Institutes, Institutions, and Institutionality

Before the events of 1968 as a cultural and historical hinge point unfolded, a slightly earlier moment in the mid-1960s was significant for the ways in which governmental institutions as well as philanthropic organizations and schools of architecture searched for new ways to define and live up to their social responsibility. In this moment in the middle of the decade, American knowledge production and institution-building rapidly evolved, and a significant number of architectural research institutes developed, multiplied, and flourished, at a time when societal institutions, from the armed forces to government, endured heavy scrutiny and attack. These concerns, including their wide-ranging interpretations, would form a crucial backdrop to the educational and pedagogical debates that would significantly mold the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies (IAUS) and a handful of other para-institutes at this moment. IAUS was conceived of at a moment in the late 1960s when the American context was replete with university laboratories, centers, and other such organized research units. Looking anew at IAUS through an examination of the organizational and administrative documents with a vast empirical basis, this essay tracks the influence of these debates on the formation of IAUS as an architectural nonprofit. This question of pedagogy at an architectural nonprofit operating in/ of/ for the city of New York would underpin the first decade of their research, production, and critical questioning, and would lead to several innovative but ultimately problematic efforts in linking together urban problems, institutional legitimation, and pedagogical innovations. As a counterhistory, this paper is part o as a series of diagonal slices through its institutional history to reveal problematics and intersections with other issues larger than architecture itself, particularly around relationships with municipal governance and administration, finance, and economic shifts in the moment of late capitalism.

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.Teach.2023.18

Volume Editors
Massimo Santanicchia

ISBN
978-1-944214-44-9