Centennial architecture exhibit 'a history, not the history'

Rietveld Schroder House Garrit Rietveld and T. Schroder-Schrader Utrecht, The Netherlands, 1924 Central Museum Utrecht

June 21, 2000
Web posted at: 12:50 p.m. EDT (1650 GMT)

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(CNN) -- Design enthusiasts probably shouldn't count on seeing another exhibition like "At the End of the Century: One Hundred Years of Architecture" anytime soon.

"This show will never happen again, I think, because of the details of it and the nature of it," said Cara Mullio, curatorial associate of the exhibition, which runs through September at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. "To document 100 years of anything is a feat."

The ambitious exhibition, conceived by former museum Director Richard Koshalek, features 21 thematic sections showing how architecture has evolved amid political, social and economic changes since 1900.

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Among them: the Bauhaus movement in Germany that emphasized functionalism and a synthesis of painting, sculpture and architecture; the rebuilding after World War II; the development of the skyscraper; Modernism; mass-produced housing such as the homes in New York's planned community of Levittown, and even fantasy cities like Disney World's EPCOT.

The exhibition incorporates more than 1,000 objects, including new and original models, film and video footage, photos, drawings, furniture and artifacts.

There are original models of Broadacre City -- Frank Lloyd Wright's utopian urban plan -- and of Chandigarh, a city in India developed from plans by the architect Le Corbusier.

Another highlight of the exhibition is "The Unbuilt," a series of computer-graphics films of four immense architectural projects that never got off the drafting table.

Developed in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "Unbuilt" lets museum-goers "enter" three-dimensional "virtual spaces" via a large-scale projection in the Visitors' Gallery. Stills from the films also are on display.

There, they can experience Le Corbusier's The Palace of Soviets, which, if built, would have dominated the Moscow skyline; The Danteum by architects Pietro Lingeri and Giuseppe Terragni, which Mussolini commissioned to commemorate and embody the writings of "The Divine Comedy" author Dante Alighieri; the Drive-In House, British architect Michael Webb's plan to integrate vehicles on tracks and high-rise structures; and Monument to the Third International by architect Vladimir Tatlin.

The latter was designed in 1919 for St. Petersburg, to celebrate the industrial and political ideals of the Soviet state.

To tackle such a massive exhibition, organizers started with an international group of advisers with various specialties, who helped narrow down the topics and determine what needed to be researched.

Given the exhibition's breadth, Mullio acknowledged there was a risk of leaving key elements out. But in the end, she said, it managed to address the important trends.

"I think we did a pretty good job in terms of highlighting these certain themes of 20th-century architecture," she said. "It's a history, not the history. Just a perspective of what transformed our built realm."

"One Hundred Years of Architecture," which museum director Jeremy Strick called one of the most ambitious projects ever mounted at MOCA, began its international tour in 1998 in Tokyo, then traveled to Mexico City, Cologne, Germany and Chicago before finishing up in Los Angeles, where it runs through September 24. A companion book features more than 300 illustrations and analyses related to the exhibition.

Mullio said it's natural that architects would be drawn to the exhibition. But she has been pleased with its reception by an even larger audience.

"The public has always gravitated toward architectural shows -- people really like to look at drawings and models," she said. "I find it's actually touching a much broader population in terms of our viewers than you would think if you had not seen the show."

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