Nineteenth-century architecture concealed new technical possibilities behind historicizing facades

Evidence

The nineteenth century disguised all its new creations under a historicizing mask, no matter what field they were inin the field of architecture just as in the fields of industry or society. New opportunities for construction were created, but they were at the same time feared, and were stifled within stone façades without the slightest restraint … When the dust of the decades is swept off the newspapers, it can be seen that the questions that concern us today have been under discussion for over a century, and remain unresolved. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 223

Categorization

• SHARE: Giedion’s framing that the 1800s masked innovation under historicist facades is exactly the kind of structural argument one architecture-minded friend would want.
• XREF: connects to: Nineteenth-century European urban life systematically arranged itself as exhibitions representing an absent reality — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 36; Postmodern architecture’s surface fascination masks underlying conflicts between place-rootedness and cosmopolitan style. — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 548; Postmodern architecture deliberately packages an older structure inside a new, alien skin — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 286 (+1 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Nineteenth-century European urban life systematically arranged itself as exhibitions representing an absent reality — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 36; Postmodern architecture’s surface fascination masks underlying conflicts between place-rootedness and cosmopolitan style. — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 548; Postmodern architecture deliberately packages an older structure inside a new, alien skin — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 286 (+1 more)