audiences. In setting out to explain the ways in which a medieval building can convey meaning through visual references to older edifices, Bandmann deals with almost all the features of the great church-orientation, axiality, internal divisions of space, choir design, transept, western frontispiece, towers, galleries etc. This is a work of extraordinary erudition.

— Stephen Murray, Professor of Medieval art, Gothic architecture, social and cultural history and the application of the digital media to Art History, Columbia University

Editorial Reviews

Thanks to Kendall Wallis's careful translation the English-speaking world now has the opportunity to rediscover ideas that have endured for more than half a century.

Comitatus

Probably the most important contribution to understanding [the] history of architecture.... The content of the work is so comprehensive, the author's excursions into related fields shed light onto so many new and surprising relationships, that it is impossible even to enumerate the variety of the historical, aesthetic, and philosophical aspects of the book.

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism - Paul Zucker

It makes a timely, welcome addition to essential library holdings in those areas... Highly recommended.

Choice

Probably the most important contribution to understanding [the] history of architecture.... The content of the work is so comprehensive, the author's excursions into related fields shed light onto so many new and surprising relationships, that it is impossible even to enumerate the variety of the historical, aesthetic, and philosophical aspects of the book.

— Paul Zucker

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism