Date: Friday June 6, 2014
Time: 10:00  - 13:00 (or later, if necessary)
Location: tba (somewhere central in Venice)
More info: [email protected]

Join for the first FA Salon on June 6, an unsolicited get together on the occasion of the opening of the Venice Architecture Biennale with speakers from around the world reflecting on the Biennale and on architecture after the death of Modernism.

Confirmed guests
Iwan Baan (photographer), Ethel Baraona Pohl (dpr-barcelona), Aljoša Dekleva and Tina Gregoric (dekleva gregoric arhitekti), Bart Lootsma (Professor for Architectural Theory at the University in Innsbruck), Tarik Oualoulou (Curator of The National Pavilion of Morocco), Nanne de Ru (co-founder Powerhouse Company and director The Berlage), Azadeh Mashayekhi (Curator of the National Pavilion of Iran), ( Adina Hempel and Marco Sosa (Curatorial team of The National Pavilion of the United Arab Emirates)*.

Modernism is dead, long live modernity!
In most historical accounts, the date of the end of Modernism is often very precise. Many share Charles Jencks’s belief that Modernism ended with the demolition of thePruitt-Igoe public housing project in St Louis on 16 March 1972, and for those that do not, only few assume it persisted any longer than the early 1970s.

Rem Koolhaas came to the same conclusion in S,M,L,XL, saying that “Modernism’s alchemistic promise – to transform quantity into quality through abstraction and repetition – has been a failure, a hoax […] A collective shame in the wake of this fiasco has left a massive crater in our understanding of modernity and modernization.”

Learning from Modernism
While Modernism in its purest form might have ‘died’ prematurely, the quest for modernity is still alive and kicking, and continues to shape the (architectural) world. The echo of Modernism haunts our urban age as large parts of the world are only now being modernized. Lessons from the past have been forgotten as globalization fuels a new wave of standardization. Every day a new Pruitt-Igoe is being erected around the world.

Simultaneously, Modernism as an architectural style is making a comeback. Pioneers of the International Style and Structuralism are being hailed as long lost heroes. One of the core members of Team X is lauded at the Dutch Pavilion with the exhibition ‘Open: a Bakema Celebration‘. Hipsters have embraced Brutalism, Metabolism is rediscovered by eco-friendly architects, Constructivist icons serve as eye candy in the blogosphere. Is this trend only about aesthetics and have the ideals in 20th century architecture simply proven to be outdated?....Continue Reading

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