Oppositions 1973-1984

Guido Zuliani


In the winter of 1971, the Italian magazine «Casabella» published a monographic double issue 359-360, entirely produced by the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, better known by its acronym IAUS, titled  The City as an Artifact.[1]
That issue of  «Casabella» introduced to Italian architectural culture, and to Europe in general, the New York Institute founded in 1967 by Peter Eisenman together with Arthur Drexler, the then director of the Department of Architecture and Design of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the historian and critic Colin Rowe at the time teaching at Cornell University, presenting its statute and a list of all its affiliates. With hindsight, that issue of the Italian magazine can be interpreted as a fundamental step towards the future publication of the Magazine «Oppositions», destined to become the ’70s agent of radical transformations for American architectural culture and, at the same time, an initiator and a reference point ‒ then the only one ‒ for the unfolding of the theoretical debate on architecture and its internationalization.[2]
The first issue of «Oppositions» would emerge from the rooms of the Institute, to whose vicissitudes the magazine would be inextricably tied, in September 1973, proposing a project to review architectural culture to bring it into line with the response to the socio-economic transformations of the two previous decades and to the political and cultural unrest that in the preceding years had questioned the Modernist precepts for architecture and the city alike.[3]
At the time, the magazine was directed by an editorial board consisting of the American architect Peter Eisenman, the Argentinean architect Mario Gandelsonas, and the British historian Kenneth Frampton. Between 1974 and 1982, and with the subsequent addition to the editorial board of the historians Anthony Vidler and Kurt Foster, the first issue would be followed by another 24. Issue 26, published in 1984, and considered apocryphal by many of the IAUS members, was to quietly close the series and also mark the definitive closure of the Institute.
The issue of «Casabella», which publicly presented a first summary of the general themes that underlay the discussions conducted at the Institute on the urban environment and the role of architecture in the processes of its construction, thereby highlighting their shared theoretical premises, appeared as the crucial point of passage and a clarifier for the intellectual history behind the publication of its magazine «Oppositions». Likewise, that monographic issue represented the first concretization of the long-pursued ambition of IAUS’ founder and director, Eisenman, of introducing himself into the rich annals of avant-garde magazines, the so-called Little Magazines, an ambition that it may be useful to bear in mind.[4]
At the beginning of the ’60s, during his stay in England and his direct contact with magazines like «Architectural Design» and «Architectural Review», innovative journals deeply involved in the cultural changes in post-war anglophone society, as well as with the publications of groups engaged in the review and contestation of the principles of the Modern Movement such as Team 10 and Archigram, and the extremely animated contexts of the Architectural Association and the Independent Group, Eisenman immediately became aware of the necessity for American architectural culture, characterized as it was by professional pragmatism on the one hand and by the cultural isolation of academia on the other, to have an arena for critical discussion which, like the British situation, might institute a productive relationship between theoretical and historical research, new pedagogical models, and new forms of professional practice in relation to the design of the city, which in the United States was trapped within processes of quantitative planning unable to tackle ‒ when not being their direct cause ‒ the dramatic socio-economic contradictions that the American city and the extra-urban territory were experiencing in those years.
Eisenman’s conviction of the importance for architectural culture, America’s in particular, to define an independent group dedicated to research based on the Team 10 model, and at the same time of the vital necessity for a publication as press organ to disseminate research and debates on the example of the monographic issues of  «Architectural Design» or «Le Carré Bleu» dedicated to the work of Team 10, was reinforced during the two journeys that he made to continental Europe, and in particular to Italy, in the company of his Cambridge colleague and mentor Colin Rowe. It was during these trips that Eisenman discovered the European avant-garde schools and, more importantly, their magazines, like «De Stjil», «Mecano», «L’Esprit Nouveau» but also Pagano's «Casabella» and Moretti's «Spazio», Fully understanding the polemical role that these magazines had played in the dissemination of Modernist culture between the two world wars, Eisenman would become an insatiable collector of them.[5] 
In 1963, back in the United States, with a position as Assistant Professor at Princeton, Eisenman begin to work with his colleague Michael Graves on a project for a linear city aggregated around the infrastructural system connecting Boston to Washington, and of which they would design the segment between New York and Philadelphia. The project would take the name “Jersey Corridor” and in its experimental form was intended to test architecture as a specific practice of spatial definition in relation to the scales of intervention traditionally characteristic of territorial planning. With substantial interdisciplinary contributions, as well as considerable financial support for the project from the school, Eisenman had the opportunity to muster a certain number of young architects at the beginning of their career.[6] What characterized this group was, as in Eisenman’s case, an awareness on the one hand of the insufficiency of the current form of professional practice, which was tendentially technocratic and acritical, and on the other, of the contents of university teaching whose discussions appeared to be isolated from the real events of urban transformation in tackling the problem of the built environment. The outcome was the establishment of a working group that took the name “CASE”, an acronym of Conference of Architects for the Study of the Environment.[7] The group’s intention, in the context of a series of conferences, eight of which took place between Princeton, MIT and MoMA, and through public presentations of concrete projects, was to discuss those issues regarding the role of architecture as a practice to define the physical form of the built environment in relation to planning processes; its theoretical formulation, and its political function in tackling the problems of the contemporary American city, in those years particularly pressing because of both the unchecked suburban sprawl and the social tensions present in the often degraded urban centres; a review of pedagogical models together with a redefinition of the relationships between architectural culture and professional practice, while dealing with questions of perception and the psychology of form.
Certain of the necessity for a channel to communicate and discuss CASE’s production, with money granted by the university for research tied to the Jersey Corridor and with the offer of a teaching post, Eisenman “imported” from England the historian Kenneth Frampton, met during his stay overseas and at the time technical editor of «Architectural Design», with the specific objective of setting up a magazine to become the official organ of CASE. This magazine, which was to have had the significant name of «Re:form», because of differences between Eisenman and Frampton ‒ the latter proposing an editorial board which did not include the American architect ‒ would never see the light of day.
Many of the themes concerning the specific role of architecture in the transformation of the city that were central to CASE’s development would remain the same in the first years of IAUS’s activities, and they formed the experience that the essay published in «Casabella» would emerge from. But among these, one in particular, still not as much in evidence in the issue of the Italian magazine as it was in «Oppositions», and often overlooked by critics, would outline what was to be a fundamental trait of the IAUS group’s cultural project, and at the same time a consolidating structure of the magazine. This theme was the result of the converging of two positions in the formation of CASE. At one extreme, the historical-critical model defined in the late ’40s by Colin Rowe, who had been a member of CASE from the very beginning, and who had been a student of Wittkower at the Warburg Institute, in his essays Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and Mannerism and Modern, together with the theoretical elaboration of the model that Eisenman was developing as a follow-up to his PhD thesis, and the early development of his work on Terragni. At the opposite extreme, the positions of two other founding members of CASE, Stanford Anderson and Henry Millon, both history professors at MIT, a position that emerged out of a discussion that took place during the famous Cranbrook Teachers’ Seminar in 1964, where the conjunction of History, Criticism and Theory was proposed as historically necessary as a foundation to review both the structure of education and the practice of architecture, in explicit opposition to the tradition of the Modern Movement.[8] As already mentioned, this triangulation of Criticism, History, and Theory would be, for Eisenman and his fellow travellers faithful to the IAUS idea, seen as a place «to condense teaching, research, and design into a single process” with the intention of “bridging the gap between the theoretical world of universities and the pragmatic one of urban planning bodies», [9] and conceived as a research centre where a small community of professionals engaged in theoretical, disciplinary, historical, and critical fields, as well as students, collaborated in research and practical projects in which the architectural discipline was practicsed on real urban themes proposed and financed by public institutions such as the federal agency of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) or the Urban Development Corporation (UDC), an agency of the State of New York, all under the patronage of the MoMA Department of Architecture and Design. Above all, this triangulation would become the framework around which the production of the Institute’s future magazine would be arranged.
Despite the first magazine project failing, first CASE and then, later, the IAUS, would succeed in producing several exemplary publications of the group's activities with a certain cultural impact, at least for the American scene. The initial work hypotheses of CASE on the theme of the urban project found a first tangible definition in the catalogue of the exhibition New City: Architecture and Urban Renewal, in which members of CASE presented projects of urban reformulation for the entire northern sector of the island of Manhattan produced by working groups set up within their respective universities.[10]
It was in the wake of this exhibition, and as Eisenman's response to the rejection of his candidacy to the Princeton chair, that the Institute would take shape, continuing the work begun by CASE and unwaveringly pursuing the goal of publications with a strong research content. The publications by the IAUS that preceded the publishing of «Oppositions» included the research work New Urban Settlements commissioned in 1968 by the New York City Planning Commission and only partially published the following year; Another Chance for Housing: Low Rise Alternatives from 1973, the catalogue of the homonymous exhibition held at the MoMA presenting the project results of research and design work on new residential typologies begun in the late ’60s and commissioned by the New York State Urban Development Corporation, of which some examples would be realized in the following years and, perhaps the most important among them, the intensive study directed by Stanford Anderson, exemplary for the wealth of its imported multidisciplinary contributions, on the theme of urban streets and which would not be published until 1978 as On Streets, edited by Anderson himself, with fundamental essays mostly produced by members of the IAUS such as J. Rykvert, A. Vidler, T. Schumacher, D. Agrest, and K. Frampton, but also with important contributions from sociologists and anthropologists such as R. Guttman. To this must be added the publication in 1972 of the volume Five Architects, the outcome of the last meeting of CASE at the MoMA, and the catalogue of the first exhibition organized at the Institute, dedicated to Constructivism and curated by K. Frampton and the painter R. Slutky.[11]
It is in relation to this panorama of different research projects and publications by subject and format, that the role and importance it would have for the Institute emerges, not to mention Eisenman’s ambitions, still geared towards a magazine project that emulated those of the historical avant-garde, with the monographic issue of «Casabella» as a recap, and at the same time with the international exposure, not so much of individual research and specific case studies, but, much more importantly, to define the common theoretical background from which such specific research originated and the background it could be framed against.
To obtain a paragon that is certainly not exhaustive but perhaps sufficient to understand the context of and implicit reasons behind the monographic issue of «Casabella», it is equally essential to take into account the changes that were taking place within the IAUS itself in the late ’60s and in ’73, and how these, by broadening and multiplying the horizon of themes and perspectives questioned in the activities of the Institute would contribute to a transformation and expansion of the critical-theoretical contents which «Casabella» can be considered the first attempt at a summary of, and «Oppositions», the mature and at the same time more problematic one.
The initial group, immediately expanded to include the historian Stanford Anderson, the Argentine architect and liaison with the MoMA Emilio Ambasz, and the painter Robert Slutzky, in ’71 was to be permanently enriched by some culturally quite different figures with the arrival of K. Frampton, who looked at architecture from positions critical of consumer society that were close to the neo-Marxism of the Frankfurt School and the stances of Hannah Arendt, Joseph Rykwerk, the architect T. Schumaker, and the sociologist and anthropologist Robert Gutman. This was an important addition that introduced themes linked to structural anthropology, and above all by the Argentine architects Mario Gandelsonas and Diana Agrest, recently arrived from Paris where they had attended the courses of R. Barthes at the École Pratique des Hautes Études and the post-structuralist intellectual circles that gathered around the magazine «Tel Quel», to recall here only some of the many arrivals, with various responsibilities in the activities of the Institute.

