Prof. Iain Boyd Whyte
BA(Hons), MPhil, MA, PhD, FRSA, FRSE
Professor of Architectural History

Room: 4.13
Tel: 0131 650 2322
Email: I.B.Whyte@ed.ac.uk

Architecture: School of Arts, Culture and Environment (ACE)
The University of Edinburgh
20 Chambers Street
EH1 1JZ, Scotland

Profile

As society and the architectural profession changes in response to technological, environmental, cultural and economic developments, research plays an ever increasing role in the design process. Inevitably this process becomes more complex, drawing reference from the past and looking to the future. Research in the Department of Architecture has as its core objective the study of the relationship of environment, technology, history, and wider patterns of cultural production to the design of buildings and urban form. It actively seeks to draw together research in computing methods, materials and processes, sustainability, history and theory and their implications for architectural design.

Iain sees architecture as a potent vehicle for cultural history, embracing visual arts, social and political history, and the building sciences. No other human artefact offers such a rich and multi-layered frame of historical enquiry as a building - be it a great cathedral or a modest suburban house. In his own research he has concentrated on cultural and architectural modernism, with a particular focus on the German-speaking countries an the Netherlands. He is a former Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung and a Getty Scholar. In 1996/97 he was co-curator of the Council of Europe exhibition Art and Power: Europe under the Dictators, 1930-45, shown in London, Barcelona and Berlin.

In 2009, a radically new e-journal, Art in Translation, was launched with Iain as Editor. Published by Berg Publishers, Oxford, and generously funded by the Getty Foundation, Art in Translation publishes the best writing from around the world on the visual arts, architecture, and design in English translation.

Iain is currently Director of VARIE (Visual Arts Research Institute Edinburgh), a Vice President of CIHA (Comité International d’Histoire de l’Art), and Chairman elect of RIHA (International Association of Research Institutes in the History of Art). He is a former Trustee of the National Galleries of Scotland and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Current Research:

1) A project on the aesthetic category of the sublime, and its current status in both art and science (with Prof. Roald Hoffmann, Chemistry, Cornell University), has produced an edited volume that will appear in 2010 in German as Das Erhabene in Kunst und Wissenschaft: Ueber Vernunft und Einbildungskraft (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp); and in English as Beyond the Finite: The Sublime in Art and Science (New York: Oxford University Press).

2) After a period of long gestation, a major anthology of texts on Berlin (co-edited with Professor David Frisby, Sociology, LSE) will be published in 2011. To capture the complexity of Berlin between 1880 and 1940, this volume covers a broad range of voices and expertises, and the text selection embraces aesthetic, economic, sociological, literary, and technical analyses by architects, city planners, journalists, cultural critics, politicians, philosophers, and social theorists. A small number of texts drawn from fiction have also been included to help explain not only why Berlin took certain forms and what these forms were, but also what was it like to inhabit them.

3) Germany was the crucible of modernist desing in the early decades of the tentieth century, a victim of totalitarian planning towards mid-cedntury, and a contentious site of rebuilding in the second half of the century. An overview of this history, entitled German Architecture in the Twentieth Century, has been commissioned by Reaktion Book, London.

Publications

Hoffmann, Roald and Whyte, Iain Boyd (eds.), Das Erhabene in Wissenschaft und Kunst: Über Vernunft und Einbildungskraft (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2010).  Roald Hoffmann is Frank H. T. Rhodes Professor Emeritus of Humane Letters at Cornell University and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1981.

Whyte, Iain Boyd, “Modernity, Architecture, and the City”, in Lutz Becker (ed), Modern Times: Responding to Chaos, exhibition catalogue (Cambridge: Kettles Yard, University of Cambridge, 2010), pp. 65-72.

Whyte, Iain Boyd , Préface, in: Maria Stavrinaki, La Chaîne de verre: une correspondance expressionniste (Paris: Éditions de la Villette, 2009), pp. 9-15

Whyte, Iain Boyd , (2007) "Berlin reconstructs', in: Eckmann, Sabine, ed. Reality Bites: Making Avante-garde Art in Post-wall Germany Ostfildern: Hayje Cantz, pp. 224-255.

Whyte, Iain Boyd , (2007) Man-made future : planning, education and design in mid-twentieth-century Britain, London : Routledge, 2007

Whyte, Iain Boyd , (2005) "Semper FYI: Style, Practical and Impractical", Bookforum (New York: February/March 2005), pp. 13-15.

Whyte, Iain Boyd , (2004) "Einleitung/Preface", in: Mechthild Borries-Knopp (ed), Building Paradise: Exile Architecture in California (Berlin: Villa Aurora Edition, 2004), pp. 4-13

Whyte, Iain Boyd , (2004). 'Modernity and Architecture', in: Mari Hvattum and Christian Hermansen (eds), Tracing Modernity: Manifestations of the Modern in Architecture and the City (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 42-55

Whyte, Iain Boyd , (2004). 'The Expressionist Utopia', in: Mari Hvattum and Christian Hermansen (eds), Tracing Modernity: Manifestations of the Modern in Architecture and the City (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 256-270

Whyte, Iain Boyd , (2003), 'Introduction: Exile and Emigration', in: Bernd Nicolai (ed), Architektur und Exil: Kulturtransfer und architektonische Emigration von 1930 bis 1950 Trier: Porta Alba, pp. 3-4

Whyte, Iain Boyd (2003) 'Pfade durch die Architekturtheorie', review article on: Akos Moravansky (ed.), Architekturtheorie im 20 Jahrhundert; and Fritz Neumeyer (ed.) Quellentexte zur Architekturtheorie, in: Werk, Bauen + Wohnen (Zurich), 10, 2003, pp. 58-61

Whyte, Iain Boyd (2003) Modernism and the Spirit of the City. London: Routledge.

