Re‐imagining the Avant‐Garde: revisiting the Architecture of the 1960s and 1970s

Re-imagining the Avant-Garde: Revisiting the Architecture of the 1960s and 1970s

Guest edited by: Matthew Butcher and Luke C. Pearson

This new special issue of Architectural Design (AD) explores the ongoing importance of the work of Architects associated with the Avant-Garde of the 1960s and 1970s for today’s designers and artists.

Release date: July 2019

Contributors: Pablo Bronstein and Sam Jacob, Sarah Deyong, Stylianos Giamarelos, Damjan Jovanovic, Andrew Kovacs, Perry Kulper, Igor Marjanović, William Menking, Michael Sorkin, Neil Spiller and Mimi Zeiger.

Featured architects: Archizoom, Andrea Branzi, Jimenez Lai, Luis Miguel (Koldo) Lus Arana, Klaus, NEMESTUDIO, Superstudio, and UrbanLab.

The avant-garde of the 1960s and 70s has been likened to an "architectural Big Bang," such was the intensity of energy and ambition with which it exploded into the post-war world. It produced architectural projects that redefined the discipline and remain highly influential today. In contemporary design, references to the likes of Archizoom, Peter Eisenman, John Hejduk and Superstudio continue to define the approaches of a new wave of practitioners. This avant-garde was highly diverse, and not tied to a single methodology or tendency in its political, formal and cultural preoccupations. It was also geographically divergent—reaching from Europe to North America and Japan. The avant-garde was, however, unified as a critical and experimental force, critiquing contemporary society against the backdrop of extreme social and political upheaval. Those turbulent times mirror today.

Re-Imagining the Avant-Garde outlines the continuing power and relevance of avant-garde projects for contemporary architectural practice. The book explores how such projects retain their power as historical precedents, operating as barometers of a particular design ethos, establishing critiques of society and inventing new formal techniques. Although our subsequent digital revolution has reshaped every aspect of architecture and culture, Re-Imagining the Avant-Garde explores why this historical period continues to retain an undeniable grip on new generations of architectural designers and theorists, demonstrating the ways they are reinventing these approaches in a contemporary context.

To support the launch of this issue of AD, the editors will be collaborating with the London gallery Betts Project on an exhibition featuring some of the contributors to the journal and with the Sir John Soane’s Museum on a series of talks scheduled for Autumn 2019. Both events will aim to expand upon and enhance the ideas, discussion and polemics raised in the special issue of AD.
 

About the Editors

Matthew Butcher is an academic, writer and designer. His work has been exhibited at the V&A Museum in London, the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York, and the Prague Quadrennial, Prague. Matthew is also the editor and founder of the architectural newspaper P.E.A.R.: Paper for Emerging Architectural Research and is Associate Professor in Design at the Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL).

Luke Caspar Pearson is a designer and lecturer at the Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL), where he is Director of the Undergraduate Architecture Programme. He is a founding partner of You+Pea, a design research practice working at the intersection of architecture and videogames. Luke is also the founder of the Drawing Futures conference and has written for publications such as eflux Architecture, Frame, Thresholds and The Journal of Architectural Education.
 

Contact for further information:
Matthew Butcher & Luke C. Pearson
UCL Bartlett School of Architecture,
22 Gordon Street, London WC1H 0QB
E: m.butcher@ucl.ac.uk / luke.pearson@ucl.ac.uk