Not to be underestimated either was the contribution, by this time offsite, of A. Vidler, who brought to the Institute a vision of history informed by Foucauldian thought. The arrival of these new figures corresponded, and was made possible in part, to the growing popularity of the Institute and the consequent growth in the numbers of affiliated schools, which resulted in a significant increase in the fees being paid by a growing number of students. Following this growth, the Institute moved to a much larger space which included, in the two floors occupied, an exhibition space, a library, a conference room, and other spaces available for sundry activities in addition to teaching, and that allowed the management of the numerous new cultural activities which began to take shape autonomously at this point.
In this new context, the issue of «Casabella» should have offered an opportunity to respond to a necessary formulation, beyond specific research and planning opportunities, of potential general conceptual principles shared by the various questions that began to emerge within the Institute.
This conceptual background was to find explicit expression in the title given to the magazine issue: the concept of the “City as an Artifact” applicable by extension to the entire anthropic environment, just as the conceptual hypothesis, the philosophical position underlying not only the essays presented but more in general the cultural attitude of the Institute, was reduced to the single work of architecture, with all its ramifications. In this regard, the brief initial fragment of the essay A Dialectical Aspect: The City as an Artifact was eloquent. In it, the historian and critic S. Anderson effectively summarized the general implications of this assumption. The American historian opened his essay by stating that «A primitive village reveals not only the materials and technologies available to the individuals who built it, but also [...] the cosmology of that society. This is no less true in an ‘advanced’ technological society.» The refusal to discuss such metaphysical content amounted to Anderson to obscuring «the most significant task of architecture: to establish an ever-greater correspondence between our values and our physical environment. [...] Architecture - like any other objectification of human knowledge - is not limited to pure ‘expression’ or ‘communication’. It produces statements of truth that are constantly verified by the continuous evolution of the metaphysics of the subject, and by the limitations and possibilities posed by the world of things and individuals.»
[12]. For Anderson, what was fundamental was the recognition ‒ shared in forms and accents that were different from the other authors ‒ of the intentional, whether conscious or unconscious, and at the same time dialectically complex form of the city, its architecture and spatial organization and what was summarized in these few lines, assumable, as we have said, on a conceptual basis of the work and writings of the other members of the Institute. This saw architecture, and with it the entire anthropic environment, as a complex cultural object, directed between, on the one hand, the specificity and autonomy of its objectives ‒ the research into nature, the role and significance of physical form in architecture and in the construction of the city ‒ and its specific tools, namely its nature as a specific and autonomous technique not only in its means but also in its content. On the other, its nature was as a plural, porous, stratified object, in some sense “polyglot”, placed at the intersection of historically determined dialectical processes that link subject and reality and in which architecture is simultaneously a product and an agent.
This was the twofold meaning of architecture as the primary agent in the construction of the physical environment that for the members of the Institute would place it within the field of humanistic disciplines, thus linking it to contemporary developments in subjects such as linguistics, anthropology, sociology, and urban geography, and their contemporary developments with the conceptual and theoretical implications that this brought and which, as we shall see, was to mark «Oppositions» story.  In the «Casabella» issue, these two polarities, still latent and in tension between one another ‒ the coexistence of autonomy and heteronomy as the dual nature of the architectural object as a cultural object ‒ manifested firstly in Eisenman's essay Notes on Conceptual Architecture ‒ Towards a Definition, dedicated to the primacy of conceptual content in determining the laws withing the formal definition processes of the architectural object, and secondly in Frampton’s sociopolitical critique, influenced, as we said, by the thinking of the Frankfurt School, of the inclusivist urbanism veined with populism of D. Scott Brown and R. Venturi. [13]. These two essays defined the extremes of a spectrum of potential positions along which would be placed not only the various critical-methodological essays published in the Italian magazine, but would also constitute the implicit poles within which the whole history of the debate would develop to characterize the American magazine, especially in its first issues.
It should be noted that, defined in this way, as a complex cultural object, the architectural artefact and its function in constructing the human environment are ontologically postioned in antithesis to the modernist idea of object-manifesto, the emblem of an ideally hypothesized future, and that of a technical object, a product, to use the words of K. Frampton, of the “totalitarianism of the technique” and of its assemblage in urban form and this, together with the position that indissolubly linked Criticism, History, and Theory, clearly showed the IAUS group the need for a kind of publication of which the «Casabella» issue was a first attempt, but which would need to find its own specific form, fundamentally distancing itself from the models originally provided to Eisenman and his group by the magazines of the historical avant-garde movements. In fact, it was to be the tension produced by this research that would be the vital thrust of «Oppositions», the dynamism and richness of its cultural project.
As the historian J. Ockman already pointed out,[14], the awareness of the historicity of this need would be clearly expressed only later, in 1974, in the editorial with a decidedly programmatic tone introducing the second issue of the magazine, where the three original editors, Eisenman, Frampton and Gandelsonas, declared that «it should have appeared to the reader of our first issue that «Oppositions» is presented with a spirit similar to that of the so called ‘Little Magazines’ of the ’20s and ’30s, and this is no coincidence, since publishers continue to be admirers of controversial magazines such as «De Stijl» and «L'Esprit Nouveau». At the same time, it is patently obvious that this is hardly the opportune moment for the spontaneous emergence of that kind of polemical magazine; the time for these kinds of polemical discourses has passed and we have no interest in exhuming them.” To this condition the three editors responded by stating that in practising an active critique of the contemporary conditions of design, the project pursued by the magazine would consist of a “new polemical form of a dialectical rather than rhetorical nature”, no longer a militant magazine-manifesto then, but a forum open also to polemically divergent positions.[15]
But let us return briefly to our account. The «Casabella» issue would be followed the following year by an attempt to respond in an anglophone context with a monographic issue of «Architectural Design», rejected by the publishers who, in addition, literally amputated various parts of an article by Eisenman dedicated to the Smithsons’ project for the Robin Hood Gardens[16]. It would be these rejections that would prompt Gandelsonas to suggest the publication of his own magazine, whose title he also proposed, produced entirely within the Institute, and edited by Gandelsonas himself together with Eisenman and Frampton.
