Review: Mai 68: L'architecture aussi!

Abstract

Mai 68: L'architecture aussi! Cite de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine, Paris 16 May–17 September 2018 Attempting to write and curate the history of the radical architectural activities associated with the events of May 1968 comes with several challenges. One is archival. A key feature of 1968 was the questioning of a Beaux-Arts architectural training system centered on the creation of artistic objects; this was accompanied by the rise of an expanded view of architecture, one that gave new attention to architecture's meanings, its publics, its economic and political underpinnings, and the various tools used to build it. Sometimes temporary and ephemeral, the architecture of this era survives in drawings and models but also emerges through written manifestos, research reports, happenings (recorded in photographs and videos), and various experimental structures (some surviving, most not). The traces of such production are, at best, partial and dispersed; often, they are lost altogether. That the events of May 1968 began in architectural schools complicates the matter further. Relevant materials reside not only in institutional and administrative archives but also in the private records of former students and their teachers. With many of the soixante-huitard(e)s still alive …