Michael Benedikt
My talk is in five sections, one in preface, three from the title, and a conclusion.
I try, in the preface, to distinguish between architectural history and architectural theory, with the latter more interested in universal truths and timeless principles. Much of Zevi’s influence rested on his (and others’) theories of architectural space types, in analogy to developments in modern physics and modern art, deployed finally in support of Mendelsohn on the question (understated) of whether there is/was such a thing as Jewish space. Martin Buber, for his part, sought universal truths in Judaism, and had influenced the young Mendelsohn.
I trace that influence not to Buber’s later and (famous) postulation of I-It/I-Thou dialogue, but (1) to the meanings of creativity by humans as versus blind, natural evolution (Mendelsohn leaned strongly to the heroic creator model, as did Buber), (2) to the value of cultural/geographical Zionism as versus cultural assimilation in the diaspora (nearly all Mendelsohn’s buildings appear as though on acropoli, hilltops, tsionut), and finally (3) to the mystical inversion/subversion of scale often involved in the appearance of divinity to human beings: the strong in the gentle, the loud in the quiet, the large in the small, the cosmic micro-encounter between ensouled entities. These “effects” are the ones Mendelsohn turned to late in life. In ways I try to describe, they are evident in the Park Synagogue in Cleveland, Ohio (1950), a building that managed to echo, too, and in the large, Mendelsohn’s earliest sketches. I conclude that “Jewish space” is a possibility which should interest all architects of spiritual or phenomenological bent. Complex and subtle, it remains, however, undertheorized.
Michael Benedikt is ACSA Distinguished Professor of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin. He holds the Hal Box Chair in Urbanism and teaches design studio and architectural theory. He was the Director of the Center for American Architecture and Design (CAAD) and Editor of CENTER: Architecture and Design in America until May 2020. He is a graduate of the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa and of Yale University.
Although Professor Benedikt has worked in a medium-sized firm and run a small architectural practice of his own, he is better known for his teaching and writing. His books include For an Architecture of Reality (1987), Deconstructing the Kimbell (1991), Cyberspace: First Steps (1991), Value (1997) and Value 2 (1998), Shelter: The 2000 Raoul Wallenberg Lecture (2001), God Is the Good We Do (2007), and God, Creativity, and Evolution: The Argument from Design(ers) (2008). His most recent book is Architecture Beyond Experience (2020).