The first issue of «Oppositions» contained five essays, almost all written previously, and produced by as many members of the Institute: Rowe published the essay Neoclassicism and Modern Architecture written between ’56 and ’57; Eisenman presented From Golden Lane to Robin Hood Gardens, a full version of the text censored by «Architectural Design» with the passages suppressed by the editors of the English magazine in bold type; Frampton published Industrialization and the Crisis of Architecture, based on a conference on his studies of the work of the German philosopher Hannah Arendt; Vidler a critical essay on the regressive nature of contemporary architectural utopias entitled News from the Realm of No-where [sic], while Gandelsonas and Diana Agrest published Semiotics and Architecture: Ideological Consumption or Theoretical Work, a summary of their semiotic approach to the critique of the relationship between ideology and theory in architectural practice.
For the three editors, the problematic dialectic between positions that assumed the nature of a cultural object of architecture began from quite distinct cultural contexts and concerns, and that «they intend[ed] to discuss and develop specific notions about the nature of architecture and design in relation to the built world» appears immediately evident: in the opening editorial, the three editors emphasized three different areas of debate underlining that «the [...] respective concerns for formal, sociocultural and political discourses will be expressed in jointly writing «Oppositions». The opposition to which the title refers is first and foremost in-house.»[17] This reference, in part directed to broadening the debate inside the Institute, expanded with the arrival of Frampton, Agrest and Gandelsonas, but not only. It was directed above all to the contents of the three essays representing the positions of the three editors ‒ the analysis and conceptual critique of form in Eisenman's essay, the analysis and critique of the relationship between architecture and cultural industry in the late-capitalist context of Frampton, the analysis and criticism from the semiotic point of view of the ideological nature of the theoretical praxis in architecture of Agrest and Gandelsonas ‒ which by immediately triangulating the debate within the magazine between autonomy and heteronomy outlined the thematic terrain on which a variegated constellation of critical contributions would settle over time. And if the choice of the word “opposition” as the title of the magazine intended to delineate, on the polemical lines of the avant-garde magazines so dear to the group, a position and a common programmatic line of criticism in the contemporary practice of architecture, it was the plural, but not neutrally pluralist, version of the word, with the addition of the final “s”, that confirmed the potential contents it would contain, as would the observation and acceptance that analysis and criticism of architecture as a cultural object could only reproduce its multiple, coexistent, and occasionally antithetical natures.
And yet, significant evidence of the internal discussion on the nature and meaning of the magazine came from the graphics chosen by Eisenman for the draft cover, which with the first P of «OPPOSITIONS» made transparent, (a choice that would significantly last only for the first two issues), suggested an alternative reading of the title as “O POSITIONS”, suggesting on the one hand the idea of a neutral container, a forum in the words of the publishers, willing, at least in part, to accept different contents, and on the other, as already noted, proposing a clear reference of a Barthian ancestry to zero-degree thinking on architecture, i.e., to a moment to rethink and re-establish the ontological bases of the theoretical discourse on architecture.[18] As a side note, it should be noticed (a far from irrelevant fact especially regarding not only the evolution of the international profile that the magazine would soon assume, but also the changed composition of affiliates at the Institute), that the authors, with the exception of Eisenman, and unlike the «Casabella» issue, were all of European origin, either directly or through specific cultural influences, as in the cases of Gandelsonas and Agrest.  
The attempt at a solution to summarize this problematic dialectic, the need to find a form in the relationship between divergent and indeed polemical positions, found an answer in the second issue in the formula of a conceptual grid that would denote the different sections of the magazine’s palimpsest, and which, as programmatically recognized in the editorial again co-written by the three editors, now explicitly introduced the Criticism-History-Theory triptych as a framework of its structure: «In short, what we tend to encourage is a number of specific discourses; that is to say, the criticism of constructed projects as vehicles of ideas; the revision of the past as a means of determining the necessary relationships existing between constructed form and social values; the definition of a spectrum of theoretical discourses that link ideology and the constructed form.» As a corollary and support for this thematic framework they added “the documentation of little-known archives as a means for the advancement of knowledge and thought in the sector, in general: the publication of reviews and letters directly related to the discussions in progress. Regarding the value of this last point, it seems to be essentially twofold: first of all, that of an ongoing discussion on the role of physical form in today's architecture and urban planning: and secondly the indivisible ideological and sociopolitical implications of architectural production as a whole.” The titles of the various sections, which would remain the same throughout the magazine’slife, were respectively «Oppositions», specifically dedicated to Criticism, History and Theory, followed by Documents and Reviews and Letters.[19]
Consistent with this programmatic definition, the second issue opened up to external contributions that were very different from one another, such as those of Stuart Cohen, Physical Context/Cultural Context: Including it All, dedicated to concepts in inclusion and contextualism, or of C. Rowe on Character and Composition, and The Fountainhead by art critic Rosalin Krauss dedicated to Minimalism, and also saw, in the Documents section, together with a text by R. Koolhaas on Leonidov’s Narkomtiazhprom, the debut as editor of an extensive reasoned bibliography on the Smithsons by Julia Bloomfield, who was to become the technical editor of the magazine from the next issue, and from then on would be unanimously recognized as an indispensable figure for the compilation and success of the publication.
The third issue of «Oppositions», published in May ’74, marked another decisive and fundamental step in the evolution of the debate among publishers on the critical contents of the magazine in the face of the aeological counterpoint between autonomy and heteronomy. Having clearly stated that «[...] we are more than aware of the need to justify the existence of a magazine that persists in trying to offer a critical discourse on a subject whose essence and meaning are too marginal compared to the interests of society in general. A prevailing skepticism obliges us [...] to ask ourselves what, if anything, is the common factor in our editorial position”, the three publishers continued to note that “It has become progressively clear that we are deeply divided about the importance that each of us attributes to the relationship between architecture and society». and that «[...] our respective positions as editors are more relevant to the way they differ than to what they have in common. In short, we have become more and more aware of the impossibility of co-writing an editorial, and as a result we have reached the decision that this will be our last joint effort.»[20]

