Institutes, Institutions, and Institutionality
Researcher: Alex Mayming, Author / Researcher
Program: Architecture
This research looks at the influence of post-1968 pedagogical debates on the formation of institutes and institutionality.
Before the events of 1968 as a cultural and historical hinge point unfolded, a slightly earlier moment in the mid-1960s was significant for the rapid evolution of a significant number of architectural research institutes. This moment of institution-building would largely develop in the shadow of an era marked by the heavy scrutiny and attack of societal institutions.
Given this historical context as a backdrop, this lecture looks anew at Institute of Architecture and Urban Studies to construct a counterhistory through an archival examination of the organizational and administrative documents with a vast empirical basis. Following Latour’s emphasis on documents and facts, this lecture tracks nominal tasks of paperwork, which reveal and identify relationships to other institutions, to subject formations, and to control mechanisms which situate IAUS in relationships to larger more established institutions and practices.
An analysis of paperwork and wordcraft is relevant not only to connect the material culture of these documents and the bureaucratic medium to the more intangible ambitions and stated goals of their contents, but as a way to examine the question of materiality of language itself. For IAUS, this para-institutional quality was most evident in the continual process of defining and re-defining the institutional scope of work, methods, protocols, personnel, roles, and in the work of managing the institute as such.
The question of institutionality at an architectural nonprofit operating in/ of/ for the city of New York would underpin the first decade of their research, production, and critical questioning, and would lead to a number of innovative but ultimately problematic efforts in linking together urban problems, institutional legitimation, and pedagogical innovations.
