25. June 2009

The conceptual practices that emerged in the 1960s through radical architecture in Europe were linked to a networked society in which architecture is no longer a built object, but becomes an environment with which the individual interacts. Within these radical movements, from Archigram to Superstudio, architecture is adapted to all scales, from domestic to urban, in the temporality of the instant and the action. Constant developed „New Babylon“ in which architecture has become an « atmospheric machine ». Today information technologies networks and computational design understand architecture as a dynamic environment. Architecture implements new concepts in a complex living system where a calculated, « machinic » nature has replaced the representational or allegorical nature of the “model”.

Since 1996, Marie-Ange Brayer has been the director of the Centre Regional Contemporary Art Collection [FRAC, Centre] in Orléans, France, where the collection is channeled towards the linkage between art and research architecture. The FRAC centre has been putting together a collection on architecture in its utopian and experimental dimension, from the 1950s until the present day. She has curated ARCHILAB (2001 and 2002) and the French Pavilion at the 8th International Architectural Biennale in Venice (2002). She is currently working on a PhD at the EHESS (School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences) in Paris, retracing the legal status of the architectural model since the Renaissance, by way of a history of representation ("A model object, the architectural maquette"). In 2008 she was a co-curator of the exhibition « Youniverse », 3rd International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Sevilla, curated by Peter Weibel.