Sigfried Giedion (also spelled Siegfried Giedion) was a Bohemia

Bohemia

Bohemia is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech Lands. It is located in the contemporary Czech Republic with its capital in Prague...

-born Swiss historian

Historian

A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...

 and critic

Critic

A critic is anyone who expresses a value judgement. Informally, criticism is a common aspect of all human expression and need not necessarily imply skilled or accurate expressions of judgement. Critical judgements, good or bad, may be positive , negative , or balanced...

 of architecture

Architecture

Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...

.

His ideas and books, Space Time and Architecture, and Mechanization Takes Command, had an important conceptual influence on the members of the Independent Group

Independent Group

The Independent Group met at the Institute of Contemporary Arts London from 1952-55. The IG consisted of painters, sculptors, architects, writers and critics who wanted to challenge prevailing modernist approaches to culture. They introduced mass culture into debates about high culture,...

 at the Institute of Contemporary Arts

Institute of Contemporary Arts

The Institute of Contemporary Arts is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. It is located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch...

 in the 1950s era.

He was the first secretary-general of the Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne

Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne

The Congrès internationaux d'architecture moderne – CIAM was an organization founded in 1928 and disbanded in 1959, responsible for a series of events and congresses arranged around the world by the most prominent architects of the time, with the objective of spreading the principles of the Modern...

. He has also taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...

 and Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

.

He was a pupil of Heinrich Wölfflin

Heinrich Wölfflin

Heinrich Wölfflin was a famous Swiss art critic, whose objective classifying principles were influential in the development of formal analysis in the history of art during the 20th century. He taught at Basel, Berlin and Munich in the generation that raised German art history to pre-eminence...

.

Space, Time & Architecture Giedion wrote an influential standard history of modern architecture, Mechanization Takes Command established a new kind of historiography

Historiography

Historiography refers either to the study of the history and methodology of history as a discipline, or to a body of historical work on a specialized topic...

.

He married Carola Giedion-Welcker, who created a circle of vanguardist artists in Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

, which included architect

Architect

An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...

 Aldo van Eyck

Aldo van Eyck

Aldo van Eyck or van Eijk was an architect from the Netherlands.-Family:...

. His daughter Verena married the architect Paffard Keatinge-Clay

Paffard Keatinge-Clay

Paffard Keatinge-Clay is an English-born architect in the modernist tradition who spent most of his professional life in the United States of America, before moving to southern Spain, where he has increasingly focussed on sculpture....

.

Literary works

• Spätbarocker und romantischer Klassizismus, 1922
• Space, Time & Architecture: the growth of a new tradition, 1941 - Harvard University Press, 5th edition, 2003, ISBN 0674830407
• Mechanization Takes Command: : a contribution to anonymous history, Oxford University Press 1948
• Architecture, You and Me: The Diary of a Development, Harvard UP 1958
• The Eternal Present, 1964
• Building in France, Building in Iron, Building in Ferroconcrete, Getty Research Institute, 1995

Secondary literature

• Sokratis Georgiadis: Sigfried Giedion : an intellectual biography - Edinburgh : Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1993