“Pro and Contra CIAM”: Modernism and its Discontents
“Pro and Contra CIAM”: Modernism and its Discontents
Ákos Moravánszky, Adjunct Professor Emeritus of Architectural Theory, ETH Zurich
ESAP, 11 Abril, 18h | entrada livre
The history of the CIAM organization and of its breakaway group Team 10 is one of the best documented and researched themes in recent architectural historiography, thanks to well-organized archives and doctoral programs. Its main protagonists, conferences, internal conflicts, communication and organizational systems have been discussed in numerous publications. Still, the method of dichotomization – generational conflicts, political divisions – tends to divert the attention from continuities and from the complex interrelations between the various lines of thought in- and outside CIAM. The lecture will trace three notions as three threads in the web: ruralism, humanism, and realism, to show their constitutive and transformative role in the fabric of post-war architecture.
Ákos Moravánszky is Professor Emeritus of the Theory of Architecture at the Institut gta of ETH Zurich where he taught since 1996. Born 1950 in Székesfehérvár, Hungary, he studied architecture at the Technical University in Budapest, and started working as an architect in 1974. In 1977, he started his doctoral studies at the Technical University in Vienna (Dr.techn. 1980). In 1983 he was appointed Editor-in-Chief of the architectural journal Magyar Épit?m?vészet. He was invited as an Alexander-von-Humboldt Research Fellow to the Central Research Institute for Art History in Munich (1986-1988). He worked as Research Associate at the Getty Center in Santa Monica, California (1989-1991) and as Visiting Associate Professor at the M.I.T. in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1991-1996). He was Visiting Professor at the Moholy-Nagy University of Design in Budapest in 2003/04. He is Dr.h.c. of the Budapest Technical University, honorary member of the Széchenyi Academy (Hungarian Academy of Sciences) and received the 2018 award of Union of Hungarian Architects. He was President of the editorial commission of the Swiss architectural journal Werk, Bauen+Wohnen and serves on the editorial boards of scholarly magazines. His main fields of research are the theory of architecture, the history of Central European architecture and the materiality of architecture.