The Architect as Corporation as Media: Doug Michels, Alexandra Morphett , and Universal Technology, 1978-1980

The work of Doug Michels can be understood as a kind of grand strategy of provocation, boundary testing, and playing with the rules of architecture. From the iconic work of Ant Farm that melded performance, installation and architecture, to his life long obsession with the dolphin as a non-human entity of high intelligence that straddled the boundary between art and technology, Michels’s practice continually experimented with the possibilities of architectural practice. This paper focuses on Universal Technology a little-known company Michels co-founded with Australian artist Alexandra Morphett in Houston, Texas. As a company Universal Technology had a very brief existence from 1978 to 1980 and produced very few realized projects. Yet the founding of this corporation encapsulates a crucial point of inflection for architecture, between the neo-avant-garde experiments in the expanded fi eld of the 1960s and 70s and more corporate forms of architectural practice.

Volume Editors
Jasmine Benyamin, Kyle Reynolds, Mo Zell, Nikole Bouchard & Whitney Moon

ISBN
978-1-944214-28-9