Suburbia/Disturbia: Learning from Levittown
The theme designated for the Program in Media and Modernity for the academic year 2007-08
is Suburbia/Disturbia. It focuses on "Learning from Levittown," the unpublished research
project and 1970 Yale design studio of Denise Scott-Brown and Robert Venturi that was
intended to be the companion volume to the canonic Learning from Las Vegas. The M+M study
of this project will culminate in the publication of a critical edition of the unpublished
manuscript and a documentary film. The theme of Surburbia/Disturbia is also addressed in a
series of invited seminars and lectures including: Ant Farm members Chip Lord and Curtis
Schreier and historian Felicity Scott; Marie Theres Stauffer on Superstudio; and Martino
Stierli on Learning from Las Vegas. In addition, the Media + Modernity PhD Colloquium
featured presentations by Noam Elcott, Jonathan Foltz, Daniel Lopez-Perez, Lydia Kallipoliti,
Meredith TenHoor, and Rafi Segal.
Furthermore, the program continues with projects from last year's designated
theme of the little magazines, polemical books, films and exhibitions of the
1960s and 70s. The exhibition "Clip, Stamp, Fold: The Radical Architecture
of Little Magazines, 196x to 197x," which opened at the Storefront for
Art and Architecture in NYC, moved to the Canadian Center for Architecture in
Montreal, and then to Documenta 12 in Kassel, the Architectural Association in
London, and Norsk Form, the Norwegian Centre for Design, in Oslo. In each site,
a series of events addressed the question of little magazines and the documentation
in the exhibition continues to expand. A major conference was convened by Shumon Basar
and Beatriz Colomina at the Architectural Association in London, featuring Peter Cook,
Dennis Crompton, David Greene, Charles Jencks, Rafael Moneo, Peter Murray, Claude Parent,
Dennis Sharp, Stanislaus von Moos and Maggie Toy.