The Other ArchitectThe Other Architect

ARAU

Atelier de recherche et d'action urbaines (ARAU) was founded in 1969 by sociologist René Schoonbrodt, priest Jacques Van Der Briest, and architect Maurice Culot as a residents' committee in Brussels, Belgium. It represented residents' rights and influence on post-war urban planning in Brussels, with an emphasis on education, public awareness, and the creation of counter proposals. Posters, publications, a hat in the form of a building (on loan from AAM archives, Brussels) show their activist activities and commitment to preserve the historical city.

1969 -

Brussels, Belgium

TAKE PART

Take Part (1971-1976) was a choreographic workshop series held in different cities such as San Francisco, Fort Worth, New York, and Cleveland, USA, organized by Lawrence Halprin & Associates with the intention of establishing new models of participatory design and alternative ways of moving, seeing, and thinking about the natural and built environments. These workshops were based on early experimental methods developed by landscape architect Lawrence Halprin and choreographer Anna Halprin in the 1960s. The documents and images on loan from the Lawrence Halprin Collection, The Architectural Archives at University of Pennsylvania focus on how these workshops were designed and performed to foster community participation and conversations on urban issues, and to trigger environmental awareness.

1971-1976

San Francisco, Fort Worth, New York & Cleveland, USA

DESIGN-A-THON

Design-A-Thon (1976-1984) was an hour-long live television show about urban design studies produced by the firm Moore Grover Harper (Chad Floyd with Mark Simon, Jeff Riley, and Charles Moore). The show served as a series of workshops that brought citizen participation to public projects in Virginia, Ohio, Massachusetts, and New York, USA. The textual documents and archival television footage of the program (from Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library) illustrate the way television was used as an urban planning tool to broadcast the concerns and opinions of architects on topics of real public interest.

1976-1984

Virginia, Ohio, Massachusetts & New York, USA

AMG

AMG (1967-1985) was established at MIT by Nicholas Negroponte and Leon Groisser as a multi-disciplinary model for teaching, developing, and communicating computer-aided architecture. Its work resulted in hardware and software prototypes as well as exhibitions and publications. The material (drawn from Negroponte's personal archive and MIT Museum; MIT Libraries, Institute Archives and Special Collections; and MIT Archives, Boston) illustrates AMG's idea of providing more democratized access to architecture through the use of computers and conversational interfaces.

1967-1985

Cambridge, MA, USA

AD/AA/Polyark

AD/AA/Polyark bus tour was organized in 1973 by Peter Murray at Architectural Design magazine, the Architectural Association, and Cedric Price (Polyark). Its aim was to expand educational formats and increase communication among schools of architecture across England through mobility, physical interaction, dialogue, and sharing of recordings and images. A special emphasis is given to the organization of the tour, the transformation of the double-decker bus into a video library, and the implementation of a television and video distribution (from the Cedric Price fonds at CCA, the personal archive of Peter Murray, and loans from the Architectural Association Archives, London).

1973

United Kingdom

PAV

Pidgeon Audio Visual is an audio-visual collection created by Monica Pidgeon in London, England, in 1979. The illustrated talks by architects, designers, and engineers were meant to support education by giving architecture schools access to the most important practitioners from around the world. As of 2009 Pidgeon Digital makes these and new resources available online. The correspondence between Pidgeon and many architects illustrates her process of selecting, researching, editing, and publishing (from the CCA Collection and on loan from RIBA Archives, London).

1979 -

London, England

FORENSIC

Forensic Architecture was initiated in 2011 by Eyal Weizman at Goldsmiths, University of London, England, with support from the European Research Council. A team of architects, artists, filmmakers, activists, and theorists conduct research that gathers and presents in legal and political forums spatial analysis that reconstructs and visualizes past events, primarily those involving human rights violations and war crimes. Three main investigations are on view (courtesy of Forensic Architecture): Rafah in the Gaza Strip, 2014-15; Nakba Day protest, 2014; Mir ali and Miranshah drone strikes, 2013, represented through videos that show the use of architectural expertise to produce evidence.

