International Lecture Series: Tom Avermaete

NB! Forelæsningen er desværre aflyst pga. sygdom - vi håber at kunne afholde den ved en senere lejlighed. 

Åben forelæsning med arkitekturhistoriker Tom Avermaete (ETH Zürich). Forelæsningen 'The View from the Grid: The Norms and Forms of an Analytical Tool' er en del af forelæsningsrækken 'International Lectures Series', hvor Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole inviterer store internationale navne indenfor til en eftermiddag med fokus på væsentlige internationale temaer i arkitekturen. Temaet for forårets forelæsninger er 'The Art of Analysis'. 

Architectural analysis is all but innocent. When architects analyze the condition in which they plan to intervene, they are always informed by ‘frames of value and thought’ which drive their logos and praxis. Sometimes these thought frames are very explicit and articulated loudly in texts and images. At other times they remain completely tacit and hidden. The French philosopher Michel Foucault has called these frames ‘epistemes’.  

This lecture will explore one of the strongest analytical tools in the history of modern architecture and design: the Grid. Throughout history, architects as different as Jean-Nicolas Durand, Oswald Mathias Ungers and Venturi & Scott-Brown have used the Grid as an analytical tool. In this lecture we will especially focus on the CIAM Grid, which was developed for the international organization on modern architecture in 1946 as a tool to present different projects. However, as from 1953 this tool would become a powerful weapon to revolutionize modern architecture and urban design. 

The Grids by the group of Team 10 not only provided an innovative analysis of cities and territories, but -more importantly- radically changed the episteme of modern architecture and urban design. The lecture will claim that these innovative definitions of modern architecture expressed a fresh conception of modernity, with different relations to history and culture, as well as to the agency of the architect and the users. 

About
Dr. Tom Avermaete is Professor at the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture, ETH Zürich. After his architecture studies in Belgium and Denmark, Avermaete obtained an MSc degree and a PhD in the history and theory of architecture at the University of Leuven, Belgium. Avermaete was lecturer in the history of architecture at the University of Copenhagen (1997), leader of the Centre for Flemish Architectural Archives at the Flemish Architecture Institute (2003), as well as associate professor (2006) and full professor of architecture (2012) at Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands.