Towards Another Architecture New Visions for the 21st Century

Published 100 years ago, Le Corbusier’ s Vers une Architecture was conceived as a way of making sense architecturally of a moment of profound social and technological change. Today, we live at another pivotal moment for architecture and for the wider world. The climate emergency alone requires us to rethink everything we have previously taken for granted about how we conceive and construct buildings. Yet, moments of crisis and transformation are also opportunities for overturning conventions, facing uncomfortable truths and forcing disciplinary and societal ‘ reset’ . What we need is not a new architecture, as Le Corbusier was popularly mistranslated as advocating, but another one: an architecture that is not bound to a single vision or future, but is diverse, pluralist and sustains multiple conversations about the active role that architects might play in the world. Towards Another Architecture brings together contributions from practitioners and thinkers working in a range of fields and geographies to advocate their vision(s) for another architecture.

Owen Hopkins is an architectural writer, historian and curator. He is director of the Farrell Centre – a centre for architecture and cities in Newcastle, UK and was previously senior curator at Sir John Soane’ s Museum and architecture programme curator at the Royal Academy of Arts.

Introduction by Hopkins. Knowledges. Learning from the Vernacular in Senegal by Nzinga Biegueng Mboup; Pluralism, Post-modernism by Dá vid Smiló ; Superflux by Anab Jain and Jon Ardern. Sites. Atemporal Wisdoms by Xu Tiantian; Liquid architecture by Gonzalo Herrero Delicado; Another way of writing by Marianela D’ Aprile. Alliances. Adaptive expertise and collaboration by Ruth Morrow; Activism and Equality by Alice Brownfield; FIELD by Xenia Adjoubei. Resets. Architecture: Abolished or Abolitionist? by V. Mitch McEwen; Home Revolution by Marianna Janowicz; Towards a Queer Architectural History by Joshua Mardell.