Reimagining Architecture in an Affluent Society 2015

This talk will focus on the ferment of new ideas emerging as architects began to question how space, design and art might be reconceived to respond to the conditions of a newly affluent society. It will detail the emergence of the electronic age from 1950s onwards and how drawings played a role in this. It looks at the great variety of artistic exploration at a time of new beats in life, society and arts; when the boundaries between the different disciplines in art and design were questioned and artists and architects were redefining their roles within the fields of art, as well as society. Architects who will be looked at include Hans Hollein, Walter Pichler, John Hejduk and Alvaro Siza. Markus Lähteenmäki is an art historian and curator currently working as a Projects Director and Editor of Drawing Matter - a project comprising of a series of workshops, exhibitions and publica- tions on drawings. In 2015 he co-curated the exhibition Land Marks: Structures for a Poetic Universe at the Hauser & Wirth Somerset, and he is currently working on an exhibition of architectural drawings opening at the Swiss Architecture Museum in Basel in March 2016. Markus received his MA in History of Art from The Courtauld Institute in 2013. He has also studied at the University of Helsinki, Moscow State University and at the Finnish Institute in Rome, in Villa Lante.