German architect and theoretician O.M.Ungers (1926-2007) sought to purge architecture from its contamination by external forces. The discourse of formal autonomy cannot be separated from the audiences that Ungers catered to – especially given the insertion of these audiences into the field of cultural production of the postmodern city. £One such case, Frankfurt during the 1980s, will be presented in this lecture. While asserting its role as Germany’s financial center, Frankfurt invested heavily in Kulturpolitik, notably in the creation of new museums, but also in the expansion of its fairgrounds. We see Ungers, a former architect of mass housing, gravitate from the periphery to the urban center with highly visible civic commissions such as the Galleria fairground extension and Deutsches Architekturmuseum. The museum’s interior was organized around a series of abstract “themes”, thus becoming a showcase for the theorization with which Ungers infused his work.

André Bideau’s research targets intersections of architecture production, urbanization and urban governance with a focus on the socio-economic dynamics of postmodernism and Post-Fordism. He has lectured and published extensively on German architect O.M.Ungers (Architektur und symbolisches Kapital, Birkhäuser 2011, English edition: 2020). His current research involves the early development of the La Défense office district in Paris, and the work of Geneva art and urban historian André Corboz. Bideau teaches at Accademia di Architettura in Mendrisio and Université de Fribourg. He is a curator at Zentrum Architektur Zürich of which he was a co-founder in 2017.

Actualité de la recherche
BA et MA d’histoire de l’art 
Prof. Ileana Parvu et Marie Theres Stauffer 
Ass. Gaëtan Stierlin et Coralie de Sousa
En collaboration avec l'Université de Genève, unité d’Histoire de l’art 

Programme des conférences du semestre de printemps