Chronograms of Architecture

Chronograms of Architecture, a collaboration between e-flux Architecture and the Jencks Foundation at The Cosmic House, takes its starting point from Charles Jencks’ iconic Evolutionary Tree diagrams tracing architecture and society’s pulsations between different ideals through time. These “chronograms”—diagrams of the history of architecture—were first created in 1969 and focus on the 80 years from 1920 to 2000. Beyond visualising and classifying architectural styles and traditions, Jencks’ ever-evolving diagrams provided a visual tool to analyse, understand, and represent dynamic relations between architecture and society as they unfold.

In this spirit, the Jencks Foundation and e-flux Architecture commissioned six new chronograms to reckon with the present day. These new works interrogate techno-optimism and techno-bureaucracy, feminist spatial practice and disciplinary racism, and the ecological implications and productive conditions of architecture. Some of the new diagrams can be seen to fill in the undulating blanks in Jencks’ diagrams, while others offer an entirely different perspective on architectural discourse. Read alongside one another, they shed light on how we got to where we are now and suggest where architecture might be going.

The exhibition and symposium have been organized with the Architectural Association (AA). On show in the AA Front Members’ Room in Bedford Square, the exhibition features the six chronograms by Pier Vittorio Aureli and Marson Korbi, Mario Carpo and Mark Garcia, Charles L Davis II and Curry J Hackett, Francesca Hughes and Urtzi Grau, MOULD, and Bryony Roberts and Abriannah Aiken, alongside original material from the Charles Jencks Archive.

The symposium will begin with a panel discussion between historians, archivists, and designers including Mark Wigley, Lily Jencks, and Ingrid Schroder to reflect on the history of Charles’ diagrams, before bringing together Chronograms of Architecture contributors Pier Vittorio Aureli and Marson Korbi, Mario Carpo and Mark Garcia, Curry J. Hackett, Francesca Hughes and Urtzi Grau, MOULD, and Bryony Roberts and Abriannah Aiken, with Nick Axel, Eszter Steierhoffer, and Manijeh Verghese as moderators and AA Tutors as respondents to collectively reflect on the method of diagramming architectural history both as an expressive visual format and as a critical tool of analysis.

Chronograms of Architecture symposium
October 20, 11am–6:30pm

11am–12:30pm: Chronograms, Charles Jencks' Diagrams
Panel with Mark Wigley, Mark Garcia, and Ingrid Schroder, chaired by Lily Jencks.

1:30–3pm: Projections into History
Panel with Pier Vittorio Aureli and Marson Korbi, Mario Carpo and Mark Garcia, and Bryony Roberts and Abriannah Aiken, chaired by Eszter Steierhoffer.

3:15–4:45pm: Cross Sections of the Now
Panel with Curry J. Hackett, Francesca Hughes and Urtzi Grau, and MOULD, chaired by Nick Axel.

5–6:30pm: Concluding roundtable