HS24: Architecture and the Collective Scale 1967-1977: Critique, Utopia, Historiography

Between 1967 and 1977, key conceptual and historiographical contributions emerged around issues of collective scale in architecture and urban planning. Architects responded to criticism of their practice that came from both outside and within their field. In the paradigm of the collective, social aspirations, architectural themes and an iconography of utopia overlap and intermingle. At the time, this was reflected in designs by Archizoom, Superstudio or OMA, but also in explorations by Dolores Hayden and Liselotte and Oswald Mathias Ungers in the territory of the USA for traces of ‘utopian’ collectives during the same years. In both cases, these were religious and socialist communes of the 19th century; however, both Hayden and the Ungers were also captivated by counterculture - radical groups that had been renegotiating the relationship between the individual, community and society since the 1960s. In the context of contemporary ‘crisis’, utopian narratives of architectural modernism were also revisited at new research institutions founded in the years around 1967 (Institut GTA in Zurich, IGMA in Stuttgart, IAUV in Venice, IAUS in New York).

In order to comprehend the range of approaches from our period of investigation, the seminar applies different disciplinary perspectives and sources. Not only will we discuss questions of historiography, but also the relationship between practice, theory and criticism. It is therefore less about examining how the ground for architectural postmodernism was prepared than about reflecting on the concerns that arose from the upheavals of the late Sixties. To this end, the contemporary circumstances must also be taken into account: Only these make it possible to understand the significance of the collective scale in a particular historical moment.