Agrest and Gandelsonas: Fabric Object II

Diana Agrest and Mario Gandelsonas are the principals of Agrest and Gandelsonas Architects, known for their collaborative work and their distinctive approach to architecture and urbanism, working across scales from urbanism to architecture and interior design, always in consideration of social and cultural issues. In addition to their practice, Diana Agrest and Mario Gandelsonas have made significant contributions to theoretical and critical discourse as well as the development of new pedagogical approaches. Their work has profoundly influenced contemporary architecture and urbanism, challenging traditional methods, and advancing new frameworks. Their transdisciplinary approach articulates critical theory, social science, and environmental studies in reimagining the field. Diana Agrest, an architect and professor at The Cooper Union, is widely recognized for her critical approach to architecture developed through theory, practice, and pedagogy. Her work explores the complex relationship between architecture, culture, and social context. At Cooper, she developed a seminal studio course Reading the City, where students, through drawing, reveal forces and narratives at play, an original approach to reframing urban discourse by Reading the City through film, and has developed critical studios focused on Nature relative to science, architecture, and representation. Mario Gandelsonas, an architect and professor at Princeton University, is renowned for his exploration of the relationship between architecture and urban form. A distinguished educator, Gandelsonas has published works that examine the intersection of architecture, urbanism, and representation. Together and separately, Agrest and Gandelsonas have made lasting contributions to architectural theory, particularly in their development of a critical framework that addresses the intersection of architecture and urban form with broader sociopolitical and environmental issues. Their work is characterized by its intellectual depth, blending practical design considerations with theoretical insights.

The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture presents Agrest and Gandelsonas: Fabric Object II, an exhibition of drawings, models, photographs, and ephemera in the Arthur A. Houghton Jr. Gallery from Thursday, April 10 through Friday, May 2. The exhibition features eighteen projects from 1975 through 2010, including Design as Reading, Roosevelt Island, New York City, 1975; Object as Fabric, Typological Morphing, Park Square, Boston, 1978; A Critical Reading of the Urban Text, Les Halles, Paris, 1980; Urban Ready-Mades, Goose Island, Chicago, Illinois, 1989; and Fabric Transformations, Midtown Manhattan West, New York City, 2003 among others, including projects and drawings developed by Diana Agrest and Mario Gandelsonas individually. The exhibition is an expansion of Fabric Object, an exhibition that originated at Princeton University’s School of Architecture in 2024 by architect, educator, and curator Michael Meredith.

Meredith explains that the exhibition aims to show the architects’ rich exploration of contradiction: “Agrest and Gandelsonas have always played with oppositional binaries. Individual-Collective. Building-City. Memory-Amnesia. Fabric-Object. Like the flip-flop reversibility of their axonometric drawings (think El Lissitzky Proun), architecture appears as something and an inversion of that thing.” Meredith was intrigued with how the two work together in constant dialogue, subverting the notion of a single creator of architecture. “Our work comes out of a conversation that Diana and I have had for many decades,” says Gandelsonas.

The materials on view reveal how the architects use non-linear representations of space to explore how architecture interacts with human behavior, memory, and society. The show includes the architects’ “intersection” drawings, which depict a building and its inverted, mirror image, and some drawings from the 1980s done by Gandelsonas with early computing software yet conveying the subjectivity of hand drawings. The show includes commentary from architecture faculty at Princeton University and The Cooper Union.

“Our drawings are not necessarily representations; they are subjects in and of themselves. We wanted to develop new ways to express the urban forces into architecture. The drawings are part of our critical work, together and individually,” says Gandelsonas.

The title of the exhibition refers to an essential approach of the architects’ work: seeing architecture as the constant interaction of existing and new spaces and formal configurations. “There’s a problem in Le Corbusier’s Urbanism—the simplistic opposition between object buildings versus urban fabric that has permeated projects like Hudson Yards, erasing fabric and replacing it with object buildings,” Agrest says, pointing to the proliferation of towers as the representation of market forces that have no awareness or consideration of history, culture, or uses. "Fabric is the locus of the social, an ‘other’ architecture generated by the city itself. Our work complicates the relation between fabric and object, blurring the opposition and proposing ‘object as fabric and/or fabric as object.’ In fact, it’s very hard to develop fabric. It requires a radically different approach.” Gandelsonas adds: “While there is an idea that architecture is about buildings, we are saying that the field should think on a larger scale.” Agrest concludes: "Focusing on the city generates this ‘other’ architecture. Ours is a critical stance against an architecture of monuments that ignores the city as urban place.”

The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) has acquired the Agrest-Gandelsonas archive; Fabric Object II is the last exhibition in the United States of their work before their drawings become part of the permanent collection of the CCA.

Opening reception: Thursday, April 10–6:30pm
Gallery hours: Tuesday–Sunday from 12-7pm