9. September 2024
Folio II: Zaha Hadid, Planetary Architecture Two, 1983 (All photographs by John Hill)
AA Folios: 1983–1985 is a small but dense exhibition now on display at The Cooper Union's Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture in New York City. Open to the public for just three weeks, the exhibition presents seven of the fourteen Folios produced by the Architectural Association in London between 1983 and 1991.
During his nearly twenty-year tenure as chairman of the AA School of Architecture, from 1971 until 1990, Alvin Boyarsky broadened the reach of the London institution, drawing in students and professors from all over the world. A major part of this effort happened via AA Publications, which was created in 1974 and produced the school's journal, AA Files, as well as annual prospectuses, project reviews, and exhibition catalogs. The last took different formats across numerous series, most famous and prized among them being the monographic Folios: high-quality reproductions of drawings on large loose-leaf pages, accompanied by critical texts and interviews, and packaged in a box. Fourteen of the catalogs in the Folio Series were produced between 1983 and 1991, many of them featuring architects who were upstarts at the time but are famous names today.
Posters for the AA Folios: 1983–1985 exhibition at Cooper Union
AA Folios: 1983–1985 pulls seven of the fourteen Folios out of the The Cooper Union Library, unboxing their contents and mounting them on the walls of the third-floor hallway in the architecture school's Foundation Building. The seven Folios are presented on one side of the hallway in chronological order, from Daniel Libeskind's Chamber Works in 1983 to James Wines's Museum of Modern Art Frankfurt two years later; in between are Zaha Hadid, Peter Eisenman, Peter Cook, and others. The 12 x 12" (30.5 x 30.5 cm) sheets that comprise each Folio are presented in grids, carefully mounted on sheets behind acetate to protect what are as much museum pieces as library books. The remaining seven Folios, the school promises, will be shown in a second exhibition in spring 2025.
World-Architects stopped by The Cooper Union over the weekend to see AA Folios: 1983–1985, which is open to the public until September 24, 2024. Take a visual tour through the exhibition below.
Folio I: Daniel Libeskind, Chamber Works: Architectural Meditations on Themes from Heraclitus, 1983, with Peter Eisenman, Kurt Forster, John Hejduk, and Aldo Rossi
Folio I: Daniel Libeskind, Chamber Works: Architectural Meditations on Themes from Heraclitus, 1983, with Peter Eisenman, Kurt Forster, John Hejduk, and Aldo Rossi
Folio I: Daniel Libeskind, Chamber Works: Architectural Meditations on Themes from Heraclitus, 1983, with Peter Eisenman, Kurt Forster, John Hejduk, and Aldo Rossi
Folio II: Zaha Hadid, Planetary Architecture Two, 1983, with Alvin Boyarsky and Kenneth Frampton
Folio II: Zaha Hadid, Planetary Architecture Two, 1983, with Alvin Boyarsky and Kenneth Frampton
Folio II: Zaha Hadid, Planetary Architecture Two, 1983, with Alvin Boyarsky and Kenneth Frampton
Folio II: Zaha Hadid, Planetary Architecture Two, 1983, with Alvin Boyarsky and Kenneth Frampton
Folio III: Franco Purini, Around the Shadow Line: Beyond Urban Architecture, 1984, with Micha Bandini, Vittorio Gregotti, and Pierluigi Nicolin
Folio III: Franco Purini, Around the Shadow Line: Beyond Urban Architecture, 1984, with Micha Bandini, Vittorio Gregotti, and Pierluigi Nicolin
Folio III: Franco Purini, Around the Shadow Line: Beyond Urban Architecture, 1984, with Micha Bandini, Vittorio Gregotti, and Pierluigi Nicolin
Folio III: Franco Purini, Around the Shadow Line: Beyond Urban Architecture, 1984, with Micha Bandini, Vittorio Gregotti, and Pierluigi Nicolin
Folio IV: Peter Wilson, Bridgebuildings + The Shipshape, 1984, with Alvin Boyarsky and Bruno Minardi
Folio IV: Peter Wilson, Bridgebuildings + The Shipshape, 1984, with Alvin Boyarsky and Bruno Minardi
Folio IV: Peter Wilson, Bridgebuildings + The Shipshape, 1984, with Alvin Boyarsky and Bruno Minardi
Folio V: Peter Eisenman, Fin d'Ou T Hou S, 1985, with Nina Hofer and Jeffrey Kipnis
Folio V: Peter Eisenman, Fin d'Ou T Hou S, 1985, with Nina Hofer and Jeffrey Kipnis
Folio V: Peter Eisenman, Fin d'Ou T Hou S, 1985, with Nina Hofer and Jeffrey Kipnis
Folio VI: Peter Cook, 21 Years-21 Ideas, 1985, with Reyner Banham and Christine Hawley
Folio VI: Peter Cook, 21 Years-21 Ideas, 1985, with Reyner Banham and Christine Hawley
Folio VI: Peter Cook, 21 Years-21 Ideas, 1985, with Reyner Banham and Christine Hawley
Folio VI: Peter Cook, 21 Years-21 Ideas, 1985, with Reyner Banham and Christine Hawley
Folio VII: James Wines, Museum of Modern Art Frankfurt: Unpremiated Competition Submissions by SITE, 1985, with Herbert Muschamp
Folio VII: James Wines, Museum of Modern Art Frankfurt: Unpremiated Competition Submissions by SITE, 1985, with Herbert Muschamp
