Les années AUA

The first retrospective on the work of the French multidisciplinary collective is a marvelous journey into a singular approach to the profession. It is also a micro-history of 1960s to 1980s France.

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Architect’s collective are very fashionable these days. The London-based studio Assemble surprised everyone when winning, in December, the prestigious Turner prize for their work across the fields of art, design and architecture and the creation of projects in tandem with the communities.

Les années AUA — **Top**: Georges Loiseau, Jean Tribel and Jean-François Parent, Quartier de l’Arlequin, Villeneuve de Grenoble, 1968-1973. Photo © Archives Jean Tribe. **Above**: Paul Chemetov and Jean Deroche, Atelier d’urbanisme et d’architecture, Bagnolet, 1968. Annie Tribel (in the foreground) and Jean Perrottet (background). Photo © Fonds Fabre Perrottet. SIAF / Cité de l’architecture & du patrimoine / Archives d’architecture du xxe siècle

On the other side the Atlantic, the Canadian Center for Architecture turned its gaze to “The Other Architect,” (see Domus 998, January 2016: The difficult craft of the architect) showing the work of groups such as Urban Innovations Group, ILAUD (International Laboratory of Architecture and Urban Design), AMO, IAUS (Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies), CUP (Center for Urban Pedagogy), ARAU (Atelier de recherche et d’action urbaines), Architecture Machine Group, Forensic Architecture or Multiplicity, all in search of “different operating models, aiming for collaborative strategies, introducing strange concepts, and experimenting with new kinds of tools.”

Yet collaborative practices - people that shared, not only their work, but moreover their life and their destiny, beyond the simple act of architecture, travelling, living, playing and eating together, – are nothing new. AUA, the Atelier d’urbanisme et d’architecture, a singular group of professionals highly influent on the French architectural scene of the 1960s and 1970s, between the inception of the Vth République and the entry in power of Francois Mitterand, was much more a mere architecture studio. With the exhibition “Une architecture de l’engagement 1960-1985”, curated by Jean-Louis Cohen with Vanessa Grossman, the Cité de l’Architecture et du patrimoine in Paris celebrates their work in a first retrospective. Multidisciplinarity, cooperative practices, a new material sensibility, leftist tendencies and a utopian thinking are at the hearth of this exhibition, on view until 29 February 2016.

A pluridisciplinary practice including more than fifteen people, most of whom are still alive, and coming from all different professional background (from architects, engineer, decorators, and urban planner, to furniture designers, landscape architects and sociologists) the group was created in 1960 by Jacques Allégret, in a former print shop of the 20th arrondissement in Paris. Partly steaming from a Beaux-arts education, members of the AUA were strongly opposed to the idea of the studio based on a single master. They ended up being a very large group, a family of some sort.

AUA was based on a strongly leftist cooperative model with tight relations to both politics and culture. In France, the group is mostly remembered for several collaborations with the so-called “red” communist mayors. Later, in the1980s, the rise of postmodernism was fatal for AUA, as much as it was for communism.

Together with L’Atelier de Montrouge, another collective created in 1958, members of the AUA were qualified of French néo-brutalism. Other saw affinities with the Italian neo-realist movement, with whom they shared an interest for both industrialization and craft skills and a desire to ennobling poor material. They were also amongst the first architects in France to offer a critique of the grands ensembles (in the magazine Forum, also created inside the group), aiming for a continuity of the urban fabric, there where Modern architecture had failed.

All this, and much more, we learn in the exhibition “AUA – Une architecture de l’engagement 1960-1985.” For who is not familiar with the group (as I am sure it is the case for many architects outside France), the exhibition is a marvelous journey into a particular epoch and a singular approach to the profession. It is also a micro-history of 1960s to 1980s France. On the other hand, the French public might discover, meandering through the exhibition, many particular paths within the group: AUA was a collective formed of a series of individuals that kept their personal signatures and worked on particular projects. The rich series of oral histories presented throughout the exhibition might as well help the visitor to grasp the many personalities that constituted this fluctuant and evolving group.

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Municipal library Elsa-Triolet, Pantin, Jacques Kalisz, Jean Perrottet with Pierre Arro, Miroslav Kostanjevac and Louis Petrocchi, 1969-1972. Photo © Alexandra Lebon

Georges Loiseau, Jean Tribel and Jean-François Parent, Quartier de l’Arlequin, Villeneuve de Grenoble, 1968-1973. Photo © Alexandra Lebon

Cohen and Grossman suggest that the fascination with AUA – and for other similar groups of the time – is the utopia it represents – a concrete utopia to use the word of German philosopher Ernst Bloch. But as every family, the AUA was full of life and highly dysfunctional at time. This is what transpires from the first ever retrospective dedicated to their work: a rich, compact and intense exhibition and an ode to a period in which politics and culture walked hand in hand. Yet if the exhibition revels an abounding quantity of archival material, models, drawings, photographs and original interviews, one would have liked more space to breathe and absorb what feels like a five room’s exhibition that has been condensed into one and only small exhibition space. But luckily, after the show closes the catalogue remains. “AUA – Une architecture de l’engagement 1960-1985”, is a beautifully designed and smartly curated book that offers a wonderful collection of essays by some of the best French architectural historians of the moment. As such, the exhibition and the book offer an immense contribution to French’s recent history.

until 29 February 2016
Les années AUA
Curators: Jean-Louis Cohen with Vanessa Grossman
Centre de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine
1 place du Trocadéro, Paris