Revisiting the Post-CIAM Generation: debates, proposals and intellectual framework

In August 1956, Jose Luis Sert opened the Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM 10), held in Dubrovnik, by reading the well-known message of Le Corbusier in which he justified his absence by claiming the existence of a generational tension. Indeed, the doctrinarian values of modernism — such as functionalism, scientific progress, and rational social planning — that once drove the congress were challenged by a group of young architects and resulted in the emergence of new perspectives. Yet, this “generation” was far beyond from being a homogeneous group both in conceptual and geographical terms.

In Portugal, immediately after that moment, the magazine Arquitecturacompletely redefined its editorial structure, starting a new edition in early 1957. Gathering a young group of architects, art historians, and critics of art and cinema, this magazine furthered the questions launched at CIAM, thus debating the duties and role of the critic, and scrutinizing the “strong relation” (Vieira de Almeida, 2012) between theory, criticism, history and architectural design.

Some of the actors and the narratives they shaped in this moment of change are widely known in architectural studies. However, the distinct manner of intellectual appropriation and critical reception of this debate in a transnational perspective is a matter that should be re-examined. How was the debate reabsorbed by architectural criticism in different geographical areas? What was its actual impact on the mechanisms of mediation as well as on the profile of the agents of criticism?

This conference intends to address these questions. The aim is to examine, in a comparative view, the ways in which the same debate was received, discussed and disseminated in different regions, on one hand; and to understand how this moment contributed to a rethinking of the relation between architectural practice and critical production, on the other.

Participants and keynote speakers present at the conference also include Lavinia Ann Minciacchi, José António Bandeirinha, Francesca Bonfante, Marianna Charitonidou,Fernando Delgado Páez, Tiago Lopes Dias, Eva Gil Donoso, Eduardo Fernandes, Joaquim Flores, Jasna Galjer, Lorenzo Grieco, Hélène Jannière, Aleska Korolija, Marilena Kourniati, Ana Esteban Maluenda, Rebeca Merino del Río, Ákos Moravánszky, Jorge Nunes, Daniela Ortiz dos Santos, Cristina Pallini, Anastasia Sakka, Rui Seco, Yuchen Sharon Sung, Rebecca Siefert, Erik Sigge, Elena Tejero, Ana Tostões and José Vela Castillo

Organisation: Architectural Studies research group Arnaldo Araújo Research Centre (CEAA) based at Escola Superior Artística do Porto.

Further Available Information about the Conference and the Program Here