From the words of Eisenman, Frampton and Gandelsonas, far from describing a simple personal polemic but rather a testimony of the critical condition in which the architectural culture found itself in the ’70s to be observed directly in their debate, a clear awareness emerges of the irreducibility to a dialectical summary of the different languages for reading and critically interpreting the processes of constructing the physical environment, seen outside the technical determinism of modernism, and of contemporary neo-modernism, as well as a univocal reading and the role and nature of architecture within them.
Paradoxically, it would be this recognized and accepted impossibility, this acknowledged “failure” to build the magazine of a “movement”, equally fashionable as those of the various historical avant-garde schools, expressed so clearly by the editors, together with the steadfastness of the structure of its palimpsest, that would determine the fortune and longevity of the magazine, which right to the end would successfully continue to be a container for the most important voices and contributions of international debate, and would indeed be the main architect of this internationalization.
In confirmation of the awareness of this condition, and realizing that in the face of the historical impossibility of fusing movements, the path to follow would be that of the albeit rather selective multiplication of the voices recorded in the debate, in this same issue, the essay L’Architecture dans le Boudoir by Manfredo Tafuri, which introduced the position of the Italian historian to English-speaking readers, and with it that of the Institute of History of Architecture in Venice, on the state of architecture of those years, thus adding further contents of the discussion and directing attention towards Italian critiques that were particularly dear not only to Eisenman but also to Gandelsonas and Agrest, the latter being responsible for inviting Tafuri to Princeton, and the consequent meeting between the Italian historian and the group of the Institute.[21]
As announced, the next three issues of «Oppositions» would be introduced by three separate editorials, added with their own titles as organic parts to the magazine’s index and each written by a single editor– in Issue 4 On Reading Heiddeger by K. Frampton; in Issue 5 Neo-Fuctionalism by M. Gandelsonas; in Issue 6 Post-Fuctionalism by P. Eisenman ‒ in which the respective lines of research were reaffirmed and which was followed, in Issue 7, by the editorial The Third Typology written by A. Vidler, a new addition to the editorial group starting from this issue.
At the same time, the spectrum of contributions expanded, and with them the content that would find a place in the magazine’s pages. Among the most significant ones, and indicative of the wide range of positions that would find a congruous space in the publication’s pages thanks to its approach, it is worth mentioning in Issue 5 of the summer of 1976 the essay by R. Moneo Aldo Rossi: The Idea of Architecture and the Modena Cemetery, Rossi's project presented under its original title The Blue of the Sky, along with the somewhat critical texts, although from opposing sides, of the personal positions of the group of editors, such as that of Tafuri on the work of the NYFive American Graffiti: Five x Five = Twenty-five and that of D. Scott Brown On Architectural Formalism and Social Concern: A Discourse for Social Planners and Radical Chic Architects. Then, in Issue 6, an important text by Agrest Design versus Non-Design, an acute analysis of semiotic nature of the conceptual tension between disciplinary autonomy and heteronomy, together with three essays, respectively by C. Rowe, C. Moore and V. Scully, dedicated to the work of R. Venturi and his project for the Yale Mathematics Building; in Issue 7, together with an essay by J. Rykwert Classic and Neo-Classic, the essay by B. Tschumi Architecture and Transgression. [22]
Marking the discontinuity resulting from the closure of this other cycle of the magazine’s life, a closure that would be recognized in the Editorial of Issue 9, the last to be signed by the editors, Issue 8, defined as a “Special Issue”, was a monographic edition edited by A. Vidler entitled Paris under the Academy: City and Ideology as a critical response to the essential conventionality of the exhibition The Architecture of the École des Beaux-Arts staged at MoMA at the end of 1975.
This first monographic version of the magazine was followed by three others, all considered as real separate volumes: the two abundant double issues 15/16 of 1979 and 19/20 of 1980 both edited by K. Frampton and dedicated respectively to the work of Le Corbusier before and after the war, and Issue 25 of 1982 entitled Monument/Memory edited by the Swiss historian K. Foster, who joined the editorial group starting from  «Oppositions» number 12 in the spring of ’78.[23]
The editorial introduction to Issue 9 which was, if we exclude the isolated case of the one written by Vidler in Issue 17[24] the only real essay, was dedicated to the critical confrontation between nineteenth-century Historicism and Post-Modernist neo-historicism. Being the last of the series produced collectively, the editors took stock of the first four years of publications, pointing out with good reason the role played by «Oppositions» in defining the place and grounds for the development of a high-level theoretical-critical discussion, on the one hand promoting and animating the debate between critics and architects, and on the other, that between Europe and America. The authors then reaffirmed the basic research objective committed to, defining the “ontological bases of contemporary architecture; the nature of its practice and the foundations of its formal and technical production” and how this would continue to be exercised on the three levels of Criticism, History, and Theory, i.e. through maintenance of the original sections of the magazine, examining the nature of concepts such as “Formalism”, “Realism”, “Modernism” and “Post-Modernism”.”.[25]
With the intention of continuing in their simultaneous role as promoters of and actors in the discussion, both within the magazine and through it, the editors, having abandoned the form of the “Editorial”, would represent themselves from here on. In addition to soliciting and selecting the essays to be published and to writing a sizable number themselves, they would comment on the contributions in the sections “Oppositions” and “Theory” with extensive critical introductions defined first as “Commentary” and subsequently “Postscript”. This new form of intervention would begin to wane within a few issues and then disappear altogether to underline in part the cultural changes that were taking place in the early ’80s with the emergence of post-structuralist currents which, by launching a profound criticism of some of the cultural categories from which «Oppositions» had emerged, began to re-orient the interests of some of the main actors, who were so stretched and so diversified that they were now living for the necessity of an articulate life of their own inside the Institute, with the arrival of figures such as R. Moneo, R. Koolhaas and B. Tschumi, A Rossi, M. Scolari and G. Ciucci, to mention only a few. To this must be added reasons relating to the editors’ own concerns and commitments. Although still engaged in the production of the magazine, they were increasingly involved in academic and design activities outside the Institute.
And if the latter editorial which simultaneously addressed the final word, albeit minimal, on the future programme, and was in a certain sense a farewell, marked the end of the magazine’s internal debate focused on the great effort of defining the specific disciplinary nature of the architecture and its theoretical definition in unitary terms, in the following 16 issues, «Oppositions» would not see any reduction in its function as an arena for the most advanced positions and discussions that the architectural culture of the ’70s and early ’80s expressed.
