Review: Drawing Ambience: Alvin Boyarsky and the Architectural Association and Drawing Ambience: Alvin Boyarsky and the Architectural Association

Abstract

Drawing Ambience: Alvin Boyarsky and the Architectural Association Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis 12 September 2014–4 January 2015 Rhode Island School of Design, Providence 24 April–2 August 2015 Rarely do we see an exhibition dedicated to the role of pedagogues, professors, or critics—all vital protagonists of architectural culture. Often subsumed in general discussions of pedagogy, or hidden away in the biographical data of architects’ backgrounds, pedagogues offer valuable insight into changing institutional cultures and the teaching environments where designers find their creative voices. At the core of the curatorial decision to focus on a teacher lies the possibility of critical engagement with the formative past of a wider architectural culture. Curated by Igor Marjanovic and Jan Howard, Drawing Ambience: Alvin Boyarsky and the Architectural Association was organized around the drawings and publications that Boyarsky collected and edited during his years in the Architectural Association. Across the four main rooms of the exhibition, the curators constructed a sophisticated dialogue between the drawings collected by Boyarsky and the publications the AA produced during his tenure, the former mounted on and the latter encased in openings in the walls, at times creating windows onto other exhibition spaces. Within the encasements, the curators deployed the compound palimpsests of some of the books, revealing the layered logic driving AA’s publications and marking much of the deconstructivist movement in architecture. Boyarsky was a central figure in post–World War II architectural culture, but one whose prominence has since faded. During his tenure …