Program in Media and Modernity Featured Event:
New York Times review of "Clip/Stamp/Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines" by Nicholai Ouroussoff (02/08/07)
Clip, Stamp, Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines, 196x to 197x
An exhibition at the Storefront for Art and Architecture, NYC
November 14, 2006 - January 31, 2007
From November 14 2006 - January 31, 2007, Storefront for Art and Architecture will host the exhibition Clip, Stamp, Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines, 196x - 197x, curated by Beatriz Colomina, Craig Buckley, Anthony Fontenot, Urtzi Grau, Lisa Hsieh, Alicia Imperiale, Lydia Kallipoliti, Daniel Lopez-Perez, and Irene Sunwoo from Princeton University, with the collaboration of Olympia Kazi.
In recent years, there has been resurgence of international interest in the architecture of the 1960s and 1970s. Yet the role of the many experimental publications that were the engine of that intensely creative period has been largely neglected. The exhibition Clip, Stamp, Fold: The Architecture of Little Magazines, 196x - 197x tracks the critical function of the little magazine in architecture during these years, when a remarkable outburst of publications disseminated and catalyzed a range of experimental practices. Coined in the early twentieth century to designate progressive literary journals, the term "little magazine" was remobilized during the 1960s to grapple with the contemporary proliferation of independent architectural periodicals that appeared in response to the political, social, and artistic changes of the period. Clip, Stamp, Fold investigates how an internationally diverse group of architectural little magazines informed the development of postwar architectural culture.
In the exhibition, the terms "little: and "magazine" are not taken at face value. In addition to short-lived, self-published magazines, Clip, Stamp, Fold includes pamphlets, building instruction manuals, as well as professional magazines that experienced "moments of littleness," influenced by the graphics and intellectual concerns of little magazines. The exhibition charts the temporal progression and transformation of the phenomenon of little magazines through the design of their covers, and also takes stock of different magazine forms and how they were put together, introducing rare originals from private collections and providing facsimiles accessible to the public. These displays will be complemented by a selection of interviews with editors and designers of these publications.
If the little magazines of the 1960s and 1970s were the engine of an intensely creative period of architectural design, they also provided a space for architectural theory to flourish and an arena for critical discussion of the role of politics and new technologies in architecture. With their dissemination, these innovative and energetic documents also established a global network of exchange amongst architectural students, avant-garde architects and theorists, as well as a means to situate themselves within the historical context of architectural publishing of progressive thought and design. An implicit aim of the exhibition, then, is to invite reflection on contemporary uses of media in architecture, and how these fit into a broader historical context. Assembling all these remarkable documents for the first time offers a unique view of a key period of architectural innovation and challenges today's architects to provoke a similar intensity.
The exhibition has been a collaborative effort by a team of PhD candidates in the School of Architecture at Princeton University led by Professor Beatriz Colomina and has been been made possible through the generous support of the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts along with the School of Architecture, the Program in Media and Modernity and the Graduate School of Princeton University.
Covers (l to r) : Megascope 1, 1964 ; Utopie : Sociologie de l'urbain 1, 1967 ; Bau : Schrift für Architektur und Städtebau 1/2, 1968 ; ARse 3, 1970 ; Casabella 367, 1972.