The programmatic stance critical of the practice of architecture and the structure of the sections that the magazine would continue to be divided into, was linked, we repeat again, to a hypothesis of the fundamental relationship between Criticicism, History, and Theory, through whose filter, to use the final words of the latter editorial, «Oppositions» would continue to question “the destiny of the humanist heritage in the age of modernity; the specific nature of ideology and its role in cultural production; the problematic nature of architecture and urban planning subjected to the impact of accelerating production and consumption; and finally the nature of linguistic operations in the production and assimilation of non-verbal art”, and would continue to frame the most significant contributions advanced by the architectural culture of the decade.[26]
Here is not the place to go into the details of the individual contributions nor the different positions and schools of thought that would find space in the magazine’s pages, but it is perhaps necessary to mention the names of some of its most significant authors to render the idea of the cultural horizon that continued to converge in the magazine. In its pages, together with the numerous essays of the editors, in particular Frampton and Vidler who continued to develop their own critical lines, room was made for the interventions of historians from different schools such as the aforementioned M. Tafuri, who, between ’74 and ’79 published the main sections of The Sphere and the Labyrinth, including the introduction The Historical “Project”, to which must be added the long essay by Giuseppe Terragni: The Subject and the Mask, and those of other exponents of the Venetian school such as F. dal Co, G Teyssot, G. Ciucci, R. Masiero, alongside S. Anderson, A. Colquhoun, K. Foster, and also S. von Moos, I. Sola-Morales, and H. Yatsuka, to name just a few of the best known, in addition to the early writings of an emerging female roster of historians such as Mary McLeod and Joan Ockman. Among the architect “designers”, empowered by the editorial staff to express theoretical-critical positions rather than projects, in addition to the aforementioned Eisenman, Agrest, Gandelsonas, Moneo who continued to publish their essays, we ought to mention completely different figures, from D. Libeskind to P. Johnson and G. Grassi, from H. Fujii to O. Bohigas, and L. Kier.
In the ’80s and ’90s, with the consolidation of the academic careers of the founders and many of the authors associated with the magazine, the discussions that had animated the pages of «Oppositions» would relocate to the academic world: at MIT Anderson established the PhD in History, Theory and Criticism in Architecture, Art and Urban Form which he directed from 1974 until 1991; Eisenman taught at the Cooper Union and at Princeton; at the Cooper Union he also taught Agrest and, for a short period, Tschumi; at Princeton, where Gandelsonas was also teaching, Vidler became Chair of the PhD programme dedicated to the Theory and History of Architecture until the early 1990s; in the early ’70s Frampton began teaching at Columbia where he went on to direct the PhD programme in Theory and History of Architecture for many years; Columbia’s teachers also included the historians Mary McLeod and Joan Ockman, and the latter would become the director of the Buell Centre for the Study of American Architecture, remaining there for a long time, as well as B. Tschumi who in 1988 would become its Dean.
As a witness of the theoretical discussion on architecture and to fill the cultural void that the closure of «Oppositions» had left, came the magazine «Assemblage», directed for 41 issues, from 1986 to 2000, by the historian Michael Hays, who had trained under the guidance of H. Millon and later of S. Anderson, and by Alicia Kennedy. The members of the initial Advisory Board included M. Gandelsonas, S. Anderson and M. McLeod.[27] «Assemblage» was to carry on in the footsteps of the cultural project set up by the Institute's magazine, expanding its horizons with a distinct and greater awareness of the themes and ambitions that had supported the debate both inside and outside it, and opening up to the new generation. of critics, historians, and designers that was emerging in the late ’80s.
Describing in the editorial post to the introduction of the first issue the notion of «Assemblage» as a concept that «suggests borrowed and transformed materials, from history, from literary criticism, from philosophy, from politics; suggests heterogeneity, collision, incompleteness», but «distinct from passive and omni-sympathetic pluralism», the editors defined the magazine as «a container dedicated to a knowledge of opposition» and directed their attention directly to the question of the unstable confine between autonomy and heteronomy not only in architectural practice, but also in those of history and criticism, recognizing that «forms of activity with modalities accepted as operating standards can be as coercive as they are productive; and disciplinary boundaries are too often defined to maintain the status quo» and that therefore, «To deal adequately with architecture and its worldly condition must often involve the crossing of institutionalized disciplinary barriers», thereby investigating, so to speak, that initial tryptich on which the «Oppositions» project had been established».[28]
These would be the themes that would confront the educated generation in the academic institutions to which the members of the Institute had moved, or that they influenced through the international dissemination of «Oppositions», which would extend the theoretical-critical discussion on architecture, under the pressure of new forms of interpreting society, to include themes that increasingly addressed a critical reading of the cultural and political significance of the work of architects, historians and critics as intellectual practices inexorably inscribed within complex mechanisms of social production and of the various forms of power that act in it. The pages of «Assemblage» would bring visibility not only to the new intake of critics and historians, from Stan Allen to Jennifer Bloomer and Catherin Ingraham, from Beatrice Colomina to Marck Wigley, Felicity Scott, Jeffry Kipness, Sanford Kwinter, Mark Rakatansky, Sarah Whiting, and Robert Somol, but also young designers such as Enric Miralles and Carmen Pinos, Herzog and De Meueron, Will Arets, Jesie Reiser and Nunaho Umemoto, Preston Scott Cohen, and Greg Lynn.
The words that the historian Michael Hays placed at the end of his reflection on the story of «Oppositions» clearly illustrate the phase of generational transition that Assemblage represented: “while the theorizing of the autonomous operation of architecture was never completely abandoned by the generation that adopted the «Oppositions» discourse, new textual strategies, based on those forged by «Oppositions», began to redirect architecture towards thematic constructions that had never been part of the «Oppositions» repertoire ‒ subjectivity and sexuality, power and property, geopolitics and other themes” increasingly using, in these processes of transcoding, techniques derived from deconstructivism, psychoanalysis and theoretical criticism. Hays concluded: “Although in the mid-1980s the theory had already begun to articulate itself differently from the «Oppositions» model, the theoretical modality would continue to have the same effect of enlarging the social and cultural spheres of architecture, extending its practical consequences.»[29]
But the true link with «Oppositions» remained the great mass of critical material deposited in its pages, a legacy that testified to one of the richest debates in the history of architecture on the nature and function of the discipline, its autonomy, and its complex link with political, economic and social processes, as an intellectual activity invested with values and objectives that transcend the pure and simple technological response to practical needs and demands. A legacy of particular importance in times when, using the concise words written by K. Frampton in the review in Issue 7 of «Oppositions» of the volume by R. Banham The Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment, «the greatest happiness of the greatest number is seen in the rationalization of human wellbeing through technology; the anti-art controversy sees the acceptance of ’culture’ welcome through consensus; the realization of human destiny is [pursued] not through political choices, but through the processes of a manipulated market», times in which it remained fundamental to remember that «in the end, a ‘technological a priori is a political a priori’ notwithstanding how remote it may appear from the immediate fields of the action of power».[30]

