Screening and roundtable
The EPFL lab for Architecture: Criticism, History and Theory invites you to a unique online screening of Diana Agrest’s film from 2013, The Making of an Avant-Garde: The Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies 1967-1984 on Monday, November 23, 2020, 8pm CET (2pm EST). The screening (64’) will be followed by a conversation between Diana Agrest, Kim Förster and Christophe Van Gerrewey. The entire event is freely accessible by ZOOM.
Diana Agrest is an architect and urbanist, theorist, author, educator and filmmaker. She is professor of architecture at the Cooper Union and has taught at Princeton and Columbia University. She is founder of Agrest Gandelsonas Architects in New York and was a fellow at the IAUS from 1972 to 1984. Her latest book is Architecture of Nature/Nature of Architecture (Oro Editions, 2019).
Kim Förster is lecturer in architectural studies at the University of Manchester, and author of the forthcoming The Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies (New York, 1965-1985). Networks of Cultural Production.
Christophe Van Gerrewey is assistant professor of theory at EPFL. He is the author of Choosing Architecture (EPFL Press, 2019) and the editor of OMA/Rem Koolhaas: A Critical Reader (Birkhäuser, 2019).
The Making of an Avant-Garde: The Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies 1967-1984 presents an intimate look back at the creation and existence of the IAUS, a place that made NY the global center for architectural debate and redefined architectural discourse in the US and abroad. A place of immense energy and effervescence, its founders and participants were young and hardly known at the time but would shape architectural practice and theory for decades.
The film documents and explores the Institute’s fertile beginnings and enduring significance as a place where an avant-garde came into being. It presents the presence of the IAUS in the architectural, cultural, and political climate of the time, the anti War riots, the Women’s Movement, the Paris May 68 revolution and the crime ridden and bankrupt New York City. The story is told through the voice of people that were active participants, telling compelling stories about the place and their own experiences, and through rich and abundant footage portraying the period, including Agrest’s archival IAUS footage which brings to life the spirit of the place.
Featuring: Diana Agrest, Peter Eisenman, Kenneth Frampton, Mario Gandelsonas, Anthony Vidler, Emilio Ambasz, Charles Gwathmey, Richard Meier, Rem Koolhaas, Frank Gehry, Deborah Berke, Barbara Jakobson, Robert Stern, Bernard Tschumi, Joan Ockman, Stan Allen, Julia Bloomfield, Mark Wigley, Peter Wolf, Frederiecke Taylor, Suzanne Stephens, Paul Lewis, Lucia Allais.
Copyright by Diana Agrest Films. Any reproduction or republication of all or part of this video is expressly prohibited unless specific prior written consent has been granted. All other rights reserved.
