Chronograms of Architecture takes its starting point from Charles Jencks’ iconic Evolutionary Tree diagrams tracing architecture and society’s pulsations between different ideals through time. Beyond visualising and classifying architectural styles and traditions, Jencks’ ever-evolving diagrams provided a visual tool to analyse, understand, and represent dynamic relations between architecture and society as they unfold.
An exhibition in the AA Front Members' Room of six newly commissioned chronograms – diagrams of the history of architecture – drawn in the Jencksian tradition but from a contemporary view, reveal critical and urgent ways of seeing, understanding and working in the architectural culture of the present. These six diagrams – perhaps six streams of a map of now – provoke questions around techno-optimism and techno-bureaucracy, feminist spatial practice and racial disparity, and the ecological implications and productive conditions of architecture.
The symposium will begin with a panel discussion between historians, archivists, and designers including Mark Wigley, Lily Jencks, and Ingrid Schroder to reflect on the history of Charles’ diagrams, before bringing together Chronograms of Architecture contributors Pier Vittorio Aureli and Marson Korbi, Mario Carpo and Mark Garcia, Charles L. Davis II and Curry J. Hackett, Francesca Hughes and Urtzi Grau, MOULD, and Bryony Roberts and Abriannah Aiken, to collectively reflect on the method of diagramming architectural history both as an expressive visual format and as a critical tool of analysis.
A full list of speakers and the schedule for the day will be announced closer to the time.
Chronograms of Architecture is a collaboration between e-flux Architecture and the Jencks Foundation within the context of their research programme ‘isms and ‘wasms that takes inspiration from Charles Jencks’ diagrams.
Symposium's timetable
11:00am – 12:30pm: Chronograms, Charles Jencks' Diagrams.
Panel with Mark Wigley, Mark Garcia, and Ingrid Schroder, chaired by Lily Jencks.
12.30pm – 1.30pm – Lunch break.
1:30pm – 3:00pm: Projections into History.
Panel with Pier Vittorio Aureli and Marson Korbi, Mario Carpo and Mark Garcia, and Bryony Roberts and Abriannah Aiken, chaired by Eszter Steierhoffer.
3.00pm – 3.15pm – Tea/ Coffee break.
3:15pm – 4:45pm: Cross-sections of the Now.
Panel with Charles L. Davis II and Curry J. Hackett, Francesca Hughes and Urtzi Grau, and MOULD, chaired by Nick Axel.
5.00pm – 6.30pm – Concluding roundtable.
6.30pm – 9.00pm – Chronograms Exhibition opening in the AA Bar and FMR.