[1] Casabella nos. 359-360: The City as an Artifact - December 1971, Editrice Casabella. This issue of the magazine was produced entirely by K. Frampton, who, for the occasion, moved for a brief period to Milan to work in contact with the magazine’s editorial staff.

[2] Frank, Suzanne: IAUS: An Insider Memoir, AuthorHouse AuthorHouse, - 2010; Förster, Kim: The Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, New York, 1967-1985: Networks of Cultural Production, gta Verlag, ETH Zurich - 2017.
A fundamental testimony on the Institute is a documentary produced by Diana Agrest: The Making of an Avant-Garde: The Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies 1967-1984 – 2013. See also: Rispoli, Ernesto-Ramon: Ponti sull’Atlantico. L’Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies e le relazioni Italia-America (1967-1985). Quodlibet - 2013.

[3] The magazine «Oppositions: Journal for Ideas and Criticism in Architecture» is only one, albeit the first, of several editorial initiatives that would be undertaken from 1973 by the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies.
The Institute's magazine OCTOBER came out in 1976 edited by the art critics R. Krauss and A. Michelson, and is still available today.
In 1978, under the initial guidance of A. McNair, the monthly tabloid Skyline was launched, dedicated specifically to events that animated both the cultural life of the Institute and the New York scene, complete with announcements, reviews, brief essays, and a calendar of events.
That same year, publication began of a series of catalogues dedicated to exhibitions organized by the Institute. A total of 16 would be published and among these it is worth mentioning those dedicated to M. Scolari - the first of the series, with an introduction by M. Tafuri, to A. Rossi, the Texan houses of J. Hejduk, and to I. Leonidov, or those dedicated to collective exhibitions such as Idea as Model and New Wave in Japanese Architecture.
From ’81 to ’82, the Institute began publication of OPPOSITIONS Books. Five of these would be published: the volume Essays in Architectural Criticism by A. Colquhoun, the Scientific Autobiography (the very first edition), and The Architecture of the City by A. Rossi, Spoken into the Void by A. Loos and a translation of the writings of M. Ginzburg, Style and Epoch. Among the volumes planned were a second collection of essays by Loos, In Spite of, the collected essays of T. van Doesburg, K. Frampton, M. Cacciari and A. Isozaki, and The Sphere and the Labyrinth by M. Tafuri.
Like OPPOSITIONS, the graphics of all the Institute's publications were by M. Vignelli.

