Magic Architecture

The first publication of artist and architect Frederick Kiesler’s epoch-spanning history of human architecture, largely unknown but still relevant.

Magic Architecture was the architect Frederick Kiesler’s most ambitious book project, an epoch-spanning history of human housing from prehistory to the atomic era, submitted to editors after World War II but left unpublished. In its holistic view of habitation through the lens of anthropology, ecology, and the life sciences, Magic Architecture is one of the most extraordinary texts on architecture written in the twentieth century, now at last published in the twenty-first. Kiesler’s exploration of the effects of modern technology in combination with the alternative epistemology of “magical” practices associated with cave drawings and the first artifacts of human industry reflects his profoundly interdisciplinary perspective on the development of art, architecture, and design.

This critical edition preserves Kiesler’s conception of the book as a neo-Vitruvian treatise divided into ten parts that narrate an alternative history and theory of architecture. Also included are more than seventy composite plate illustrations consisting of images cut and pasted from books and popular science journals, with elaborate captions, as well as Kiesler’s own line drawings made specifically for this project. The editors have reassembled the book’s text and illustrations from archival documents, supplementing them with notes that trace the copious development of the work.  Introductory essays provide an interpretation of key themes and bibliographic sources, as well as a chronological context of the architect’s research. Appendixes offer additional textual and visual material gathered by Kiesler for the project.

Introduction: The Unity of Vision and Fact
PART ONE
Chapter 1: The Eternal Preamble to Architecture
Chapter 2: Fear of the Unseen
Chapter 3: The Enigma of Death
Chapter 4: The Enigma of Birth
Chapter 5: Birth necessitates Shelter; Death inspires Architecture
Chapter 6: The Cave, first natural Shelter
Chapter 7: The Nest, first artificial Shelter
Chapter 8: The Universe as Architecture
Chapter 9: The Split in the Unity of Vision and Fact

PART TWO ANIMAL ARCHITECTURE AND MAN’S ABILITY TO BUILD
Introduction
Instinct, Memory and the Drive for Invention
Chapter 1: Man’s House is Animal Architecture
Chapter 2: The Building-Instinct of Animals: the Termitary of the Termites
Chapter 3: Animal Engineering: the Dam of the Beaver
Chapter 4: Building Tools of Animals
Chapter 5: Man a Composite Animal of Building Techniques
Chapter 6: Man’s first Invention: The (first) transformation of dead material into useful tools
Chapter 7: The (second) transformation of dead material into magic tools of physical attraction
Chapter 8: The (third) transformation of dead material into magic tools of spiritual Power

PART THREE AWARENESS OF THE MIRACULOUS
Introduction: From Animal Housing to Magic Architecture
Chapter 1: The Birth of Magic Design
Man discovers his capacity to convert his own body into a dream-image through make-up.
Chapter 2: Man discovers that the fingers of his hand are magic wands for the transformation of surfaces into images through the application of paint.
Chapter 3: Man discovers that by making grooves (engraving) hard stone objects held in his hand can transform soft stone surfaces into images.
Chapter 4: Discovery and Affirmation of the Superfluous

PART FOUR ART AND THE UNKNOWN
Introduction: The Superfluous becomes a Necessity
Chapter 1: The Meaning of Magic
Chapter 2: Man part of the Cosmos and Man apart from the Cosmos
Chapter 3: Artifacts, Symbols and Art
Chapter 4: Myth and Magic
Chapter 5: The psycho-plastic Era
Chapter 6: The ideo-plastic Era
Chapter 7: The Era of Metamorphosis
Chapter 8: The Era of Abstraction
Chapter 9: The Physio-plastic Era