Team 10: Symposium

1.

A symposium, “Team 10 Today,” was still possible to envisage a more or less in time, as perhaps the most urgent task System that provided the fodder for much held on September 21, 2006, in con- consciously planned pattern of sustainable seems to be again the definition of the Team 10 discussion in the 1960s about junction with the exhibition Team 10: land settlement and urbanization before the role of architects in today’s world, whether how to translate program into urban fabric. Utopia of the Present. Organized by Pandora’s box of late consumerist capital- this means that we are looking to articulate Plattus reminded the audience of others, associate professor Keith Krumwiede, ism, driven by the universal ownership of utopia again: as a projection, as a fantasy, such as James Stirling, Kevin Lynch, and it brought together Yale faculty Peter de the automobile, finally sealed the environ- as a sense of hopefulness about architec- Gordon Cullen, who informed the urban Bretteville and Alan Plattus and histori- mental fate of the species.” ture’s capacity to intervene or as a relent- design debate as it matured into a more ans Ana Miljacki of Columbia University Thursday evening’s symposium, mod- less struggle to do any or all of the above elaborate, layered approach to urban situ- and Thomas Avermaete of the Delft erated by Peter de Bretteville, included against overwhelming odds.” Hansen, ations. But the participants in Team 10, University to discuss the influence discussions by Thomas Avermaete, asso- who was isolated in the Eastern bloc, can all from different countries, had diverse of Team 10 in today’s contemporary ciate professor at the Delft University of be related to the current climate of design opportunities to achieve their social goals. architecture culture. Technology; Ana Miljacki, adjunct assistant globalization and ideas of “open architec- Another part of Team 10’s legacy is both professor at Columbia University; and Alan ture as an architecture that could accept the consciousness of an emerging environ- The Venice Biennale is the nearest contem- Plattus and Keith Krumwiede, of Yale, link- change without obsolescence.” mental agenda and the continuity of issues porary architects come to convening as an ing architecture and the dynamic postwar Panelists also discussed projects such as the means of production of both international group, presenting new work period—which ultimately settled into the such as Ralph Erskine’s Byker Wall, the building and urban form. Krumwiede, in his and discussing the crosscurrents buffeting “–isms” of the late 1970s to the 1990s. The Economist Building by the Smithsons, and talk, “Thoughts on a Shiny New Brutalism,” the field of architectural thought and pro- speakers argued that most of what we see the Wheels of Heaven Church by Van Eyck, presented the Smithsons’ Burrows Lea duction. Each curated event in the Arsenale today in both formal and programmatic each of which has a distinct image and Farm, alluding to the flexibility in formal is freestanding and open to the public. In terms was first explored provocatively by ethos about scale and the social diagram. interpretation and even an emerging envi- contrast, the series of closed meetings the network of Team 10. Collectively, the Projects such as the Berlin Free University ronmental layer, allowing the architects to conducted around Europe by Team 10— five presentations made the case that Team have been restored and expanded, yet clearly diverge from Modernist orthodoxy. from 1959 to the death of Jaap Bakema in 10 took on indeterminate and complex ethi- they have not become part of architectural Krumwiede in showing the Smithsons’ 1981 and the last real meeting in Bonnieux, cal concerns at their various meetings and pilgrimage itineraries. In the case of Urbino, diagrammatic sketch sections, perspectival Italy, in 1977—come closer to a research struggled with transitioning from postwar Avermaete made the argument that the photo collages, and photographs by art- guild. Team 10’s history reads more as a recovery to consumerism in each of their work played a role in the reemergence of ist Nigel Henderson, (of the Golden Lane school of schools, a group of like-minded respective countries. Many participants history as an active force in design. When competition), clarified the influence of Team architects getting together to critique one argued for two readings, one of Team 10’s De Carlo dared to use arches, oval win- 10 on contemporary design. This graphic another. The exhibition on display at Yale legacy, as disseminated in AD, Forum, and dows, and sloping roofs, it paved the way and conceptual break from CIAM’s dogma- and organized by the Netherlands Institute Spacio e Società, and the other as built for a more complex formal vocabulary. tism seems to herald the individualism that of Architecture, Team 10: A Utopia of the work, reflecting the various personalities The Team 10 struggle—to describe living became part of the new generation’s work Present covered the group’s legacy, while of each of the architects and their respec- a contemporary life while making links to and a connection to more conceptual think- the symposium at Yale, “Team 10 Today,” tive countries. The social reality of the the past—was the first break into Post- ing. The schism also inspired an exchange addressed the legacy of the key individuals commissions have had a deep, geographi- Modernity. between disciplines, as when Candilis and and their respective contributions through cally dispersed influence that is increas- Certainly the early work