[4] See B. Colomina, G. Buckley: Clip, Stamp, Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X to 197X, Actar - 2011. The volume contains a conversation and interviews with P. Eisenman, K. Frampton, M. Gamdelsonas, and A. Vidler.

[5] The rich collection of magazines assembled by Eisenman, including pamphlets and original avant-garde documents, from the early 1920s to the 1960s, is now preserved at the Beinecke Rare Books & Manuscripts Library of Yale University. See the catalogue published for the exhibition of the collection by the Library itself: Architecture in Dialogue: The Peter Eisenman Collection at Yale, Beinecke Rare Books & Manuscripts Library of Yale University – 2012.

[6] For the Jersey Corridor project, see P. V. Aureli, M. Biraghi, F. Purini: Peter Eisenman. Tutte le Opere, Electa – 2007, pp. 56 – 57. Also: http://www.architectmagazine.com/videos/michael-graves-new-jersey-corridor-project .

[7] S. Anderson, CASE and MIT: Engagement, in A Second Modernism: MIT, Architecture, and the 'Techno-Social' Moment, (Vv.Aa.) edited by A. Dutta, MIT Press - 2014 pp. 578-651. For the story of CASE see also the acts of the congress Revisiting CASE, held at the MIT in 2015.  Part of the acts can be consulted at: https://architecture.mit.edu/history-theory-and-criticism/event/revisiting-case

[8] C. Rowe: Mathematics of the Ideal Villa in Architectural Review no. xx, March 1947; Mannerism and Modern Architecture in Architectural Review no. xx, May 1950; both now in C. Rowe: La matematica della villa ideale ed altri scritti, edited by P. Berdini, Zanichelli Editore – 1990.
P. Eisenman: The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture. Dissertation 1963, Lars Müller – 2003; Italian translation by P. Eisenman: La base formale dell’architettura moderna, Pendragon – 2009. Vv.Aa.: The History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture. Papers from the 1964 AIA-ACSA Teacher Senimar, edited by M. Whiffen. The MIT Press - 1965. The volume contains essays by P. Collins, B. Zevi, S. Chermayeff, S. Moholy-Nagy, S. W. Jacobs, S. Anderson, and R. Banham.

[9] Mentioned in: Frank, Suzanne: IAUS: An Insider Memoir, AuthorHouse- 2010;

[10] Vv.Aa.: The New City: Architecture and Urban Renewal, The Museum of Modern Art in New York - 1967.

 
[11] Vv.Aa.: New Urban Settlements no. 1: analytical phase, Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies - 1969; Vv.Aa.: Another chance for housing: low-rise alternatives; Brownsville, Brooklyn, Fox Hills, Staten Island: an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, The Museum of Modern Art in New York - 1973; Vv.Aa.: On Streets: Streets as elements of Urban Structure, edited by S. Anderson, MIT Press - 1978 ; Vv.Aa.: Five Architects, Wittenborn Art Book, Inc. - 1972. 1972.

[12] S. Anderson: L’ambiente come artefatto: considerazioni metodologiche in: Casabella nos.359-360: The City as an Artifact - December 1971, pp. 71-77, Editrice Casabella.
It is perhaps interesting to note how interest in the relationship between cultural facilities and the construction of the physical environment expressed by Sanford Anderson crosses, albeit in quite different forms and with other objectives and results, a significant part of the architectural culture of the ’50s and ’60s, from an interest in the anthropology of the members of Team X like the Smithsons, A. Van Eyck, G. Candillis and S. Woods, to the theme of collective memory in the writings of Aldo Rossi and Vittorio Gregotti, heirs of the urban analyses of Saverio Muratori and the thinking of Ernesto Rogers.

[13] P. Eisenman: Appunti sull’architettura concettuale - Verso una definizione, pp. 48-57; D. Scott Brown: Il “Pop” insegna, pp. 14-23; K. Frampton: America 1960-1970. Appunti su alcune immagini e teorie della città, pp. 24-38; D. Scott Brown: Risposta per Frampton, pp. 39-46, in: Casabella nos. 359-360: The City as an Artifact - December 1971, Editrice Casabella.

[14] J. Ockman: Resurecting the Avant-Garde: the history and program of Oppositions in ARCHITECTUREPRODUCTION, Revision n.2, edit by Beatriz Colomina, Princeton Architectural Press – 1988, pag. 181-199.

[15] P. Eisenman, K. Frampton, M. Gandelsonas: Editorial statement in Oppositions n. 2, The Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies – January  1974. «It must have occurred to the readers of our first issue that Oppositions present itself in a similar vein as the so-called ‘Little Magazines’ of the twenties and thirties, and it is scarcely an accident since the editors continue to be admirers of such polemical journals as De Stijl and L’Esprit Nouveau. At the same time, it is patently obvious this is hardly an opportune moment for the spontaneous emergence of that kind of polemical magazine; the time for this kind of polemical discourse has passed and we have no interest in resurrecting it.” At the end of the next section, after listing the points the magazine would be structured around, the authors commented, “For us, the sum total of these efforts constitutes a new polemical form which is dialectical in nature rather than rhetorical». 

[16] P. Eisenman: Robin Hood Garden London E14, Architectural Design n. 42 – settembre 1972, pag. 73 – 92.

[17] P. Eisenman, K. Frampton, M. Gandelsonas: Editorial statement, in Oppositions n.1, The Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies – September 1973. «Oppositions is an attempt to establish a new arena for architectural discourse in which a consistent effort will be made to discuss and develop specific notion about the nature of architecture and design in relation to the man-made world».
Further on, the authors concluded «[…] our respective concerns as individuals for formal, sociocultural and political discourse will make themselves felt in our joint editing of Oppositions. The opposition alluded to in the title will first and foremost begin at home.»
 

[18] On this topic, see  J. Ockman: Resurecting the Avant-Garde: the history and program of OPPOSITIONS in ARCHITECTUREPRODUCTION, Revision n.2, edit by Beatriz Colomina, Princeton Architectural Press – 1988, pag. 182.

[19] P. Eisenman, K. Frampton, M. Gandelsonas: Editorial statement in Oppositions n. 2, The Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies – January 1974. “In short, what we are striving for is the inducement of a number of specific discourses; namely, the critic of built work as a vehicle for ideas; the reassessment of the past as a means of determining the necessary relations existing between built form and social values; the establishment of a spectrum of theoretical discourses linking ideology and built form;” the text continued “the documentation of little known archival material as a means for advancing scholarship and thought in the field as a whole; and finally, the publication of reviews and letters that have a direct bearing on the discourses at hand. As to the last they seem to us to be primarily twofold: firstly, an ongoing discourse on the place of physical form in architecture and planning today; and secondly, the indivisible ideological and socio-political implications of architectural production as a whole.” 

