Chronograms of Architecture - e-flux

Editors Nick Axel, Nikolaus Hirsch, Lily Jencks, Eszter Steierhoffer

Contributors MOULD, Pier Vittorio Aureli, Marson Korbi, Bryony Roberts, Abriannah Aiken, Urtzi Grau, Francesca Hughes, Mario Carpo, Charles L. Davis II, Curry Hackett

Jencks’s diagrams sit somewhere between a map and a drawing, rendering and projecting at once. First created in 1969, the timeline stretched from 1920 to 2000, his diagrams were not only analytical, but also speculative. These were drawings of time that looked back to the past in order to predict the future. It is therefore important to recognize and read Jencks’s diagrams as moral exercises and projective acts: a diagnosis of the current state of things, as well as a provocation and call to action to change them.

Chronograms of Architecture is a collaboration between e-flux Architecture and the Jencks Foundation within the context of their research program “‘isms and ‘wasms.”

Chronograms of Architecture was exhibited at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London from October 20 to December 9, 2023.

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7 essays

Visualizing the Racial Epistemologies of the Architectural Canon

Charles L. Davis II and Curry Hackett

The following diagrams redeploy the visual language of evolutionary histories of architecture to reveal the racial epistemologies that animated these discourses in the past.

A short but believable history of the digital turn in architecture

Mario Carpo

If we look at buildings as architects, what matters is not so much what digital technologies can do, but what we could not do without them. This is the critical component of innovation, and only an enquiry into this creative leap may help us understand why and how digital tools have changed the way architecture is conceived and built, and the way it looks.

Cul-de-sac

Urtzi Grau and Francesca Hughes

Given that architecture’s future is written in its schools, we contend that of the many predictive diagrams that Charles Jencks produced, it was his 1969 dissimilarity matrix of the most future-shaping architects of the day that possessed the keenest foresight.

Feminist Spatial Practices, Part 1

Bryony Roberts and Abriannah Aiken

A vast landscape of feminist spatial practices around the world, stretching back in time and forwards into the future, resists power and imagines new futures through experimental storytelling, community-building, educating, material testing, and fabricating new architectures.

Base and Superstructure: A Vulgar Survey of Western Architecture

Pier Vittorio Aureli and Marson Korbi

It is well known that within Marxism the term “base” addresses the way in which human beings produce and reproduce themselves, while “superstruc…

Architecture is Climate

MOULD

Without the pretence of a stable discipline producing fixed objects, architecture becomes part of a febrile and disrupted world, vulnerable to its contingencies. No longer standing outside and applying superficial patches to the wounds of climate, architecture is climate binds the discipline and its humans to the scars, violence, and emotions of climate breakdown.

Editorial

Lily Jencks, Eszter Steierhoffer, and e-flux Architecture

Chronograms of Architecture is a collaboration between e-flux Architecture and the Jencks Foundation within the context of their research program “�…

Subject

History, Time, Climate change, Critical Race Theory

Chronograms of Architecture is a collaboration between e-flux Architecture and the Jencks Foundation within the context of their research program “‘isms and ‘wasms.”

Contributors

Lily Jencks, Eszter Steierhoffer, and e-flux Architecture Editorial
MOULD Architecture is Climate
Pier Vittorio Aureli and Marson Korbi Base and Superstructure: A Vulgar Survey of Western Architecture
Bryony Roberts and Abriannah Aiken Feminist Spatial Practices, Part 1
Urtzi Grau and Francesca Hughes Cul-de-sac
Mario Carpo A short but believable history of the digital turn in architecture
Charles L. Davis II and Curry Hackett Visualizing the Racial Epistemologies of the Architectural Canon

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