Outmodernisms: industrialization and the forgotten histories of the avant garde

Interweaving ideas from Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Biedion and Kenneth Frampton, this paper will look at the historical importance of nineteenth century industrial forms in recording the intangible histories of modernism, glimpsed through surrealism and its subsequent interpretation. While a lot of emphasis has already been placed on the programmatic aspects of industry, this paper will look at the way that the outmoded provides an alternative avenue for redeeming the artifacts of nineteenth century construction; not as symbols of economic progress but agents of aesthetic (and psychological) transgression. The collision between the "new" in modernism and the rediscovery of the "old" in the historical avant-garde is a critical aspect of architectural production in the 1920s, framing the relationship of architecture to work and establishing it as a model of production that is tied to both craft and industry. Through an analysis of this aspect of architectural production, this paper will reveal the submerged traces of the industrial architecture of the nineteenth century and its silent influence on the aesthetics of the present and future.