El _ensayo editorial_ en arquitectura: efectos de enmarcado, montaje imaginativo y crítica editorial

Abstract

We discuss the editorial techniques of a heterogeneous set of 20th century experimental books of architecture, today considered seminal works. Following the methodology of cultural studies, we will read them in controversy with the design techniques that crystallize with the impulse of the cultural economy in mass society. We will see how in them the use of imaginative montage confronts the fragmentation and framing effects commonly adopted in the presentation of architecture as building technology. Considering these relationships will allow us to identify the keys that would define a possible critical genre to be investigated, the editorial essay. If fragmentation and framing can be linked to different mechanisms of externalization of the critical, the connectivity and deviations encouraged by imaginative montage —a cognitive and persuasive technique, as well— bring the editorial essay closer to the rescue operations of the forgotten and the excluded characteristic of cultural criticism.