Architecture as a textual phenomenon: Alexander Brodsky’s architectural practices of appropriation

Abstract

This paper analyses architecture created through appropriating existing materials while focusing on strategies of intertextuality. It argues that the meaning of an architectural object does not derive from itself, or its poetic concepts, but rather from its relationship with order architectural objects, other art works as texts, cultural texts, and every day practices. My aim is to show various theoretical problems of the theory of architecture and art, which is a network of overlapping texts of culture, surround the architectural production of Alexander Brodsky. Here I use different and varied theoretical concepts, selecting two case studies by Brodsky – The Pavilion for Vodka Ceremonies and Rotunda – upon which the paper is based as an interdiscursive study.