The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) is presenting Architecture Itself and Other Postmodernist Myths, on view through April 7 2019. Curated by Sylvia Lavin, the exhibition suggests a reading of the postmodern movement in architecture based not on the images and buildings it produced but on the material evidence that was suppressed to maintain the myth of architecture as an irreducibly autonomous and artistic practice?the myth of ?architecture itself.?
Madelon Vriesendorp. Freud Unlimited, used by Rem Koolhaas in his book Delirious New York, 1978. © Madelon Vriesendorp
Exhibition opened: November 6, 2018
Curator: Sylvia Lavin
Associate Curator: Sarah Hearne
Exhibition design: Besler & Sons
Graphic design: Chad Kloepfer Lavin explains, ?one version or another or the idea of ?architecture itself? has been used by architects to manage the encounters between things operating beyond individual control. The notion has been called upon since at least the early modern period when the notion that architecture was a godly rather than human matter was invented but postmodernity is what gave the idea the power of myth.?
Her project repositions the discipline through the presentation of its extraordinarily ordinary and bureaucratic procedures?adhering to building codes, applying for research grants, generating revenue through the art market, patenting architectural designs?the project dismantles postmodernism as a floating signifier and anchors it to the world of things.
John ...