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During the 1980s and 1990s, German-Swiss architecture gained worldwide acclaim on account of its constructional and aesthetic coherence. Its precision, rigour and sobriety were however only outer manifestations of a deeper ethical orientation, reacting against formal arbitrariness and postmodern relativism. Swiss architects resorted to the discipline of concepts and formal reductionism in order to recover a sense of stability, normality and cultural continuity. In Forms of Practice, Irina Davidovici provides an in-depth analysis of their work during the last decades of the twentieth century, discussing its cultural and theoretical conditions as facets of one artistic and cultural phenomenon. Richly detailed case studies and conceptual frameworks are brought up to reveal, behind the seductive appearance of Swiss architecture, the implicit conflicts between shared values and individual expression, artistic integrity and economic interest.

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Davidovici, Irina
Irina Davidovici ( 1972) ist Architekturhistorikerin. Nach dem Architekturstudium in Bukarest und London promovierte sie in Geschichte und Philosophie der Architektur an der University of Cambridge. Sie forscht derzeit am Institut für Geschichte und Theorie der Architektur (gta) der ETH Zürich zu ®Wohnanlagen in der europäischen Stadt 1865-1940¯ und arbeitet mit am SNF-Forschungsprojekt ®Flora Ruchat-Roncati an der ETH 1985-2002. Professorin, Planerin, Theoretikerin¯.

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