Utopia's Ghost - architeria.eu

ARCHITECTURE EXHIBITION
Canadian Centre for Architecture
Montreal, Canada

Utopia's Ghost
28 February - 25 May 2008

CCA presents Utopia’s Ghost: Postmodernism Reconsidered

On view 28 February to 25 May 2008, the exhibition includes original works by Peter Eisenman, John
Hejduk, Aldo Rossi, James Stirling and others in a new interpretation of postmodern architecture.

The result of a research seminar led by Reinhold Martin at Columbia University Graduate School
of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, Utopia’s Ghost is the third in the CCA’s ongoing series
of exhibitions developed in collaboration with university students.

Reflecting the spirit of the research seminar, the installation fills the walls of the CCA Octagonal Gallery
by juxtaposing original works against a grid of duplicated reference images assembled by the student curators.
The work of internationally renowned architects Peter Eisenman, Michael Graves, John Hejduk, Arata Isozaki,
Aldo Rossi, James Stirling, Robert Venturi, and others is presented through models, drawings, and renderings
from the CCA’s extensive collection of architectural archives.

The exhibition title wall features a photomural depicting the dramatic implosion of the high-modernist St. Louis
housing project Pruitt-Igoe designed by the architectural firm Leinweber, Yamasaki & Hellmuth in 1950-54.
This spectacular and much publicized demolition in 1972 marked not only a public expression of the failure
of certain modernist ideologies embodied by the project, but could subsequently be interpreted as a moment
of “birth” for the postmodern period. According to Reinhold Martin, much of the architectural production
of the past half-century has been haunted by the ghosts of modernist utopias: “the projects documented
in the exhibition are understood as bearers of a latent discourse that contradicts the very same
anti-utopian currents that many of these projects have been thought to represent.”

The exhibition draws attention to an uncanny presence of the modernist notions that had been declared dead.
The reproductions and originals representing a selection of projects of the 1970s and ‘80s take on the
character of evidence assembled within five subject groups that trace a utopian afterlife: Babble/Babel,
Islands, Roads to Nowhere, (In)human Scale, and Worlds within Worlds. In this reorganisation, the curators
challenge the traditional understanding of postmodernism and offer a new framework for approaching
the architecture of this period.

ABOUT THE PROJECT

The exhibition is a result of the research seminar “Utopia’s Ghost: Postmodernism Reconsidered,” conducted
at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP) in Fall 2006
and with a different group of students in Fall 2007. Led by Reinhold Martin, the first group of students
developed a series of concepts for tracking the ghost or ghosts of utopia in a wide range of architectural
works conventionally understood as postmodern. These concepts were first explored in a small prototype
exhibition at the GSAPP in December 2006.

The second group of students worked in collaboration with CCA curators, archivists, and other staff
to extend and develop these concepts in the context of the CCA collections. The resulting exhibition
is built around material from the CCA’s substantial holdings in architectural archives from this period.
The curatorial team included Cristina Goberna, Brian Ackley, Marta Caldeira, Meir Lobaton Corona,
Greta Hansen, Katherine Heck, Nika Grabar, Sharif Khalje, Karen Kubey, Ciro Miguel, Troy Therrien,
Susan Thompson, Eirini Tsachrelia, Dimitra Tsachrelia, Elena Vanz and Micheal Young.

Reinhold Martin is Associate Professor of Architecture in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and
Preservation at Columbia University, where he directs the PhD program in Architecture, and the MS program in
Advanced Architectural Design. He is a founding co-editor of the journal Grey Room, a partner in the firm of
Martin/Baxi Architects, and has published widely on the history and theory of modern and contemporary
architecture. Martin is the author of The Organizational Complex: Architecture, Media, and Corporate Space
(MIT Press, 2003) and co-author, with Kadambari Baxi, of Entropia (Black Dog, 2001) and Multi-National City:
Architectural Itineraries (ACTAR, 2007).

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CREDITS:
Text and images: Canadian Centre for Architecture