2011 -

London, England

AMO

AMO was established by Rem Koolhaas and Dan Wood in 1999 to operate as a think tank both within and independently of the architectural practice Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. The exhibition represents early projects by AMO including the work done for the fashion company Prada (starting 1999), the research project for the identity of the European Community (2001), and ideas for magazines such as Wired (2003) (courtesy of OMA). These examples make evident the way in which AMO applied "architectural thinking" outside of built form and how it experimented with a new role for an architectural office.

1999-

Rotterdam, Netherlands

ADA

Architectural Detective Agency (1974-1986) was founded by Terunobu Fujimori and Takeyoshi Hori in Tokyo, Japan with the goal of documenting unnoticed or abandoned early-modern buildings through photography, sketches, and maps in order to establish a new method of writing architectural history. The thorough photographic and annotated documentation (courtesy of Terunobu Fujimori and Takeyoshi Hori, Tokyo) illustrate how field research and inventory can reveal the city in new ways.

1974-1986

Tokyo, Japan

COMMUNES

Kommunen in der Neuen Welt (1969-1976) was conceived by Liselotte and Oswald Mathias Ungers as a series of research trips to study the lifestyles, customs, and architecture of commune settlements across the USA. Their photographs, maps, and observations (on loan from Ungers Archiv für Architekturwissenschaft) were published in magazines, pamphlets and the publication Kommunen in der Neuen Welt.

1969-1976

USA

LEU

Lightweight Enclosures Unit (1969-1986) was founded by Frank Newby and Cedric Price in London, England, to conduct research and design related to lightweight air structures. It resulted in extensive photo documentation and bibliographies alongside project designs. The Lightweight Enclosures Unit is part of the Cedric Price fonds in the CCA collection.

1969-1986

London, England

ARC

The Architects' Revolutionary Council (ARC) was established as an activist group by Brian Anson and students of the Architectural Association (AA) in London,England in 1974. Their aim was to criticize the profession and educate architects while working with communities to offer design expertise and stress the social role of architecture. In its ambition to revolutionize, ARC singled out the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) as its nemesis, arguing against their subservience to a privileged patronage. They assisted communities in rejecting development projects such as GLC's Covent Garden that proposed the demolition of over two-thirds of the historic site, which would have displaced and disrupted many people who lived and worked in this area.

1974-1978

London, England

GLOBAL TOOLS

Global Tools (1973-1975) was founded by a group of radical Italian architects and designers in Milan. They reacted against the industrialization of design processes and promoted the study and use of natural materials and non-technological methods in workshops, courses and publications. The documentation (courtesy of Ugo La Pietra, Davide Mosconi, Adolfo Natalini, and Piero Brombin and Valerio Tridenti) focuses on the founding of the group, their bulletins, and the outcomes of some of their workshops on the topic of the body and the issue of communication.

1973 - 1975

Italy

ANY

Anyone Corporation (1990-2000) was established as a think-tank to foster debate on architecture, which took the form of ten annual conferences organized by editor Cynthia Davidson and held in Los Angeles, Yufuin, Barcelona, Montreal, Seoul, Buenos Aires, Rotterdam, Ankara, Paris, and New York. Photographic documentation of the conferences, post-conference exchanges with the editor, and textual documents on the organization showcase the formation and the scope of this institution. The Any Corporation archive is held at the CCA.

1999-2000

International

DELOS

Delos Symposion (1963-1972) was a forum for discussion held annually on a boat in the Aegean Sea, hosted by its organizer, Constantinos Doxiadis. The inter-disciplinary discussions addressed topics related to population growth, resource management, and the role of science and technology in the planning of the built environment. Unpublished notes edited by Jacueline Tyrwhitt during the cruises, along with the final statements (Delos Declarations) and photographic documentation of the cruises (on loan from the Constantinos A. Doxiadis Archives, Athens) testify to the intensity of the debate and the global scale of its scope.

1963-1972

Aegean Sea, Greece