Publication

  • Log: Observations on Architecture and the Contemporary City, Issue 50: Model Behavior
    Cynthia Davidson
    Editor
    Anyone Corporation, 2021
  • GRANTEE
    Anyone Corporation
    GRANT YEAR
    2021

NEMESTUDIO, “Middle Earth: Dioramas for the Planet,” 2017. View of Plastic Pacific Hall. Drawings courtesy the architect

Log 50, Model Behavior, considers model behaviors and their ramifications, both historically and today, and asks: What is model behavior in the information age? Or in a #MeToo society? Or in a postdigital architectural practice? Or in architectural education? From study models to presentation models, from the Thorne Miniature Rooms at the Art Institute of Chicago to the rotating models in Rhino and Revit, architecture produces models that project and elicit behaviors that shape both the discipline and the public realm. These models are not autonomous or neutral, but rather draw on socioeconomic and political models that are the basis of human interaction and settlement. In addressing these questions and more, Model Behavior raises awareness of the influential behaviors of models in architecture, and also launches a seven-month research program, led by Cynthia Davidson and Mirko Zardini, to shape an exhibition of the same name.

In an interview in Log 44, the architectural historian Kenneth Frampton says, "What's important is critical discourse in architecture. Once the culture of architecture is no longer a discourse, it's completely lost, it has no continuity. It just becomes a technical provision of built form. There's no other meaning or significance that you can attribute to it." To encourage and sustain the discourse so critical to architecture, Log provides a platform for ideas and arguments presented by both established voices, such as Frampton's, and emerging voices. As time passes, the names in Log's pages change; the ideas reflect the work of a younger generation, such as the work on authorship in architecture that Ana Miljacki and Ann Lui are organizing with Log 53, 54, and 55, or the new look at the role of Italy in 21st century architectural education, called Perché l'Italia Oggi? (Why Italy Today?) that Manuel Orazi and Alicia Imperiale are organizing, and even the open issue, in which there is no overriding theme but rather the opportunity to engage current events, current books, and current buildings in an ongoing critical discourse on architecture.

Cynthia Davidson is executive director, Anyone Corporation, editor, Log; acquisitions editor, Writing Architecture series books with MIT Press; visiting professor, GAUD Pratt Institute; visiting critic, Cornell College of Art, Architecture and Planning; freelance articles with Architectural RecordArquitectura Viva, and other periodicals; cocurator, The Architectural Imagination, US Pavilion, 2016 Venice International Architecture Biennale; cocurator, Model Behavior.

Patrick Templeton is Log managing editor since 2017; bachelor’s of architecture, University of Arkansas, oversees layout and production of every issue of Log, whether working with guest editors or participating in the selection of articles and essays for an open issue of the journal. Freelance articles with The New York Review of Architecture and The Architects' Newspaper. Manages Anyspace exhibitions.

Mirko Zardini, director of the Canadian Centre for Architecture from 2005 to 2019, is an architect, author, and curator. His exhibitions and publications include Asfalto: Il carattere della cittá (2003); News from the Interior for the 2004 Venice International Architecture Biennale; Sense of the City (2005); 1973: Sorry, Out of Gas (2007); Actions: What You Can Do with the City (2008); Other Space Odysseys: Greg Lynn, Michael Maltzan, Alessandro Poli (2010); Imperfect Health: The Medicalization of Architecture (2011); Rooms You May Have Missed: Umberto Riva, Bijoy Jain (2014); and It’s all happening so fast (2016), a reflection on the often conflicting ideas about human relationships to the environment. In addition to his curatorial and editorial work, he teaches design and theory, presently at the Princeton University School of Architecture. Mirko is cocurator of the exhibition Model Behavior.

Ann Lui is cofounder and architect with Future Firm, Chicago; assistant professor in practice, University of Michigan; cocurator, Dimensions of Citizenship, US Pavilion, 2018 Venice International Architecture Biennale; guest coeditor for the Log themed issue on Authorship.

Ana Miljacki is historian/theorist, curator, associate professor of architecture, MIT; director Critical Broadcasting Lab; cocurator OfficeUS, 2014 US Pavilion, Venice International Architecture Biennale; author, The Optimum Imperative: Czech Architecture for the Socialist Lifestyle 1938-1968; guest coeditor for the Log themed issue on Authorship.

Manuel Orazi is architectural historian, editor of architecture books at Quodlibit Publishers, Macerata, Italy; author, Yona Friedman: The Dilution of Architecture; teacher, Ferrara and Ascoli-Picena; curator, Milan Triennale, and Log protagonist; guest coeditor for the Log issue Perché l'Italia Oggi? (Why Italy Today?).

Alicia Imperiale is architect, artist and theorist; visiting assistant professor, Pratt Institute; critic, Yale School of Architecture; author, "New Flatness: Surface Tension in Digital Architecture" and numerous articles, including "An 'Other' Aesthetic: Moretti's Parametric Architecture," Log 44; guest coeditor for the Log issue Perché l'Italia Oggi? (Why Italy Today?).

Contributing authors include: Stan Allen, Sean Anderson, Phil Bernstein, Cynthia Davidson, Joe Day, Penelope Dean, Samantha Ding, Dora Epstein Jones, David Erdman, David Eskenazi, Marshall Ford, Forensic Architecture, Todd Gannon, Erik Herrmann, Eric Höweler, Christian Hubert, Ferda Kolatan, Jimenez Lai, Mark Lee & Sharon Johnston, Alice Loumeau, John McMorrough, Michael Meredith, Kiel Moe, Rizal Muslimin, Jason Rhys Parry, Shane Reiner-Roth, Jesse Reiser, Anna Renken, Paulette Singley, Tyler Survant, Alican Taylan, Patrick Templeton, Davide Tomasso Ferrando, Neyran Turan, Tom Wiscombe & Marrikka Trotter, Andrew Witt, and Kechao Xiang.

Anyone Corporation is a New York-based nonprofit architecture think tank established in December, 1990, to advance the knowledge and understanding of architecture and its relationships to the general culture through international conferences, public seminars, exhibitions, books and periodicals that erode boundaries between disciplines and cultures.