Whyte, Iain Boyd (2003) 'Glas', in: Rainer Stamm and Daniel Schreiber (eds.), Bau einer neuen Welt: Architektonische Visionen des Expressionismus, exhibition catalogue, Kunstsammlungen Bottcherstrasse, Bremen / Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin, 2003 Cologne: Walther Konig, pp. 164-177

Whyte, Iain Boyd(2002) 'The Expressionist Sublime', in: Karen Koehler, ed., The Built Surface: Volume 2, Architecture and the Pictorial Arts from Romanticism to the 21st century. Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 111-134

Whyte, Iain Boyd (2001) Review of 'Walls Have Feelings: Architecture, Film and the City', Architecture Research Quarterly, vol 5 (4), p377-378

Whyte, Iain Boyd (2001) 'Hitler's Berlin', in: E. S. Schaffer, ed., Comparative Criticism 23: Humanist traditions in the twentieth century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 117-143

Whyte, Iain Boyd (2001) Review of 'Fragments of Utopia: Collage Reflections of Heroic Modernism', by David Wild, and 'Mart Stam's Trousers: Stories from behind the Scenes of Dutch Moral Modernism', edited by Crimson with Michael Speaks and Gerard Hadders, Architectural Research Quarterly, vol 5 (2), pp181 - 183

Whyte, Iain Boyd (2001) 'Taut visionario' , In Nerdinger, Winfried, et al, eds. Bruno Taut, 1880-1938, Milan:Electa, pp68-89

Whyte, Iain Boyd. (2000) 'Charlottenhof: The Prince, the Gardener, the Architect, and the Writer', Architectural History, vol. 43, pp. 1-23.

Whyte, Iain Boyd (2000) 'Futurist architecture', In: Berghaus, Gnter, ed. International Futurism in Arts and Literature, New York, Berlin: de Gruyter, pp. 353-372

Whyte, Iain Boyd(2000) Clive Entwistle: Dreams of the Crystal Palace', in: Louise Campbell (ed.), Twentieth-Century Architecture and its Histories London: Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, pp. 11-36.

Whyte, Iain Boyd. (2000). Some joint! Strictures on structures. Harvard Design Magazine,Summer, p.21-27

Whyte, Iain Boyd (2000) 'The spirit of the City', In: Welter, Volker, and Lawson, James, eds. The city after Patrick Geddes. Oxford :Peter Lange, pp15-32

Whyte, Iain Boyd, (1999) 'Vienna between memory and modernity', In: Blau, Eva, and Platzer, Monika, eds. Shaping the Great City: Modern Architecture in Central Europe, 1890-1937, Munich: Prestel, pp125 - 135

Whyte, Iain Boyd, (1999) The Expressionist Utopia: the Crystal Chain Letters Mac Journal, 4.pp 76 - 93

Whyte, Iain Boyd, (1999) 'Architecture', In: Van der Will, Wilfried and Kolinsky, Eva (eds.), Cambridge Companion to Modern German Culture, Cambridge University Press, pp. 282-301.

Whyte, Iain Boyd, (1999) The Neo-classical revival in turn of the century Britain. EAR, 26, September, pp 7-27

Whyte, Iain Boyd. (1998). Reflections on a polished floor: BenWilkins and the Reichskanzlei of Albert Speer. Harvard Design Magazine, Fall, p.54-63

Whyte, Iain Boyd. (1998). The soil on which they built: national settlement and ambition in the architecture of Hungary' , Times Literary Supplement, 2nd Oct .p.20

Whyte, Iain Boyd (1997). E Owen Williams: Boots Wets Factory, Beeston, Nottingham, Casabella, 651/652, October, p48-61

Whyte, Iain Boyd (1997). Berlin: Excesses of Order and Licence, Deutscher Architekentag, 13 June 1997, Staatsratsgebaude, Berlin.

Whyte, Iain Boyd and Macdonald, A.J. (1997). Benjamin Baker, The Forth Bridge, Stuttgart, Edition Menges, 60 pages.

Whyte, Iain Boyd (1996-1997). 'Selectors' Introduction' (pp. 16-17); 'Berlin, 1 May 1936 (pp.43-49); 'Berlin Architecture: National Socialism and Modernism' (pp. 258-269), in Ades, Benton, Elliott, Whyte, Art and Power: Europe under the Dictators 1930-45, exhibition catalogue to 23rd Council of Europe Exhibition, Hayward Gallery, London; Centre de Cultura Comtemporania, Barcelona (as Art i Power; Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin (as Kunst und Macht).

Whyte, Iain Boyd (1996). Hendrik Petrus Berlage on Style, Getty Center Publications/University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 376pp.

Whyte, Iain Boyd and Romana Schneider (1996). Die Glaserne Kette: Eine Expressionistische Korrespondenz, Hatje-Kanz, Stuttgart, 142 pp.