A day of talks celebrating the centenary of British architect and prominent architecture critic, Alan Colquhoun (1921–2012). Invited speakers will explore the continuing significance of Colquhoun’s writing through four parts: Meaning, Type, Historicism and Regionalism. Ending in a keynote lecture by Kenneth Frampton, the colloquium brings into sharp focus how Colquhoun's writings remain relevant for a new generation of architectural historians and practitioners.
Sessions
Writings on Meaning
Jana Ndiaye Berankova (GSAPP Columbia) and Léa-Catherine Szacka (University of Manchester) describe the influence on their work of Alan Colquhoun’s essays on meaning, semiotics and structuralism, including Historicism and the Limits of Semiology; Postmodernism and Structuralism: A Retrospective Glance; Sign and Substance; Reflections on Complexity, Las Vegas and Oberlin. • Respondent: Joan Ockman, Yale School of Architecture • Moderator: Mary McLeod, GSAPP Columbia
Writings on Type
Ioanna Piniara (Architectural Association School of Architecture, London) and Charles L. Davis, State University of New York at Buffalo) analyze the notion of type in the work of Alan Colquhoun, and their impact on their own research. Their work addresses the seminal essays ‘Typology and Design Method’; ‘Superblock’; ‘Form and Figure’; ‘Twentieth-Century Concepts of Urban Space’. • Respondent: Anthony Vidler, Cooper Union • Moderator: Tom Avermaete, ETH Zurich
Writings on Historicism
Nikos Magouliotis (ETH Zurich) and Cesare Birignani (The City College of New York) revisit the notion of historicism through the lens of Alan Colquhoun’s seminal essays ‘Rules, Realism, History’; ‘Historicism and the Limits of Semiology’; ‘Three Kinds of Historicism’; ‘E. H. Gombrich and the Hegelian Tradition’. • Respondent: Mari Hvattum, AHO Oslo School of Architecture • Moderator: Patricia A. Morton, University of California, Riverside
Writings on Regionalism
Scholars Phillip Denny (GSD Harvard) and Ayala Levin (UCLA) discuss the notion of Regionalism as expounded by Alan Colquhoun (‘Regionalism I+II’; ‘Regionalism and Technology’) within shifting the theoretical frameworks and expanded geopolitical of contemporary research contexts. • Respondent: Stanislaus von Moos, Emeritus, University of Zurich • Moderator: Kathleen James-Chakraborty, University College Dublin
Keynote Address
Alan Colquhoun, Colleague and Protagonist
Kenneth Frampton (Emeritus, GSAPP Columbia) pays tribute to Alan Colquhoun, discussing their decades-long collaborative and collegial relations.
General Info