Institution Architecture: Building the Avant-Garde

Institution Architecture: Building the Avant-Garde takes a terminological, sociological, and semiological approach that develops by tracing the 'avant-garde' in a century span of literatures for a textual analysis, unpacking the text, and in a process analysis, interpreting it. The sources consist of 825 well-known, globally influential European, including Russian, architectural literatures of the extended 1920s, and of Anglo-Saxon literatures of the extended 1960s to the 2010s. The book traces the connotations that the term 'avant-garde' acquired in them and shows the different notions under the 'avant-garde' signifier, directing attention to the term's early twentieth-century roots and modes; its 1960s rising usage, modes, and function; and its post-1960s to 2010s developments. It sheds light on the sociological topography of the avant-garde, and through the writings, on the ways in which the term and avant-gardism connected, the actors, agencies, and mediators therein, on the terms' techniques and modes, indicating the reasons for its heretofore limited systematic inquiry. The book aims at unravelling a century-old 'avant-garde' mystic function for unlocking horizontal, plural, and transparent conversations about interdisciplinary futures of architecture, cross-disciplinary dialogues, and liberatory dynamics. The book will therefore be relevant to scholars and researchers interested in the avant-garde in architecture, and the avant-garde as a transdisciplinary subject.

Lina Stergiou (PhD) is an architect, cultural researcher, writer, curator, educator whose research cross-breeds scholarship with design and activism, Princeton University Research Fellow, and recipient of several research grants and awards. Her publications include Against All Odds: Ethics/Aesthetics (Benaki Museum) and Revelation (Cultural Olympiad 2001-2004).

Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction: 'Avant-Garde' Coloniality of Value Chapter One: Institution Arts, 1960s and after: Meditations on 'Avant-Garde' Origins, Mediation, and Agency Chapter Two: Institution Architecture, 1920s: Avant-Gardism - 'Avant-Garde' -Vanguard Chapter Three: Institution Architecture, 1960s: 'Avant-Garde' Roots and Function Chapter Four: 1960s-1970s 'Avant-Garde' Architecture Chapter Five: 1960s-1980s Avant-Gardism Chapter Six: Strategy 'Avant-Garde' Avant-Gardism. Two Cases 1960s-1980s Chapter Seven: 'Russian Avant-Garde' Chapter Eight: Avant-Garde Semiotic Domain: Subcategories and Un/Professionalisation Appendix Primary and Main Sources References and Bibliography Index