[20] P. Eisenman, K. Frampton, M. Gandelsonas: Editorial statement in Oppositions n. 3, The Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies – May 1974. “[…] we are more than commonly aware of the need to justify the existence of a magazine, which persists in attempting to offer a critical discourse on a subject matter whose essence and meaning are only too marginal to the basic interest of the society at large.” Further on “It has gradually become clear that we are sharply divided as to the importance which each of us attaches to the relationship of architecture and society. […] our respective positions as editors are of more consequence for the way in which they differ than for what they have in common.  In short, we have become increasingly aware of the impossibility of writing a joint editorial with the result that we have come to the resolution that this will our last common effort.”
 

[21] In reality, Tafuri, only a few years earlier had already published a critical essay in English in the catalogue of the exhibition dedicated to the architecture of Italian Radicalism, mounted in the summer of 1972 at the MoMA by E. Ambasz and entitled Italy: New Domestic Landscape. Achievements and problems of Italian Design.
M. Tafuri: Design and technological utopia in Italy: New Domestic Landscape. Achievements and problems of Italian Design edited by E. Ambasz, The Museum of Modern Art in collaboration with Centro Di – 1972.

[22] Browsing through the indexes of these 4 issues of «Oppositions» gives an idea of the amazing, and at the same time disorienting, variety of positions expressed in the magazine's pages. 

«Oppositions» n. 4, Wittenborn Art Book, Inc. – Ottobre 1974: Editoriale di K. Frampton: On Heidegger; P. Eisenman: Real and English: Robert A.M. Stern: Yale 1950-1965; Mimi Lobell: Kahn, Penn, and the Philadelphia School; E. Ambasz: A Selection from Working Fables; A. and P. Smithson: The Space in between. Nella sezione Documents: Karel Teige’s Mundaneum, 1929 and Le Corbusier’s In Defense of Architecture, 1929, Introduction by George Baird; Luigi Moretti: The Values of Profiles, 1951; Structures and Sequences of Spaces, 1952, Introduction by Thomas Stevens; Paul Rudolph: Alumni day speech: Yale School of Architecture, February 1958.

«Oppositions» n. 5, MIT Press – Estate 1976: Editoriale di M. Gandelsonas: Neo-Fuctionalism; R Moneo: Aldo Rossi: The Idea of Architecture and the Modena Cimitery; A. Rossi: The Blue of the Sky; M. Tafuri: American Graffiti: Five x Five = Twenty-five; A. Vidler: The Architecture of the Lodges: Ritual Form and Associational Life in the Late Enlightenment; D. Scott Brown: On Architectural Formalism and Social Concern: a discours for Social Planners and Radical Chic Architects. Nella sezione Documents: The magazine Veshch/Gegenstand/Object. Commentary, Bibliography, and Translation by Kestutis Paul Zygas.

«Oppositions» n.6 MIT Press – Autunno 1976: Editoriale di P. Eisenman: Post-Functionalism; C. Rowe: Robert Venturi and the Yale Mathematics Building; C. More: Conclusion; V Scully: The Yale Mathematics Building: some Remarks on Sitting; K. Frampton: Constructivism: The Pursuit of and Elusive Sensibility; D. Agrest: Design versus Non-Design; Nella sezione Documents: William S. Huff: Symmetry: An Appreciation of its Presence in Man’s Mind; Gruppo Sette: “Architettura” (1926) and “Architettura (II): The Foreigners” (1927) – Introduction by Ellen R. Shapiro.

«Oppositions» n.7 MIT Press – Inverno 1976: Editoriale di A Vidler: The Third Typology; W. Seligmann: Runcor: Historical Precedents and the Rational Design process; M. Pawlwy: “We shall not bulldoze WestminsterAbbey”: Archigram and the Retreat from Tecnology; J. Rykwert: Classic and Neo-Classic; B. Tschumi: Architecture and Transgression. Nella sezione Documents: i 10 – Commentary, Bibliography and Translations by Suzanne Frank.

[23] «Oppositions» n. 8, Paris under the Academy: City and Ideology a cura di A. Vidler -Primavera 1978, MIT Press; «Oppositions» n. 15/16, Le Corbusier 1905-1933 a cura di K. Frampton – Winter/Spring 1979, MIT Press; «Oppositions» n. 19/20, Le Corbusier 1933-1960 edit by K. Frampton – Winter/Spring 1980, MIT Press; «Oppositions» n.25, Monument/Memory edit by K. Forster – Autumn 1982, MIT Press.

[24] A. Vidler: Editorial – After Historicism in «Oppositions» n. 17 – Summer 1979, MIT Press.

[25] P. Eisenman, K. Frampton, M. Gandelsonas, A. Vidler: Editorial, in «Oppositions» n. 9 – Summer 1977, MIT Press, pg. 1. «[..] the ontological bases of contemporary architecture: the nature of its practice and the foundations of its formal and technical production».

[26] P. Eisenman, K. Frampton, M. Gandelsonas, A. Vidler: Editorial, in «Oppositions» n. 9 – Summer 1977, MIT Press, pg. 2.

[27] The vicissitudes of the magazine Assemblage, and in particular those that would lead to its voluntary closure, became intertwined starting from the ‘90s with the debate on the emergence of digital technology, and deserve a thorough analysis that is yet to be made. The same goes for the editorial products – the magazine, conferences and books – on that cultural operation, also begun in the early ‘90s, that went under the name of «Any», and which, although directed by Cynthia Davidson, had the direct input of Eisenman behind it. ANYONE Corporation is still operational, and still under Davidson’s direction and continues to publish the magazine «LOG», and the series for MIT Press, Writing Architecture.

[28] M. Hays, Alicia Kennedy: About Assemblage in Assemblage n.1 – October 1986, MIT Press, pg. 4-5.

[29] M. Hays: The Oppositions of Autonomy and History in «Oppositions Reader: Selected readings from A Journal for Ideas and Criticism in Architecture 1973-1984, a cura di M. Hays – 1998, Princeton Architectural Press, pg. XIV.

[30] K. Frampton: On Reyner Banham’s The Architecture of the Well-Temper Environment, in «Oppositions» n. 7 – Winter 1976, MIT Press, pg. 86-89.