of George Woods analyzed slums in Moroccan cit- the presentation of five talks on the subject. ingly felt as the global economy matures. Candilis and Shadrach Woods, as well as ies, and makes sense of the adventure that As young architects, friends, partners, Unfortunately, there wasn’t time to hear that of the Smithsons, shows the radical was the Rem Koolhaas book Delirious New and educators, the group fluctuated well the presenters debate the reasons why this nature of their architecture. One can see a York, as well as AMO’s research in Lagos. beyond the handful of core members. work is less referenced than it should be in formal and ideological debt in the work of The idea that the vernacular was in fact a Minor participants, such as James Stirling, current discourse, the scholarship limited, contemporary architects such as Calatrava basis for architecture was something Le Kisho Kurakawa, Doshi, and Hans Hollein, and the remaining buildings less sought out and Foster. The soaring structural clarity Corbusier had commented on and used, are better known today among students by architectural tourists. of the Coventry Cathedral project in par- but not as the foundation of practice and of than the official Team 10 architects such Krumwiede, de Bretteville, and ticular demonstrates that it was not just the professional direction as Team 10 did. as Aldo Van Eyck, Giancarlo de Carlo, and Avermaete presented the work of the Smithsons’ provocative clothes and media The symposium did not suggest that perhaps even Alison and Peter Smithson. Smithsons, De Carlo, Aldo Van Eyck, and savvy that generated interest in their work, architecture students are gravitating to But, as suggested at the symposium Candilis-Josic-Woods, who are each con- but their talent for creating original form understand this break with Modernist by Peter de Bretteville of Yale, who had sidered the most representative and con- and their interpretation of the urban fab- orthodoxy that has presaged the work worked for De Carlo in the 1970s and nected to the Team 10 legacy. As a group ric. Avermaete also underscored how De of OMA, Aldo Rossi, Richard Rogers, chaired the first session of the symposium, of educators, many taught in the United Carlo’s social form of architecture, such as and Norman Foster. But the scholarship what exerted a sustained influence on a States, for example, at Cornell in 1971 Terni Housing, resulted in a richer function- emphasized an enduring legacy of theory younger generation of American architects through O. M. Ungers, or James Stirling, alism, beloved by its residents and admired based upon building and a sustained multi- was exposure to the members as teach- and Shadrach Woods and De Carlo at at the time by his colleagues. In parallel, national search for an individual’s place in ers and employers, rather than their built Yale in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as in Frampton noted his interest in Team 10’s global and economic hierarchies. Much of works. The waning of awareness of this Europe at ILAUD, De Carlo’s Siena-based architecture despite the impossibility to Team 10’s built work was constructed in group has perhaps been abetted by the think tank. Or, in atelier work settings such recreate the social conditions to which it the vanguard of postwar reconstruction, lack of a public presence so that even as the Candilis-Josic-Woods office, where was responding. He noted the Conventry and now it has been altered or eroded. today, the knowledge of this work reverber- many architects including Jean Nouvel and Cathedral project, The Economist build- It was hard to miss the implication through ates mostly through architects with aca- Charles Gwathmey gravitated. Yet for many ing, and how their “Fold and Cluster this concentrated look at the production of demic ties. younger faculty now teaching in architec- houses were pre-consumerist by definition, Team 10 that many of the current critics and Kenneth Frampton’s talk “Structure, ture programs, who were children in the along with the poetic, existential vision of architects, considering global practice and Identity and Existence in the Work of Team socially turbulent 1960s and graduate stu- Nigel Henderson. All of this was “before sustainable design, are part of its legacy. 10,” on September 18, set up a framework dents in the 1980s, there are still a series of Guy Debord’s narcissistic Society of the for Thursday evening’s event. Frampton’s resonant ideas and buildings that give life Spectacle finally took hold.” —Claire Weisz personal familiarity with almost all of the to the current debate about the social pro- It is in housing that Team 10’s legacy Weisz (’89) is a critic in architecture and key architects involved, as well his book, gram of architecture. is most debated. Yale’s Alan Plattus pre- partner in the New York firm Weisz + Yoes. Modern Architecture: A Critical History, Historian Ana Miljacki presented in sented a rebuke to those who extolled has put him in a position to take on a regu- her talk, “Practicing Utopia”, the relatively the architectural virtues of projects by the 1. Team 10 announcing the “death” of lar reassessment of Team 10’s relevance. unknown Team 10 member and Polish Smithsons such as Robin Hood Housing CIAM at Otterlo in 1959 with Jan Bakema, He emphasized, “Team 10 was one of architect Oskar Hansen and contended and Bagnol sur Ceze—urban extensions Alison and Peter Smithson, Aldo Van Eyck, those last moments in Europe when it was that a reassessment of his legacy is “just and ideas about the Stem and the Open and Van Ginkel. Courtesy NAi. 9